Italian Old Master Oil Painting, Mary Magdalene Penitent, 17th Century Baroque Original on Canvas, Framed

The Magdalene is shown half length, turned slightly to her right, her eyes lowered toward a skull that rests in her open left hand at the lower edge of the canvas. Her right hand lies flat against her breast. Long red gold hair falls in heavy waves over both shoulders and down her back. A white chemise slips from the shoulder and is caught by a rose coloured drapery across the body, with a fold of deep red behind. Behind her, a mass of brown rock closes the left of the composition, while at the upper right the sky opens in cool blue and grey cloud. The light falls from the upper left across the face, the shoulder and the hands, and leaves the rest in shadow.

The Penitent Magdalene was among the subjects most frequently painted by Italian artists during the 1600s. The theme allowed painters to combine religious devotion with the study of the human figure, of drapery and of dramatic lighting. Artists across Italy produced versions of it, drawing on the influence of Caravaggio and his followers, who established the contrast between deep shadow and focused illumination. The half length format with vanitas objects such as the skull became a standard composition, repeated throughout the century in workshops from Rome to Naples, Bologna and Venice, and painted at this scale for the wall of a private room rather than for a chapel.

The canvas has been relined and carries small losses to the paint layer along the lower edge and fine surface stripes, visible in the photographs. It is unsigned and presented in an antique gilded wood frame showing general age wear.