Lot 16: Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome 1593-1654 Naples)

Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome 1593-1654 Naples)
The Penitent Magdalene
oil on canvas
25¾ x 19¾ in. (65.7 x 50.8 cm.)

Rome, Museo del Palazzo di Venezia, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Saint Louis, The Saint Louis Art Museum, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, 15 October 2001-6 January 2002, 14 February-12 May 2002, and 15 June-15 September, 2002, no. 73.
Saint Louis, Saint Louis Art Museum, on loan, 16 September 2002-25 October 2006.
Los Angeles, The Getty Museum, on loan, 6 November 2006-29 June 2010.

R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia and the Authority of Art, University Park, 1999, pp. 208-9, no. 9, fig. 68, pl. VII.
G. Papi, review of Ward Bissell, op. cit., 2000, pp. 450-52.
K. Christiansen and J.W. Mann, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, exhibition catalogue, New Haven and London, 2001, pp. 395-97, no. 73.
J.W. Mann, Artemisia Gentilleschi: Taking Stock, Turnhout, 2005, p. 184, pl. 4, pps. 195c.

Art market, Los Angeles, mid-1970s.

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION

Mary Magdalene, the luxurious harlot who casts off her finery, repents her sins and is forgiven them by Jesus Christ, is the most potent image of penance in Christian art: 'Ne desperetis vos qui peccare soletis, exemploque meo vos reparate Deo' ('Do not despair, you who have fallen into the way of sin; restore yourselves through my example and through God'). Artemisia Gentileschi painted an early representation of the saint at the instant of her conversion (c. 1615-1616; Florence, Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti), in which she is richly attired in an opulently appointed setting, but the artist focuses here on the final, meditative period of the Magdalene's life, when she lived as a hermit in a grotto near Sainte-Beaume, France. Alone in her darkened cave, as Judith Mann recently observed about the present painting, the Magdalene 'places her right hand on her breast and her left on the skull lying before her, gestures that refer to the dual stages of her life, her early devotion to sensual pleasures and the later renunciation of worldly vanity'. She wears the simplest of gowns, unadorned by jewelry or cosmetics, and devotes her thoughts entirely to the contemplation of Christ's Passion. The painting displays Artemisia's art at its purest and most deeply felt, stripped of the flamboyant flourishes that mark many of her earliest pictures, and displaying a tenderness, depth of human empathy, and hard-won simplicity that characterize the later works of many of the greatest masters. In a striking parallel with her subject, Artemisia has by this stage in her career renounced the finery, opulence and easy charms of her early paintings in favor of a deeper and more profound reflection on the meaning of renunciation and redemption.

Artemisia's painting -- like the many, similar images of the saint produced in the seventeenth century by Guido Reni, Guercino and Cigoli - was an image made in all probability for domestic worship, as an aid for the devout to contemplate Christ's sacrifice as the Magdalene herself is depicted doing. The image reflects a popular devotional treatise published in 1611 by the Capuchin preacher Michelangelo da Venezia: 'Who will ever be able to express fully the happiness of that soul who, imitating the glorious Magdalene, gives himself to the meditative life and with a burning spirit, through the practice of elevated contemplation, desires and procures for himself union with the sweet and beloved Jesus?'.

The present Penitent Magdalene was first identified in the 1980s by Burton Fredericksen, and its attribution has subsequently received wide-spread endorsement. Ward Bissell suggested placing it in Artemisia's Florentine period (c. 1613-1620), comparing the head of the Magdalene with Judith in the famous Naples Judith Slaying Holofernes (c. 1612-1613; Naples, Museo di Capodimonte). However, Mann and Giani Papi have located the painting more convincingly during the artist's first Neapolitan sojourn (c. 1630-c. 1639), with Mann citing the similarity of the Magdalene to the Virgin Annunciate in Gentileschi's Annunciation (Naples, Museo di Capodimante), a painting that is signed and dated 1630. In her view, the present work demonstrates 'the more pious, conservative turn that can be observed in [Artemisia's] work after she relocated to Naples around 1630'. Mann dates the present lot to circa 1630-1632.