The Penitent Mary Magdalen adoring the True Cross in a rocky landscape tempera grassa (?) on panel, shaped, in a later engaged frame 28 x 15 in. (71 x 38 cm.)
London, Wildenstein, The Art of Painting in Florence and Siena from 1250 to 1500, 25 February-10 April 1965, p. 38, no. 65, as dated to 'c. 1485-88'. Paris, Musée du Luxembourg and Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, Botticelli e Filippino: L'inquietudine e la grazia nella pittura fiorentina del Quattrocento, 1 October 2003-22 February 2004, pp. 304-06, no. 59, illustrated.
Literature
P. Zambrano and J.K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan, 2004, pp. 324-25, no. 18, fig. 170. J.K. Nelson, 'Maddalena ritrovata. L"apparizione' di due Maddalene di Filippino Lippi,' Art e Dossier, n. 199, April 2004, pp. 42-7.
Provenance
Anonymous sale; 4 February 1898 (according to a label on the back of the panel) from where purchased by Count Frans von Ingenheim, Reisewitz. with Knoedler, London, Paris and New York, from whom purchased by Denys Sutton, 2 January 1964, and by descent to the present owner.
Notes
PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF DENYS SUTTON
The present panel was first published in 1965 as Filippino Lippi, based on the attribution of Dr. Alfred Scharf. This has been independently confirmed by Everett Fahy and Federico Zeri (in verbal communication to Jonathan Nelson, January 1990) and maintained in the recent monograph on the artist by Patrizia Zambrano and Jonathan Nelson, both of whom date the composition to the late 1470s on the basis of a similarity of color, figures and rock formations in Lippi's Adoration of the Magi, National Gallery, London). Interestingly, the London Adoration includes a similar figure of Mary Magdalen kneeling before a cave in the distant background (see fig. 1). The present painting is described as 'a small gem' and 'in excellent condition' (op.cit., under 'Exhibited').
Filippino Lippi was born in Prato circa 1457 and was the son of the leading Renaissance painter Fra Filippo Lippi (c. 1406-1469) and Lucrezia Buti, a nun in the Augustinian convent of Santa Margherita in Prato where Fra Filippo was chaplain. His father trained Filippino in the rudiments of painting while executing the frescoes for the choir of the cathedral of Spoleto. Following his father's death in 1469, Lippi was apprenticed to Sandro Botticelli (1444/5-1510), whose manner he copied so skillfully that the attribution of Lippi's early works (1475-81) poses ongoing problems for art historians. Vasari praised Filippino Lippi as 'a painter of the rarest genius and most charming invention'. More importantly he had the ability to absorb, without slavishly following, the most popular trends in contemporary painting. Lippi worked in Florence and Rome at a time when patrons were beginning to intermingle personal, religious, social and political ideals in their ambitions for palaces and chapels. He won many important civic and religious commissions with the support of wealthy and erudite patrons, such as Lorenzo de' Medici 'il Magnifico' and the wealthy Florentine banker Filippo Strozzi (Lippi's most distinguished achievement was the decoration of the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, Florence).
The Penitent Mary Magdalen was a cult figure in Quattrocento Florence, where Saint Antonius, the city's Bishop and Prior of San Marco had written an extensive account of the saint's life (who was also patroness of his order) in his influential Chronicles, in which the Magdalen embodies penitence, self-abnegation and prayer. Most probably a work intended for private devotional use, the artist has chosen to emphasize these qualities by depicting the saint, not in the act of renunciating the vanities of this world by casting off her sumptuous clothes and jewels, but kneeling in prayer alone before a cross in the wilderness. The mouth of the cave in the background is a reference to the Golden Legend according to which, in later life Mary Magdalen lived as a hermit for thirty years in a grotto at Sainte Baume in France. The angle of the impressively foreshortened cross in the right foreground, a testament to Lippi's skillful draughtsmanship, draws the spectator into this highly original composition
Clearly inspired by Donatello's (1386-1466) sculpted version of the same subject in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence, (Lippi relied heavily of sculpture for inspiration throughout his career), the emaciated Magdalen wears nothing but her unkempt and unnaturally long hair that covers her gaunt body. The verticality of the composition is accentuated by the high rocks, tall trees, towering wooden cross and the Magdalen's long hair that frame her infinitely sad face making it the focal point of the picture. Her features recall the type of physionomy that characterized Botticelli's women but Lippi's rendering of expression is subtler and softer than in his master's work. Indeed the way in which the saint gazes intently at the cross shows Lippi's mastery at creating physically and psychologically refined figures, and here he succeeds in conveying in the Magdalen's face the pathos of the written text and her fervent devotion. Her sallow skin reveals the harshness of the conditions she is exposed to, and Lippi's uncharacteristically sober landscape with a stunningly rendered dead thorn bush and hard rock formations, follows the description of the hostile landscape in the Golden Legend: 'there were no streams of water there, nor the comfort of grass or trees'. Even the monochromatic color palette of predominantly brown contributes to the austerity of the scene and the atmosphere of piety that emanates from it. Professor Nelson aptly described The Penitent Mary Magdalen as a successful blend of 'exquisite grace and extreme passion in the same work' and this hauntingly poetic painting was undoubtedly one of the less familiar highlights of the recent Botticelli and Filippino exhibition in Florence and Paris.
