Spanish or Italian school; 18th century.

Spanish or Italian school; XVIII century.
"Magdalene penitent."
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 102 x 83 cm; 116 x 95 cm (frame).
This piece is a remarkable example of late Baroque devotional painting, focused on the emotional and spiritual exaltation of the sacred figures. This representation of Mary Magdalene, archetype of the repentant sinner redeemed by divine grace, is part of a long iconographic tradition whose main objective was to provoke the viewer's introspection through pathos and moral meditation.
The canvas shows the saint in a moment of ecstatic recollection, with her gaze directed upwards in a gesture of supplication or inner illumination, surrounded by the classic attributes of penitence: the skull, emblem of vanitas and the transience of earthly life, the open book, symbol of spiritual meditation and sacred knowledge, and the cross barely insinuated in the background, which refers to the redemptive sacrifice. The composition is dominated by chiaroscuro, a technique inherited from Caravaggist naturalism, which intensifies the drama of the scene by contrasting the areas of light, concentrated on the face, hands and symbols, with the dark, almost neutral background, which isolates the figure from the environment to accentuate its spiritual dimension.
The pictorial quality of the work is remarkable: the treatment of the face, of great expressive finesse, reveals a sensitivity for contained emotion, while the folds of the cloak and tunic, treated with loose but controlled brushstrokes, denote a solid technical knowledge and a desire to capture matter and light with verisimilitude. The choice of colors, white, symbol of purity, the dark red of the cloak, associated with love and sacrifice, and the golden shades of the hair, respond to a symbolic intention coherent with the theological message of the painting.
This painting is inscribed in the context of a pictorial practice that was highly cultivated both in Spain and Italy during the 18th century, where workshops continued to produce cult images with a mixture of baroque theatricality and an incipient taste for a more restrained and elegant sensibility that anticipated the neoclassical aesthetic. Particularly in Spain, this type of representation maintained a didactic and emotional function in the domestic and conventual sphere, being frequent models in private devotional painting.