Italian school, XVIII century.

Italian school, XVIII century.
"Mary Magdalene."
Oil on canvas.
Relined.
Needs restoration. It presents lack of polychrome in all the pictorial surface.
Measurements: 78 x 63 cm; 95 x 79 cm (frame).
Maria Magdalene was a biblical figure extremely represented in the Baroque period, especially in the Italian painting of more sensualist roots. Here, a strong chiaroscuro models the soft features and lush flesh tones of the saint. With her left hand, the woman with long, flowing hair is about to remove an earring, a symbolic gesture of the process of detachment from material goods.
While Eastern Christianity honors Mary Magdalene especially for her closeness to Jesus, considering her "equal to the apostles", in the West the idea developed, based on her identification with other women in the Gospels, that before meeting Jesus she had dedicated herself to prostitution. Hence the later legend narrates that she spent the rest of her life as a penitent in the desert, mortifying her flesh. In art she was preferably represented in this way, especially in the 17th century, a time when Catholic societies felt a special fascination for the lives of mystics and saints who lived in solitude in wild places, dedicated to prayer and penance. The theme of the Magdalene, moreover, offered the possibility of representing a beautiful woman who shows some parts of the anatomy then considered taboo, such as the feet or the breast, but who in her respects decorum in that she is mortified flesh expressing repentance for her past sins.