(Bologna 1665–1747)
The penitent Magdalene,
oil on canvas, 97 x 76 cm, framed

Provenance:
Angelo Cecconi Collection, Florence;
Aldo Briganti Collection, Rome;
Private collection, Como

Exhibited:
Rome, Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, Cinque Pittori del Settecento, Ghislandi, Crespi, Magnasco, Bazzani, Ceruti, April 1943, no. 18

Literature:
M. Marangoni, La raccolta Cecconi di pittura secentesca, in: Dedalo. Rassegna d’arte diretta da Ugo Ojetti, 2, 1921, pp. 371-372, ill.;
A. Morandotti (ed.), Cinque Pittori del Settecento, Ghislandi, Crespi, Magnasco, Bazzani, Ceruti, exhibition catalogue, Venice 1943, no. 18;
M. Marangoni (ed.), Arte Barocca, Florence 1953, p. 131 pl. 86;
M.P. Merriman, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Milan 1980, pp. 260-261, no. 96, ill.;
G. Viroli in: A. Emiliani/A.B. Rave (eds.), Giuseppe Maria Crespi 1665-1747, exhibition catalogue, Bologna 1990, p.148, mentioned under no. 74;
A. Emiliani in: A. Emiliani/R. D’Amico/A. Volpe (eds.), Doni acquisti depositi. Le acquisizioni degli ultimi dieci anni, 1987-1997, Bologna 1997, p. 55;
A. Emiliani in: J. Bentini (ed.), Percorsi del Barocco. Acquisti, doni e depositi alla Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, 1990-1999, Bologna 1999, p. 78;
W. Prohaska in: J. Bentini et al. (ed.), Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. Catalogo generale. 4. Seicento e Settecento, Venice 2011, p. 147, mentioned under no. 85.

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri (no. 70199) as Giuseppe Maria Crespi.

The present well conserved painting is the earliest of two known autograph versions by Giuseppe Maria Crespi. The second version is conserved in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (inv. no. 7197). The present painting dates from the early 1720s and the Bolognese version dates to the 1730s.

The present depicts the Magdalene as a sensual figure with long red hair according to tradition; with a gesture of pained dedication she contemplates the crucifix, which she holds in her left hand pressed against her right arm, this is in turn folded against her breast signalling penitence. Her whole body is rendered with contraposto torsion that serves to draw the spectator more closely into the protagonist’s drama. To the left of the saint, her attribute, the skull, is visible, while in the background the outline of a cave can be made out. This canvas, which is of an extremely high quality, is in Marangoni’s words (see literature): ‘quasi monocromatica su toni Dorati’ [‘almost monochromatic in tones of gold’]. The ochre-red shades that create this effect also help to accentuate the erotic character of the scene, recalling the exuberant painting of Rubens. Indeed, even the figure’s rounded fleshy arms, and the swift and fluid brush strokes of the painting reveal the influence of Rubens. Crespi´s biographer Gian Pietro Zanotti records that Rubens was indeed a source of inspiriation during this period of the 1720s (see G. P. Zanotti, Storia dell’Accademia Clementina di Bologna, Bologna 1739, II, p. 70). The version in Bologna belongs to the next decade and the style of painting is indicative of Crespi’s final period of activity.

This engaging image of the Magdalene can be compared with the broadly diffused trend during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for images that depicted saints with an undertone of sensuality and thus revealed the preference of patrons for sacred themes that were infused by profane elements. In Bologna in particular this current is rooted in a tradition that spans from the late work of Guido Reni through to Cantarini, Pasinelli, Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole and others. Among the closest precedents to the present painting are, for example, the Magdalene by Dal Sole in the Pinacoteca in Bologna and a painting of the same subject by Giovanni Antonio Burrini in the Pinacoteca in Parma, which are datable to between the mid 1680s and the early 1690s. Andrea Emiliani explains that the contaposto torsion of the Magdalene figure in the present painting might even derive from ‘un modello non insensibile alla memoria di Ludovico Carracci’ [‘a model that was not insensitive to the memory of Ludovico Carracci’] (see Emiliani 1999 in literature). Furthermore, the softness of the brushstrokes in this painting recall the work of Federico Barocci, especially in his delicate drawings and pastels, which Crespi could have admired in Urbino and in the Florentine collections of Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici.

Crespi undertook the subject of the Magdalene on several occasions, each time focussing on differing thematic aspects, as seen in the two renderings in Hannover (Niedersachsisches Landesmuseum) and another rendering known only from a photograph (see M.P. Merriman, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Milan 1980, p. 260, nn. 94-95). These works reveal a similar composition which highlight the penitential spirit of the saint, while another version in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Lyon, underlines the Saint’s meditative character (see Viroli in literature).

This painting was first published in the 1920s by Matteo Marangoni when it was in the Florentine collection of Angelo Cecconi, an important collector of Italian seventeenth-century art. During the 1940s the painting entered the Roman collection of Aldo Briganti, the father of the celebrated art historian, Giuliano, who was also himself a scholar. In 1943 it was exhibited at Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne in Rome on the occasion of the exhibition dedicated to eighteenth-century painting; at a later date it entered the collection of the current owners.