La Madeleine dans le désert

Delacroix showed this at the Paris Salon of 1845: a single head of Mary Magdalene alone in the desert, eyes closed, face tilted as if caught between grief and sleep. She is not preaching or triumphant here but withdrawn entirely into herself. Among the critics that year was Charles Baudelaire, then about 24 and still unknown, writing his very first Salon review. He singled this picture out for its strange, aching beauty, and went on to become the painter's fiercest defender in print.