Madonna and Child with Three Repentant Sinners

Around 1629 Van Dyck was back in Antwerp, home from years in Italy where he had soaked up Titian and Veronese, and a few years short of the move to London that would make him Charles the First's court painter. Here he gathers an odd company before the Virgin and Child: three people from scripture who all sinned and then repented. King David, who sent a man to his death to take his wife. Mary Magdalene. And the young prodigal who wasted his inheritance and came home. In Catholic Antwerp, ringed by Protestant lands that had thrown out confession, a picture about penance was taking a side. A century later the canvas hung in Louis the Fourteenth's throne room in the Louvre, kept among his Italian paintings. The Magdalene's face you see now is largely a restorer's work.