Penitent Magdalen

This canvas kept changing its author. It entered the Spanish royal collection in the 18th century correctly named as Giordano, and was then listed as a Ribera, then as a Murillo, then under other names, until it was given back to the Neapolitan in the mid-1950s. The confusion is the picture's own doing, because what Giordano is imitating here is Ribera, the dark and closed setting, the earth colours, the loaded brush, the flesh laid over a dark ground. The Prado dates it around 1665 and cannot do better, since the first record of it is a Madrid collection in 1764. The Magdalen sits on a rock with a skull resting on her lap and an open book in her hand, a cross of two tied sticks propped in the shadow behind her.