Penitent Magdalene

In 1641 Ribera, a Spaniard who had settled in Naples and signed himself the little Spaniard, painted four large penitent saints, and this Magdalene is one of them. Nobody knows who ordered them. By 1658 all four were listed among the goods of Jerónimo de la Torre, a Spanish secretary of state for Flanders. She is shown full length, down on the ground in a rocky place, hands pressed together at her breast, face lifted, her long hair loose. The first thing you see is the great red mantle; under it a coarse dark cloth lies against her skin and her feet are bare. On the stone beside her sits the small jar of ointment that identifies her. To the left the rock opens on a strip of sky and blue mountains far off, with a dry tree. Ribera gave that sideways opening to every canvas in the series. This was exactly the saint the Counter-Reformation church wanted people to see, a great sinner who repented, proof that anyone at all could be forgiven. He gives her no tears and no drama, only the lifted face and the light.