Penitent Magdalene

By 1666 this picture was inside the old Alcázar in Madrid, the rambling royal palace that stood where the Palacio Real stands now. On Christmas Eve 1734 the Alcázar burned for four days and hundreds of paintings were cut from frames or thrown out of windows. Ribera's Magdalene is listed again in 1747, in the inventory of the new palace, in the room of the furriera, and later in an antechamber of the infante Don Antonio. Ribera painted it between 1635 and 1640, a Magdalene seen half-length, her head resting on a skull, a metal jar of ointment in front of her. The light has gone golden by these years, and it catches on her hair and on the lid of that jar.