Penitent Mary Magdalene

In 1626 the Spanish ambassador to the papacy, Fernando Enriquez Afan de Ribera, third Duke of Alcala, bought three paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi in Rome. This was one of them, made around 1625 and 1626, possibly to his own order. He took it home to his palace in Seville, the Casa de Pilatos, where Spanish writers of that century call it famous and much copied. Two of those copies still hang in Seville Cathedral and in the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City. The original stayed with the duke's heirs, then dropped out of the record altogether and did not surface again until a French auction in 2001. Fort Worth bought it in 2024.

The Magdalene has sunk into a high-backed chair, her eyes shut and her cheek resting on her limp hand, auburn hair threaded through her fingers. An ointment jar and a small black-framed mirror lie on a table in the shadows at the left. She has not taken off the pearl earring or the gold bracelet. The canvas still carries its 18th-century strainer, which suggests very little was ever done to it.