Saint Mary Magdalene

The Gospels name Mary of Magdala as a follower of Christ and a witness to his burial and resurrection. Later tradition merged her with an unnamed sinner who washed Christ's feet and dried them with her hair, an identification the National Gallery calls almost certainly untrue. That is the woman Reni paints, eyes lifted, long fair hair loose, a red cloak slipping from her shoulders against a plain dark ground.

The penitent Magdalene was one of his most successful subjects, and he and his studio made dozens of variants of it. From around 1630 the studio also turned out smaller versions of popular compositions, and for a time this canvas was taken for assistants' work. It is now generally accepted as Reni's own, from the mid-1630s, on the strength of its shimmering flesh and fluid brushwork. It once belonged to the Marquis de Seignelay, son of Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV, then to the dukes of Orléans, and came to London with their pictures in the 1790s.