The death of Saint Mary Magdalene

The grand duchess who ran Tuscany in the 1620s, Maria Maddalena of Austria, was named for this saint and devoted to her. Most painters showed the Magdalene as a penitent alone in the wilderness, so an image of her death was the rarer choice, and it also quietly honoured the patron who carried her name. In the medieval legend the Magdalene had spent her last years as a hermit in a cave in Provence, and at the end angels lifted her while a bishop brought a final communion. Rustichino made this around 1624 for the grand-ducal villa at Poggio Imperiale.