The Feast in the House of Simon

This small scene is one of four that ran in a row along the foot of an altarpiece in the Florentine convent church of Santa Elisabetta delle Convertite. The convent took in women leaving prostitution, and their patron was Mary Magdalene, so the four panels told her story. This is the point where it turns, the dinner at the house of Simon the Pharisee, where she washes Christ's feet and dries them with her hair. The guild of doctors and apothecaries paid for the altarpiece around 1491, and Botticelli's workshop carried a good deal of the painting. In the 19th century the altarpiece was taken apart and the single plank holding the four scenes was sawn into four. The main panel, a Trinity, is in London at the Courtauld, and the four small scenes are in Philadelphia.