Vanitas

Scholars still argue about two basic things here: what this painting shows, and whether we are even seeing all of it. The pensive figure beside a skull could be a plain vanitas, the old reminder that everything earthly passes, or it could be a penitent Mary Magdalene, the saint traditionally shown withdrawn from the world with a skull before her. The two readings sit uneasily together, and nothing has been settled. A second doubt concerns the canvas itself, which may be a fragment cut from a larger composition, which would explain why the figure fills the space so tightly. Preti painted it around 1650, in his most productive years, working between Rome and Naples. It reached the Uffizi late, bought in 1951 from a private collection, under the inventory number it still carries.