Magdalena penitente

By the 1560s Titian was past 70 and painting for the most powerful patron in Europe, Philip II of Spain, who could not get enough of these penitent Magdalenes. Titian had settled on the composition around 1561 and his Venice workshop turned out version after version, with this one in the Hermitage counted among the finest. What changed over those late years was the touch. Look closely at her loosened hair and the wet gleam under her eyes, and the paint stops behaving like a smooth surface. Titian was laying it on directly, in broken, fluid strokes you can almost count, so that up close the figure nearly dissolves and only pulls together at a distance. Beside her sits the jar of ointment, the detail that tells you which saint this is, the one who anointed Christ's feet.