Madeleine méditant devant le crâne

Ribera was a Spaniard, nicknamed Lo Spagnoletto, the little Spaniard, who spent almost his whole career in Naples, a city then ruled by the Spanish crown. He painted this penitent Magdalene around 1630, at the height of the Counter-Reformation, when the Catholic Church, answering Protestant attacks on confession and penance, filled its walls with images of repentant sinners. The Magdalene was the favourite of them all, at once a model of turning back from sin and a chance to paint a beautiful woman. Ribera gives her a rich red robe and lets a single strong light fall across her out of the dark, in the manner he took from Caravaggio. She rests her head on her hands above a skull, the old reminder that life is short. At her side sits the jar of ointment, the sign that identifies her as the woman who anointed Christ's feet.