悔悛のマグダラのマリア

Jusepe de Ribera was a Spaniard who spent his working life in Naples, then ruled from Madrid, and he built his fame on unflinching pictures of martyrdoms and flayings. This Magdalene, from around 1641, shows the other side of him. She is the repentant sinner of legend who withdrew to the desert, and Ribera paints her half-length and tender, resting her cheek near a skull that stands for how short life is, a jar of ointment set in front of her. By this point his early harsh shadows had warmed into a softer, golden light that catches in her loosened hair and on the metal of the jar. Within a few decades the canvas hung in the royal palace, the Alcazar, in Madrid.