Maria Madalena em uma gruta

By 1876 Jules Lefebvre was one of the reigning names of the Paris Salon, the official annual exhibition where academic polish still ruled, in the very decade the Impressionists were breaking away from it. The subject is the penitent Mary Magdalene, who by legend withdrew to a cave in southern France to live out her days in prayer. In practice the holy story gave Lefebvre licence to paint what the Salon prized: a reclining nude, here with a fall of red hair across a shadowed grotto and a slip of bright coastline beyond. The picture later hung in the private apartments of Nicholas the Second, the last Russian tsar, in the Winter Palace. It passed into the Hermitage in 1920, after the palace had become a state museum.