GUIDO RENI

(Calvenzano, 1575 – Bologna 1642)

The Penitent Magdalene

Oil on copper

27 ⅛ x 21 ⅜ inches
(68.9 x 54.3 cm)

Provenance:

Probably Duke Anton Maria Salviati (1664–1704); by descent to his daughter:

Caterina Zeffirina Salviati (1703–1756), wife of Fabrizio Colonna (1700–1755)

Colonna Collection, Palazzo Colonna, Rome

Private Collection, United Kingdom; by whom sold, Christie’s, London, 4 July 1997, lot 365, as Guido Reni, where acquired by:

Private Collection, New York, 1997–2023.

Exhibited:

“Sacra e profana”: les aspects de la femme à travers la peinture italienne du XVe au XVIIIe siècle. Paris, Galerie Virginie Pitchal,  January 1999, as Guido Reni.

Engraved:

Domenico Cunego, inscribed at bottom with title and “Guido Reni pinxit Dom Cunego sculp. Romae 1776.” and “Ex tabula in Aedibus Colonna Roma Preso Domenico Cunego.”

Giovanni Brunetti, inscribed at bottom “Guido Reni lo pinto; Bernardino Noqui Rom. Lo dibu.xo; Juan Brunetti de Ravena lo gra.o en Mad.a 1803” and “Copia del Original que existe en Roma en la Galeria COLONNA.”

Literature:

D. Stephen Pepper, “Guido Reni’s Practice of Repeating Compositions,” Artibus et Historiae, vol. 20, no. 39 (1999), pp. 36-37, footnote 28, fig. 13, as Guido Reni.

Maria Cristina Paoluzzi, La collezione Colonna nell’allestimento settecentesco: la galleria negli acquerelli di Salvatore Colonnelli Sciarra, Rome, 2013, pp. 114-115, footnote 441.

Guido Reni was one of the leading lights of the Bolognese school. He began his artistic formation in Bologna, where he absorbed the influence of the Carracci and the members of their academy. After an extended period in Rome during which he remained closely associated with the community of Bolognese painters, Reni returned to his native city and settled there for the rest of his life. Reni succeeded Ludovico Carracci as the principal painter of Bologna following the death of the elder artist in 1619. Despite being one of the most famous and successful painters of seventeenth-century Italy, Reni faced increasing financial pressures from his gambling losses during the 1630s and he began to produce multiple versions of his more popular compositions. This striking depiction of the penitent Mary Magdalene, special due to its copper support, is one such example.

Reni’s paintings have been celebrated across the past several centuries for their figural grace and idealized beauty. His religious paintings, often charged with intense emotion and rendered with bold colors and brilliant light effects, are particularly prized. The Bolognese art historian and one of the artist’s earliest biographers, Carlo Cesare Malvasia, recorded Reni’s declaration that he “could paint heads with their eyes uplifted a hundred different way.” The present painting is a testament to Reni’s masterful depictions of holy figures in a state of ecstasy or receiving divine inspiration. Mary Magdalene is here depicted bust-length and close-up, her body nearly filling the pictorial frame. She is bathed in a bright light that illuminates her alabaster skin and pink garment, which contrast sharply with the dark gray backdrop and burnt orange halo. The highpoint of the painting, both in terms of the composition and its execution, is the saint’s golden hair, which is fluidly painted and highlighted with passages of rich impasto. The Magdalene’s locks are beautifully observed, flowing freely as they cascade down her shoulders and even interlacing with her delicate fingers as she holds her hands to her breast. 

The Penitent Magdalene was one of the most popular subjects of Seicento Italy, and it was a favorite of Guido Reni’s. The Magdalene’s heavenward gaze and expressive face clearly indicate that we are witnessing her in a moment of ecstasy. The direct presentation of the figure, divorced from any sort of background or context, follows a formula frequently employed by Reni in his small-scale paintings. Comparable examples include his depictions of the head of Christ crowned with thorns, excerpted from a scene of the crucifixion. The present painting may be a quotation of the Magdalene receiving a vision in the wilderness, such as in Reni’s Barberini Penitent Magdalene (Rome, Galleria Nazionale), which similarly shows the saint with her mouth slightly agape.[i]

A second autograph version of the present composition, also on executed copper but 5 cm wider than the present work, is in the Musée National de Versailles (Figs. 1-2).[ii] It is listed in Charles Le Brun’s inventory of 1683 (no. 75) and generally dated to the mid-1620s. Stephen Pepper considered our painting typical of Reni’s “second manner.” Here the figure is not only more elongated and lithe, but the color key is brighter. He compared the technique and palette of this Magdalene to the well-known Charity in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Guido Reni’s authorship of the present painting was confirmed on the basis of firsthand inspection by Stephen Pepper and Sir Denis Mahon, who both concurred in dating it to the 1630s. The attribution has also recently been endorsed by Dr. Lorenzo Pericolo on the basis of photographs. He has suggested a dating for the painting to ca. 1637, around the time of Reni’s Europa in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and just after his versions of the Allegory of Fortune (written communication, 28 August 2019).

Reni’s many treatments of this theme, combined with their frequent replication by followers and copyists, makes tracing the painting’s provenance through inventories and sale records problematic. However, the history of our painting can be followed with some certainty due to its size, copper support, and prints after the composition, which help to distinguish the work from other paintings by or after the master. The painting is identifiable with the Saint Mary Magdalene formerly in the Colonna Collection, which was engraved by Domenico Cunego in 1776 (Fig. 3) and by Giovanni Brunetti in 1803.[iii] The Colonna painting first appears in the 1704 inventory of the recently deceased Duke Anton Maria Salviati—the given dimensions of 3 ¼ x 2 ½ palmi (73.1 x 56 cm) corresponding to those of the present painting.[iv] The painting then passed to the Duke’s daughter, Caterina Zefferina Salviati, who married Prince Fabrizio II Colonna in 1718. It remained in the Colonna Collection in Rome, where it was inventoried in 1783[v] and listed in Mariano Vasi’s Itinerario Istruttivo di Roma in 1816.[vi]

It is unclear when the Saint Mary Magdalene left the Colonna Collection. Maria Cristina Paoluzzi has recently associated our painting with the Saint Mary Magdalene that was part of a matched pair with a depiction of Saint Peter, which were sold out of the Colonna Collection ca. 1798-1799.[vii] However, our painting cannot be from this pair, as these works were painted in an oval format, and when they were later sold by Lord Radstock in London, their dimensions were reported as about 23 ½ x 16 inches, much smaller than the present Magdalene.[viii] Furthermore, this pair was depicted in a watercolor by Salvatore Colonnelli Sciarra, which shows them displayed in the octagonal frames mentioned in the inventories and with the Magdalene’s head and body oriented in differently than in the present work.[ix]

The present painting was once thought to be the Saint Mary Magdalene on copper mentioned by Malvasia in the Zambeccari collection, which was later bought by Cardinal Girolamo Boncompagni and appears in his 1684 inventory.[x] As the version in the Musée National de Versailles was in Charles Le Brun’s inventory of 1683, it could not be the painting formerly in the Zambeccari and Boncompagni collections. It is possible that the latter painting may have later been purchased by Duke Anton Maria Salviati and later passed to the Colonna

[i] Guido Reni: 1575–1642, exh. cat., Bologna, 1988, pp. 142-143, cat. no. 59.

[ii] On deposit in Versailles from the Louvre, inv. no. 529.

[iii] For Stephen Pepper’s discussion of the Magdalene in the Colonna collection and its relation to the version in the Musée National de Versailles, see: D. Stephen Pepper, Guido Reni: A Complete Catalogue of his Works with an Introductory Text, New York, 1984, p. 262, under cat. no. 126; and D. Stephen Pepper, Guido Reni: L’Opera Completa, Novara, 1988, under cat. no. 115, p. 269.

[iv] It is listed in the inventory as follows: “[110] Altro quadro alto palmi trè ¼ largo palmi due e mezzo, rappresantante una Madalena, con Cornice dorata, et intagliata da Guido.” Philippe Costamagna, “La collection des peintures de une famille Florentine établie à Rome: L’inventaire après décès du Duc Anton Maria Salviati dressé en 1704,” Nuovi Studi, vol. 5, no. 8 (2000), p. 193, no. 110, p. 223, footnote 201.

[v] Catalogo dei quadri, e pitture esistenti nel palazzo dell’ eccellentissima casa Colonna in Roma, Rome, 1783, p. 139, no. 1089. “Un quadro di 3. Per alto= La Maddalena=Opera insigne di Guido Reni Bolognese.” In “secondo facciata verso l’anticamera.”

[vi] Mariano Vasi, Itinerario Istruttivo di Roma, Rome, 1816, p. 221, “la celebre mezza figura di S. Maria Madalena, di Guido Reni.”

[vii] Maria Cristina Paoluzzi, La collezione Colonna nell’allestimento settecentesco: la galleria negli acquerelli di Salvatore Colonnelli Sciarra, Rome, 2013, pp. 114-115, footnote 441. These paintings can be traced in the Colonna inventories back to Cardinal Girolamo I Colonna, who was archbishop of Bologna from 1632–1645 and may have commissioned these works from Reni. They are recorded in his 1667 inventory as follows: “[foglio 114v, no. 46] Un quadro d’una Testa di S. Pietro, che stà con le mano piegate piangendo con cornice dorata alta p.mi 3 2/3 e lar. p.mi 2 2/3 di Guido Reni” and “[foglio 114v, no. 51] Un quadro d'una Testa di S. Maria Mad.a scapigliata con le mani appoggiate al petto ovata ad ottangolo con cornice dorata intagliata alt. p.mi 3 e lar. p.mi 2 1/2 in c.a di Guido Reni.”

[viii] Sold at Tresham, London, 12 May 1826, lots 51 and 52.

[ix] Paoluzzi, La collezione Colonna, plate 26.

[x] Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, Bologna, 1678, vol. 2, pp. 31, 33; and Raffaella Morselli, Documents for the History of Collecting: Italian Inventories 3, Collezioni e quadrerie nella Bologna del Seicento. Inventari 1640–1707, Los Angeles, 1998, p. 106. “[foglio 45, no. 2] Una Santa Maria Maddalena pure in rame a oglio di mano del medemo [Sig.r Guido Reni] con cornice compe sopra [intagliata, e dorata] L2545.” The painting was mentioned in the eighteenth century by Marcello Oretti as still being in the Zambeccari collection, but this was almost certainly a copy after the original. The Zambeccari, like other noble families in Bologna such as the Sampieri, frequently had faithful copies made after the paintings sold out of the collection. See: and Marcello Oretti e il Patrimonio artistico private Bolognese, ed. Emilia Calbi and Daniela Scaglietti Keleschian, Bologna, 1984, p. 161, [a]57/1.