Private collectors have held this painting for 400 years. Now you can see it at the Kimbell
The Kimbell Art Museum announced Friday it acquired Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Penitent Mary Magdalene,” which has been held in private collections since it was painted circa 1625-26.
First acquired by Fernando Enríquez Afán de Ribera, the third Duke of Alcalá and Viceroy of Naples, while he was serving as Spanish ambassador in Rome, it remained in his family’s hands. With everyone wanting their hands on one, it was copied and appears in the Seville Cathedral in Seville, Spain, and the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City.
While the painting became a hand-me-down, scholars thought it was lost until it popped up at a French auction in 2001. It remained in a private American collection, until the Kimbell got its hands on it this year, courtesy Adam Williams Fine Art, Ltd., New York. The price was not disclosed.
“Although the composition is well known through copies in Spain and Mexico, nothing compares with seeing the newly rediscovered, emotive original in person, with its bold design, delicate brushwork, and subtle variations of light and shadow,” said museum director Eric Lee.
The copies, while widely revered, have been described in contrast as “flat.”
You understand why they were copied when you see it, which you can in the Kahn Building, beginning on Friday.
Gentileschi was one of the most revered painters of the 17th century. An Italian who barged her way into the patriarchal European art world, she initially adapted from Caravaggio’s realistic style. But she gained her style and became known for painting detailed depictions of women woven with dramatic narratives and impeccable attention to color and form. While many women stand solo, many also are defying men, often violently. Among those scenes are the famous “Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes” (c. 1623–25), where the two are beheading a man, and, in another case, “Jael and Sisera” (c 1620), where the woman is on the verge of stabbing a defeated general.
But “Penitent Mary Magdalene” is about a woman crying because of a man.
She is crying with regret about her sinful and opulent past, with hints of it around her. Remnants of that past, such as the ornate chair she sits on, the gemstone bracelet, the pearl earring shimmering from her ear and, on a table to the left, are an ointment jar and a small hand mirror. Each object, and the mirror, in particular, are symbols frequently used in art. The mirror is a complex one in art. Here it conveys vanity, vulnerability, or personal growth, for instance.
But these decadent objects are part of her past and are cast aside as she devotes her life to Christ until his death.
Gentileschi, who had her own issues with men, brings out her best moves to portray regret. And it’s the artist’s style of very bold brushstrokes with lighter wisps and dedication to glorifying a woman who was so strong but is weak here.
Her face is swollen, especially visible in her eyes. Her posture suggests she is so bereft she cannot feel pain. Her right wrist is so limp that it barely holds up her face, while the fingers interlace with her long auburn hair. The left arm straddling in her open lap looks like it could pull her down any second.
In a painting full of emotion and beauty, there’s still somehow room for transformation. As she sits, the opulence seems to fade away. As the bright light on her right teases us, a brown veil twists from her right shoulder, where a lacey chemise is falling. Her sensuality is still there given the bare shoulder.
But she’s not about to submit to Christ, as we first think. That transformation is already happening.
It’s a story of her past and of the present, making this dramatic narrative also one of the artist’s finest.
