Santa Maria Madalena (Saint Mary Magdalen Reading) - Correggio
Coleção privada
Óleo sobre painel - 22x27
Newly rediscovered, this exquisite painting on panel has recently been identified as Correggio’s long-lost picture of the reclining Magdalen, one of his most celebrated masterpieces, hitherto only known in the form of copies. Probably commissioned by Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua (1474–1539) after her visit in 1517 to the shrine devoted to Saint Mary Magdalen at Sainte-Baume, south-east France, it boasts a distinguished provenance. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries it was one of a number of prized small-scale masterpieces by Correggio owned by the Farnese. Housed in the Palazzo Ducale in Parma, and later moved to their palace at Capodimonte, Naples, Saint Mary Magdalen was displayed with other works by the master, such as La Zingarella and the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, which are both still at Capodimonte. Inventory records, descriptions, dimensions and an engraving after this painting all support the identification of the present work as the one formerly in the Farnese Collection. Most importantly, its status as an original by Correggio is confirmed by its exceptional artistic quality, which is wholly consistent with autograph paintings such as the Saint Mary Magdalen at the National Gallery, London. A date in the late 1510s has been independently proposed by Davide Gasparotto and David Ekserdjian, a dating with which Hugo Chapman is broadly in agreement.
In this sophisticated and elegant painting Correggio translates a representation of the reclining Magdalen into an image of enduring beauty and profound spirituality. In the words of Hugo Chapman, "the painting is a wonderfully moving meditation on female piety." With characteristic subtlety, it succeeds in blurring the boundaries between the sacred and the profane by alluding to the saint’s legend and to her religious devotion, while at the same time suggesting her seductive allure. Barefoot, the Magdalen is depicted in a grotto setting that evokes the wilderness where she lived in solitude. Lying on the ground and deeply absorbed in reading a large devotional book, she cradles it with her left forearm, while propped up on her right elbow; in a remarkably natural gesture, she leans on its pages as she rests her head on her hand. The Magdalen’s sensuous body is cocooned in a robe that envelops also her head. Beside her, the ointment jar, whose lustrous surface is exquisitely rendered, catches the light that falls on her as she reads; and the finely painted clasps that form part of the book binding also gleam. In contrast to the rocky backdrop that shimmers in the distance, the grotto setting is otherwise dark.
Correggio’s image of the reclining Magdalen is one of the earliest Italian versions of this highly unusual theme. Its iconography, which is discussed by Maddalena Spagnolo, relates to a sculpture of the saint once located in her shrine at Sainte-Baume in Provence and now lost, although known through copies. Correggio, in faithful emulation of his model, conceives the Magdalen as she lies on the ground in front of the grotto at Sainte-Baume, reading while supporting her head in her hand. The nearby basilica of St Maximin, which claimed to be the repository of her relics, was also central to the cult of Saint Mary Magdalen and to the iconography of this painting; indeed, at the far left of the composition Correggio depicts the abbey above the distant cliff face, while the sailing vessel in the distance refers to the saint’s sea voyage to Provence.
Of all the versions of the composition, the one generally regarded until now as having the best claim to being Correggio’s original, is one on copper, formerly at the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, and before that in the Este collection in Modena, missing since the Second World War. However, its authorship as a work by Correggio has not been unanimously accepted. In a recent article that presents the sensational rediscovery of Correggio’s original, David Ekserdjian examines a range of questions relating to the picture’s iconography and patronage, as well as stylistic and chronological considerations. Building on the work of Gaetano Ghiraldi published over two decades ago in the 1998 exhibition catalogue devoted to the art collections of the Galleria Estense, which clarified the Este provenance of the Dresden painting, Ekserdjian traces the latter’s provenance.
Ghiraldi dispelled the myth surrounding the Este painting, identifying it not as Correggio’s original but as the copy after Correggio by Cristofano Allori (1577–1621), first documented in 1609, when Cosimo II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, gave it as a gift to Princess Eleonora d’Este (1597–1661) when she took the veil. In a document listing the gifts, the picture is described as a small painting on copper of the reclining Magdalen after Correggio in an elaborate silver frame with precious stones. Its author is noted as Bronzino but this reference must be to Cristofano Allori, son of Alessandro Allori (1535–1607), Bronzino’s pupil and heir. Ekserdjian suggests that its designation as a copy after Correggio may have been forgotten and its status upgraded to that of an original when it passed out of Eleonora’s ownership and reached Modena. By 1663, when it is first securely recorded there, it is listed in an inventory without an attribution. Recorded again in successive Este inventories, the painting was widely admired as one of Correggio’s greatest achievements. As Ghiraldi has convincingly argued, the fame of the Este collections bolstered its claim as an autograph work and its true provenance fell into obscurity. It remained in the Galleria Estense until the mid-eighteenth century when Francesco III d’Este sold a portion of the collection to Augustus III of Saxony: one hundred pictures, including the Magdalen on copper, were sent to Dresden in 1746. Not until the mid-nineteenth century were doubts expressed about Correggio’s authorship.
The medium, support and dimensions of the Dresden Magdalen differ from the painting presented here. The discrepancy – not insignificant – is a key factor in establishing the primacy of this version on panel, which accords with records of it in inventories, over the version on copper. Even more significant than the dimensions in establishing this as Correggio’s original is its grotto setting, markedly different from the wooded landscape of the lost Dresden copper. The latter’s verdant landscape features in innumerable copies of its design, whereas the grotto depicted here, as well as the distant abbey, only feature in this painting and in one other, the sole known replica of this design: an eighteenth-century copy on canvas housed at Southampton City Art Gallery. This important difference distinguishes this design from written descriptions and old photographs of the Dresden painting before its disappearance and from the many copies after the latter version.
All the copies that follow the Dresden prototype, which is executed on a copper support, are either also on copper or on canvas and all are considerably larger (approximately 6 cm. higher and 12 cm. wider). The copies also differ from the present work in showing a much more elongated female saint than the more rounded proportions of the figure in Correggio’s panel. Furthermore, the explicit mention of the grotto in seventeenth-century inventories is highly significant since the Dresden prototype shows not a grotto but a landscape with stones in the foreground and background vegetation. Always the settings of the copies employ a wide landscape, never a grotto, as a backdrop. Some copies, such as the version by Allori (Palazzo Pitti, Florence), also incorporate a skull, in the case of the latter with a crucifix.
Maddalena Spagnolo has argued persuasively that the highly distinctive iconography adopted by Correggio should be understood as a reflection of Isabella d’Este’s special interest in the saint. The evidence strongly suggests that the Gonzagas of Mantua – and very possibly Isabella herself – were the painting’s original patrons. Both Isabella d’Este and her son Federigo (1500–1540) visited Mary Magdalen’s shrine in Provence within a year of each other. In the summer of 1516, the young Federigo arrived in France in the retinue of King François I for a journey motivated by political and religious reasons. Following a tour of the Loire, the party proceeded to Provence to visit the pilgrimage sites dedicated to the Magdalen. After visiting St Maximin, where they venerated the relic of Saint Mary Magdalen’s head, the company went to see the hermitage at Sainte-Baume where the saint had lived as a penitent, before continuing their tour of the south.
So eager was the Marchioness to undertake "il viaggio de santa Maria Magdalena" that she herself visited the shrine in March 1517, following in the footsteps of her son Federigo. Keeping closely to a similar itinerary to his, Isabella then travelled to Marseilles, Aix, Arles and Avignon, and later spent a few days in Lyons, where she admired some very beautiful pictures of the Magdalen and ordered some of the saint to be sent to her in Mantua. As Spagnolo relates, the paintings only arrived there in April 1518 after some delay and Isabella was disappointed with the results, for they were not as beautiful as the ones she had seen in Lyons. Rather than keep them for her own collection she decided to give them away. She resolved to do the same with another Magdalen, sourced in Lyons by Stazio Gadio, the Gonzaga maestro di casa, in April 1518, when he was in France with Federigo on the occasion of the Dauphin’s baptism. In Stazio’s letter to Isabella, he stated that he had made every effort to find a beautiful Magdalen to please her, while bemoaning the dearth of beautiful figures of the saint. If deemed not beautiful enough and not to her liking, Isabella reserved the right to give it away. A few months later, doubtless aware of his mother’s appetite for such works and her recent disappointments, Federigo ordered – most likely on her behalf – two Flemish paintings of the Magdalen ("due Magdelene dipinte… hopera fiamincha") from his agent Nicolò Nobili.
Isabella’s continuing interest in Saint Mary Magdalen is attested a decade later by a letter dated 3 September 1528 addressed to her by Veronica Gambara about a masterpiece painted by "il nostro maestro Antonio Allegri", which she describes in detail as showing the saint in a cave genuflecting, her hands clasped and raised to heaven. Its whereabouts today unknown, this lost kneeling Magdalen is known from an engraving by Piloty. As Maddalena Spagnolo has pointed out, Veronica’s letter is the earliest surviving document to link Correggio and Isabella. She makes two important observations: firstly, that Correggio was already known to her, as is clear from the wording of the letter; and secondly, that Isabella’s special interest in the depiction of the Magdalen at the cave was commonly recognized, at least in the courts near Mantua.
Spagnolo draws attention to two records linking Correggio’s Reclining Magdalen to the court of Mantua: firstly, an entry in the Gonzaga inventory of 1627 that refers to "la Madalena in terra copia del Coregio del Fetti" (Fetti’s painting – if the attribution is reliable – is lost but the record does indicate the presence of a version of Correggio’s composition in Mantua in the early seventeenth century); and secondly, an unpublished letter by Ortensio Landi, lost but recorded by Braghirolli in 1872, in which Correggio was said to have painted a Magdalen reading for Federigo Gonzaga in around 1533. While this tantalizing evidence – were it verifiable – gives some support to the idea that Federigo commissioned Correggio’s painting for his mother, none the less on balance it is more likely that Isabella, rather than her son, was the original recipient of Correggio’s sophisticated painting, given her tendency to provide detailed iconographical instructions and her devotion to the Magdalen. Indeed, Spagnolo makes a convincing case that it was executed for Isabella d’Este, a theory supported by David Ekserdjian. Stylistic reasons discussed below for dating Correggio’s painting to about 1519, rather than the early 1530s, also strengthen the case for Isabella’s patronage.
Isabella d’Este was not the only aristocratic lady in Italy interested in owning representations of the Magdalen. Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara (1492–1547), also sought such works. Even after receiving a Magdalen painted by Titian in 1531 she persisted in requesting one from Isabella’s collection. Speculation over which painting she sought has led scholars to propose different candidates, including Correggio’s Kneeling Magdalen and his Reclining Magdalen. It may be that the latter was given as a gift to Vittoria Colonna but without further evidence this suggestion remains unproven. In any case Isabella arranged for the painting in question to be copied before its departure and Ekserdjian raises the possibility that one of the many pictures of the Magdalen recorded in the 1627 Gonzaga inventory was that copy.
Another possible lead to the Magdalen’s later sixteenth-century provenance is given by the Florentine art historian and biographer Filippo Baldinucci (1625–1696) in his Notizie de’ Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in qua (1681). There in his biography of Cristofano Allori he mentions a picture of the reclining Magdalen that was among the beautiful paintings collected by "il cavaliere Gaddi" – Niccolò Gaddi (1537–1591) – who lived in Florence in the time of Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (1541–1587). Baldinucci describes it minutely: "a small figure of a St Mary Magdalen in the desert, almost wholly covered by a blue drapery, reclining propped up on her right arm, and reading a book, which she holds in her left hand, all the work of Correggio." He goes on to report that somehow the picture came to the attention of Cristofano and that he copied it again and again and from those copies proliferated more copies by at least one of his pupils. Such was the demand that many believed them to be Allori’s invention. However, Baldinucci says nothing of the picture’s whereabouts and with Gaddi’s death the trail runs cold, for the painting does not feature in his posthumous inventory.
The next documentary record of the picture places it securely in one of the most distinguished ducal collections in Italy, that of the Farnese in Parma. From about 1680, or slightly later, until 1736, Correggio’s Magdalen is recorded in Parma as hanging at the Palazzo Ducale and is listed in six inventories. The Magdalen is described in the most precise and detailed of these, the Inventario de’ Quadri esistenti nel Palazzo del Giardino, a document that is traditionally dated about 1680 but is thought to be later, perhaps drawn up at some point in the first half of the following decade. In this inventory, both dimensions and medium are given, frame descriptions and old and new inventory numbers. Applying conventional conversion, the dimensions given in the inventory of 5 oncie in height by 6 oncie in width are equivalent to 22.7 by 27.3 cm. This corresponds with the present panel, which was originally approximately 5 mm. greater in height before the rebate was removed. The few millimeters lost along the bottom edge can be assessed through the painted copy on canvas at Southampton City Art Gallery, which measures 23.2 by 29.3 cm. The precise description, medium, support and almost identical size make it certain that the present work is the picture described in the inventory.
How Correggio’s Magdalen came to be part of the Farnese collection is not yet known. One intriguing possibility is that it belonged to Carlo Beccaria (1605–1680), treasurer of the Farnese in Parma. A work fitting its description – "A Magdalen on panel reading by Correggio" – is recorded in a list of Beccaria’s paintings bequeathed in part to the Farnese. Drawn up in 1680, the year of Beccaria’s death, and transcribed by Filangieri di Candida, who published it in 1902, the list records the painting under item 14. If it does indeed denote the present work, it would make it the earliest written description of Correggio’s painting known to date.
Be that as it may, soon after Beccaria’s death, Correggio’s painting is recorded at the Palazzo del Giardino of the Farnese in Parma in their inventory of about 1680 (commonly referred to with that date but probably drawn up slightly later). In this, the first of the Farnese documents to include the present work, all paintings are listed with an attribution and sometimes even "school" or "workshop" as identifiers. As might be expected, the most important pictures were displayed in the principal rooms, while minor pictures were kept in various private apartments and feature towards the end of the inventory. The Magdalen is listed in the third of the principal rooms, known as the "Terza Camera detta della Madona della Gatta" (the room named after the Madonna of the Cat at the time thought to be by Raphael and now given to Giulio Romano; at Capodimonte, Naples). This reflects the high esteem in which Correggio’s Magdalen was held. Among the highlights displayed in this room were Parmigianino’s Holy Family with the young Saint John the Baptist, still at Capodimonte; several works by Annibale Carracci, now dispersed between Capodimonte, the Musée Condé, Chantilly, and the Galleria Nazionale, Bologna; as well as Correggio’s small gem, still in Naples, the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, a work of the early 1520s painted on a panel of comparable dimensions to the present work.
Described as hanging in the Galleria by 1708, the record of the Magdalen in the inventory of that date retains the same numbering as in the earlier Farnese inventory. It describes the composition’s principal elements in a similar way, while adding further details on framing (it was displayed in a gilt frame) and a significant demotion in terms of its attribution (‘viene dal Coreggio’ means it is a copy of an original by Correggio). By 1736 Correggio’s Magdalen is recorded as hanging in the "primo Corridore" at the Palazzo Reale in the inventory of that year, drawn up to record the works to be transported to Naples. Although after 1736 the Magdalen no longer appears in Farnese inventories, other circumstantial evidence proves the painting went to Naples with the rest of the collection. Works were initially stored at the Palazzo Reale, with only a small proportion on display. The majority, including probably the present work, remained stored in crates under conditions that were far from ideal. By 1758 the Palazzo at Capodimonte was ready to house the paintings, the Magdalen had regained its earlier autograph status, and was noted in travellers' accounts as displayed there.
Of significance as a further demonstration of the work’s return to favor and as evidence of the painting’s continuing presence in Naples in the 1770s is an engraving of it by Raphael Morghen (1761–1833), which he made at some time between about 1770 and 1778. The painting’s link to Morghen’s engraving was first noted by Hugo Chapman. Morghen, who was born in Naples in 1761 (and not 1758 as is commonly stated), was the son of Filippo Morghen (1730–1807), himself an engraver and print dealer, who moved to Naples from Florence. The family was well connected at the Bourbon court. Stylistically Morghen’s print of the Magdalen is comparable to his earliest engravings, which he executed at the young age of nine; by age twelve he was considered a fully trained engraver. A small print, rather crudely executed, the Magdalen is not recorded in the complete catalogue of his works by Robert Halsey. Nevertheless it is likely to date to the early 1770s and certainly no later than 1778, when Morghen, aged seventeen, left Naples for Rome.
Morghen’s engraving – the only print to match the rediscovered Magdalen – clearly reproduces the latter composition and not the Allori derivation reproduced in countless other prints, a reflection of the fact that the fame of the Dresden version eclipsed that of Correggio’s original. The engraving, which is inscribed "Ant. Allegri da Coreggio pin.", is distinctive in featuring the grotto, the silhouette of the mountain on the left, with the sailing boat and the tiny building of the basilica of Mary Magdalen in Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. It also reproduces the flowers and plants in the foreground that none of the other versions has, apart from the faithful copy in Southampton. Furthermore, the figure’s compact proportions differ markedly from the elongated forms of the Allori derivation. The rounded forms of Correggio’s Magdalen denote a voluptuousness more akin to the feminine ideal of the early Cinquecento.
The Magdalen must still have been in the collection at Capodimonte in 1783, when it was described by Tommaso Puccini in his account of his visit there, but it is not yet known when exactly the painting left the collection. A terminus ante quem is provided by the 1799 inventory made by Ignazio Anders after the sack of Naples, which no longer lists the Magdalen. As Davide Gasparotto has pointed out, the Portrait of a Collector by Parmigianino today in the National Gallery, London, and the Portrait of a Man, also by Parmigianino, now at the York City Art Gallery, shared the same destiny as the Magdalen by Correggio, since they left the Farnese collection in unknown circumstances during the turbulent years of the Napoleonic period, and entered the antiquarian market of the early nineteenth century.
The panel is highly refined in its detail and the figure of the Magdalen is in excellent state, as is the meticulously detailed foliage in the foreground, which is not found in any of the other known versions – as Ekserdjian points out – and the distant coastal landscape. Although overall the effect is darker than it would originally have appeared, notably in the area of the saint’s robe, which shows degradation of the blue pigments, an occurrence found also in other paintings by Correggio, nevertheless the painting retains the figure’s subtle qualities and the beautiful tonal gradations of the setting. With a delicate play of carefully nuanced tones, Correggio portrays the Magdalen’s unselfconscious beauty. The volume of her hair is rendered in a particularly sensuous way, its blonde waves framing her lovely face. She is illuminated partly by light falling from the left but also by its reflection from the pages of her book, highlighting her cheeks, in contrast to the more shadowed areas of her face, especially her downcast eyes. Correggio not only conveys her total absorption in the act of reading, he also captures the intimacy of a woman in contemplative solitude, unaware of the world around her; the effect on the viewer is beguiling.
Infra-red reflectography reveals some pentimenti by the artist; the principal changes are an adjustment to the pages of the book, most obviously around the Magdalen’s left breast, which was originally covered by the upturned left-hand page; and some reworking to the area of the right-hand page to show more space between her raised torso and the book’s flat surface. In the center foreground the foliage has likewise been slightly altered and there is some indication that the outline of the woman’s feet was adjusted.
Stylistically Correggio’s painting is datable to a year or two later than the Magdalen at the National Gallery. The juxtaposition of the two paintings in 2018 helped shed light on the stylistic and chronological relationship between them. Certainly, they share several features: in both the saint is shown in blue, semi-nude, hair unbound, with the same attributes of book and ointment jar, the latter so similar in form that it could be taken for its pair; the wild setting and careful attention paid to vegetation are also common to both. Independent cabinet pictures of Mary Magdalen were rare, especially full-length depictions, as David Ekserdjian points out. Indeed, the complimentary qualities of these two pictures and Isabella d’Este’s desire to possess such images, led him to propose that the standing Magdalen may also have been commissioned by the Marchioness of Mantua. Her patronage of Correggio was to culminate in his two Allegories of Virtue and Vice for her Studiolo; meanwhile, her son Federigo ordered for the Emperor Charles V arguably Correggio’s finest works on canvas: the four great mythologies of the Loves of Jove.
"La famosissima Maddalena" – among the most widely copied images of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – holds a special place as an icon of western art. Its acquisition from the Este collection as Correggio’s original – incorrectly, as is now widely recognized – was deemed a great coup for the Dresden Gallery and indeed it was one of its most highly prized (and costly) purchases. Upon its arrival there, the Magdalene became a favorite of the king’s and by 1750, if not before, it was hanging in his bedroom. In 1746 when Dresden was under attack from the Prussians the picture was handed to the queen for safe keeping; and two years later, following the city’s surrender and the Gallery’s relocation to Königstein, only the Magdalen and one other painting – Raphael’s Sistine Madonna – had special crates built to safeguard their transit.
The desirability of this treasured masterpiece made it the object of an art theft in 1788. By coincidence, in October of that same year, the scandalous Venetian writer Giacomo Casanova was travelling to Dresden. In his infamous memoirs he vividly describes the thorough search he and his luggage had to undergo during the hunt to recover the masterpiece. In a detailed letter to Prince Belozelski, Russian Minister to the Court of Dresden, he writes, "Trust me my Prince..., I have known many Magdalens but none made me swear as much as the one of Correggio". The picture even featured in the list of desiderata in The Wants of Man, the celebrated poem written in about 1840 by John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States. Only very recently have the historical fortunes of Correggio’s long-lost original been disentangled from the history and erroneous attribution of the Dresden picture.
Among the greatest rediscoveries of modern times, Correggio’s Magdalen constitutes an Italian Renaissance masterpiece of real distinction. His interpretation of the Sainte-Baume Magdalen, while remaining faithful to the iconographic detail of his French prototype, succeeded in transforming its compositional elements to create a work of unrivalled elegance. Endlessly imitated, the original, which boasts a superb provenance, can now take its rightful place at the head of a long line of derivations, most of which departed from the restrained elegance of his original conception. Only now with the re-emergence of this intimate painting can the artist’s true intentions be fully appreciated and properly understood in the context of his work and the patronage of the Gonzaga.
