(Venice circa 1548–1628)
The penitent Magdalen,
oil on canvas, 141 x 115 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 09 January 1980, lot 255

This painting is recorded as an autograph work by Jacopo Palma il Giovane in the Fondazione Zeri (File 43150). For the first time, it is here set in context with its preparatory drawing (see fig. 1), which is in the National Museum, in Stockholm (see S. Mason Rinaldi, Palma Il Giovane, L’opera completa, Milan 1989, cat. no. D 182).

It can be compared to a Magdalene at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo from 1615, 132 x 112 cm, Inv. Nr. 58AC00359. The sweeping diagonals and the boldly delineated physiognomy reveal the artist’s debt to Tintoretto which continued throughout Palma’s career. Like the comparable Magdalen in Bergamo, which was painted in circa 1615, the present work may be dated towards the end of Palma’s life. Good comparative material is provided by the Triumph of David organ-shutters in the Chapel of San Anastasio in San Zaccaria, Venice, dated 1595, where the lighting and the vigorous treatment of hair and flesh are very similar.

Palma is possibly the last great exponent of Venetian High renaissance painting. He is said to have been a pupil of Titian, but this tradition has been doubted (it is probably based on the fact that he completed the Pietà that Titian left unfinished at his death). In the late 1560s and early 1570s he worked in central Italy, mainly Rome, but thereafter he spent the rest of his life in Venice, and after the death of Tintoretto in 1594 he was the leading painter in the city.