(Florence 1600–1646)
Mary Magdalene,
oil on canvas, 74.5 x 58 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Rome, 1990s;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Sandro Bellesi for confirming the attribution on the basis of a photograph.

This Mary Magdalene is highly representative of Furini’s celebrated artistic output. He is best known for his many works featuring sensuous female nudes, with subjects drawn mainly from classical mythology and the Old Testament, such as this Mary Magdalene, and for his slightly blurry, sfumato modelling of skin tones.

Comparisons are possible with other female saints depicted by Furini, such as the Mary Magdalene in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, dated 1630-1635 (inv. no. GG 213), depicted in a very similar pose, with bare shoulders and a blue drape that wraps her torso, the blond hair styled with braids. In the present composition there is no skull, as her attribute, but an ointment jar. Her opened mouthed expression is comparable to that of the Mary Magdalene in the Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Florence (see G. Cantelli, Francesco Furini e I Furiniani, Pontedera 2010, cat. no 69).

Mary Magdalene was one of the preferred subjects of seventeenth century painters in Italy: she embodied the concept of transgression and absolution enforced by the Counter-Reformation. She changed her existence radically and freed herself from sin to follow Christ. As a penitent sinner, she is a figure that fluctuates between the sacred and the profane. Representations of the saint encapsulate the duality of trespass and redemption that so appealed to the Counter-reformation sentiments.

Furini, one of the leading Florentine painters of the first half of the seventeenth century, was born in Florence into a family of artists and trained under Matteo Rosselli (1578–1650) and Domenico Passignano (1559–1638). Influenced by Guido Reni, his interest in classical sculpture is evident in his many mythological and allegorical paintings of the 1620s and 1630s. He visited Rome and Venice and having returned to Florence he received commissions from several of the most eminent noble families. For the Medici he painted several easel pictures and two large lunette frescoes in the Palazzo Pitti.