(Lombardy circa 1495 - circa 1550 Bruges)
Mary Magdalen,
oil on panel, transferred to canvas, 69 x 54 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Curt Benedict, Paris;
with Galerie Pardo, Paris, until 1948;
where purchased by André Leducq (1904–1980), Marseille, 1948;
thence by descent;
by whom sold, Christie’s, Paris, 22 June 2006, lot 14;
Private collection, USA

The present painting is listed in the RKD database under no. 63530 (as Ambrosius Benson).

The painting is among the most refined of Ambrosius Benson’s several portrayals of Mary Magdalen. Typical of Benson’s oeuvre is the artful manner in which he fuses an Italianate womanly elegance with the lustrous textures of Northern oil painting. Mary Magdalen appears here as a contemporary society beauty, replete with all the luxurious trappings of wealth enjoyed by Flemish elites, just as much as she is portrayed as a biblical penitent saint. The present sparkling portrayal exhibits the hand of the Lombard-Netherlandish master at the peak of his powers, when Benson, following the death of his tutor Gerard David in 1523, had become foremost among Bruges’s painters.

Immensely popular by the 1530s, these rich and contemplative, yet seductive Magdalens of Benson’s mature output, fall into two broad types. These were first enumerated by Georges Marlier in his monograph on the artist (see G. Marlier, Ambrosius Benson et la peinture à Bruges au temps de Charles-Quint, Damme 1957, pp. 192–200). The first depicts the saint opening a gilded perfume jar, such as the present example. Several related works show the same type with slight differences to her costume, such as the version with leopard skin sleeves sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 27 January 2022, lot 5. The second portrays Mary Magdalen reading, as exemplified by the panel conserved in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG 655).

Till-Holger Borchert compares the present work with another panel conserved in the Royal Collection, Hampton Court Palace (inv. no. RCIN 406108, 68.7 x 51.1 cm). He suggests a date of execution for both paintings in the 1530s or 1540s. The close similarity in size between the present work and the version at Hampton Court Palace, along with the almost identical fold patterns of Mary’s drapery suggest that both pictures were executed from the same pattern drawing. A third, related treatment of the same subject by Benson is in the Groeningemuseum, Bruges. All three paintings are catalogued as fully autograph works by Benson, although, as Borchert notes, ‘any painting by Benson was in some way – more or less – the collaborative work of a workshop, where design and execution were not always necessarily by the same hand’. Borchert further adds that ‘it is impossible to judge for sure which of the three versions of the Magdalen is the original’ which does not discount the possibility that the present picture is the prime version.

The attribution of the present picture to Ambrosius Benson was first confirmed by Max J. Friedländer (on the basis of photographs) on 4 March 1948 (according to M. J. Friedländer’s archival records, RKD, The Hague). That year it entered the collection of André Leducq, a noted French Olympian who gained 25 étapes in the Tour de France between 1927 and 1938. With so many of Benson’s Magdalens now in public collections, the present picture, with its illustrious provenance, remains one of the few autograph versions still in private hands.

Little is known of Benson’s early life and he is assumed to have hailed from either Ferrara or Milan. Around the year 1515, Benson relocated to Bruges where several Italian banchi had branches, and joined the workshop of Gerard David. Arguably exceeding his master in invention and refinement, Benson notoriously won a court case against David in order to recover a crate of his drawings that David had confiscated for his own use. Becoming a master of the Bruges Guild of Saint Luke in 1519, he attained great success in the commercial and artistic entrepot, twice being commissioned to decorate the City Hall. His relatively chiaroscuro characteristics and his facility at painting nudes, both deriving from his Italian training, marked out Benson from his Flemish contemporaries.

We are grateful to Till-Holger Borchert for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot.

Technical analysis by Gianluca Poldi:

The subject was originally painted on an oak panel, and transferred to canvas in 1915, as the handwritten text on letterhead from the French restorer applied on the stretcher testifies: ‘I affirm and undersign that this Portrait of a Renaissance Woman holding a vase of gold, measuring 69x54 cm, was painted on oak wood and that, given its state of obsolescence, I had to transpose it from wood to canvas. Done in Paris on March 17, 1915. H. Laurent 5 Rue Barthelemy Paris’.

We are therefore faced with the great French tradition of transfer from panel to canvas, evident from the quality of the work the restorer carried out, which is clarified by the reflectographic analyses. IRR, in fact, shows some integrations but generally it is in fair state of preservation, with the evidence of a thin line along the vertical axis meaning the retouches occurred along the join of the two boards that constituted the original support.

Pentimenti can be detected in the folds of the green dress, to the left, while the bonnet on top of the hair was added above the already completed background curtain. IRR also reveals the system of shades of the extraordinary curtain that constitutes the backcloth in the format of a canopy or protected sancta sanctorum from which the saint emerges with her precious ointment jar, similarly precious are the embroidered details of the white borders of her dress.

The outline underdrawing is thin and shows a sparse hatching in the lips and in delineating the shadow of the nostril. It is possibly made with a black chalk or similar tool, revealing an accurate transfer from a cartoon, perhaps a transparent oiled paper, of this beautiful subject.

Pigments, examined by spectroscopic and microscopic analyses, are all coherent with sixteenth century practice, which include lead white and vermillion in the flesh tones, lead-tin yellow in the vase, and a combination of red in the velvet sleeves: vermillion in the lights and a carmine-type red lake in the shadows. Verdigris was used in the green (now green-brownish) shades of the curtain and of the saint’s dress.