José Antolínez

Private collection, Spain;

With Caylus, Madrid;

Where acquired by the Apelles Collection in 1997–98;

From whom acquired by the present owner in May 2018.

Oviedo, Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, En Torno a Velázquez, Pintura Española del Siglo de Oro, The Apelles Collection, 20 May 1999 – 30 January 2000, no. 18, reproduced in colour.

I. Gutiérrez Pastor, Pinturas de Cuatro Siglos, exh. cat., Caylus Anticuario, Madrid 1997, pp. 128–31, reproduced p. 129;

V. Leanse and B. Pezzini in En Torno a Velázquez, Pintura Española del Siglo de Oro, The Apelles Collection, H. Brigstocke and Z. Véliz (eds), exh. cat., Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, Oviedo, 2000, pp. 172–79, no. 18, reproduced in colour.

Signed and dated, this full-length depiction of the penitent Magdalen was painted by José Antolínez in 1670. The artist trained and worked with Francisco Rizi and by the end of his career had become one of the most prominent painters of the Spanish baroque. He favoured large-scale depictions of religious subject matter, above all depictions of the Immaculate Conception (a fine example of which is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford),¹ or as in the present case, scenes from the life of the Magdalen. The painting is known in two variants: one datable to 1673 in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Seville, and the other in the Colegio de Santamarca, Madrid.² This differs from them both in having a single winged child in the foreground.

Although details surrounding the commission of the painting are unknown, it seems likely that it was conceived as a full-size altarpiece, perhaps for a convent for repentant courtesans. Unlike the other two versions or variants, it is dated to 1670, towards the final years of the artist’s life.

¹ WA1941.159; oil on canvas, 213 x 170 cm.; https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-immaculate-conception-141639

² Reproduced in Oviedo 2000, pp. 176 and 177, figs 2 and 3.