Attributed to Jean-Baptiste Santerre

C. Lesné and F. Waro, Jean Baptiste Santerre 1651-1717, Magny-en-Vexin 2011, pp. 89-92, reproduced p. 89 (as location unknown). 

Santerre first painted a version of the composition for a private individual but it caught the eye of Louis XIV and the King instead acquired it for his cabinet at Versailles; in 1876 that painting was returned to the cathedral in Magny-en-Vexin, the artist's birthplace, where it remains.¹ Though almost identical to the present work, that painting's composition is a more horizontal format, with the bottom edge of the table cut off and less space in the background above the Magdalene's head. In 1712, Santerre received 200 livres to extend that painting into a larger composition, perhaps reflecting the more square version we see here. Indeed a second version of the composition, perhaps completed for the original patron, was thought to be lost and known only through an old photograph in the Louvre's archives, but is almost certainly the present work.² 

The contrast of the Magdalene's soft gray hair with the warm red tones of her cloak was a technique employed by Santerre more than once, perhaps most famously in his sensual Susanna at her bath, now in the Louvre.²

We are grateful to Claude Lesné for his assistance with the cataloguing of this lot. 

1. See Lesné and Waro, under Literature, reproduced p. 88. 

2. Ibid, pp. 89-92.

3. See https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010062555