| Magdalen in the Desert | |
| Artist: | Antonio da Correggio |
| Medium: | Oil on copper |
| Subject: | Mary Magdalen |
| Height Imperial: | 11 |
| Width Imperial: | 15 |
| Metric Unit: | cm |
| Imperial Unit: | in |
| Museum: | Lost |
Magdalen in the Desert, also known as The Reading Magdalen, and The Magdalen Reading in a Cave, was an oil painting of uncertain date traditionally but disputedly attributed to Antonio da Correggio. The painting was last in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, but went missing after the Second World War.[1]
Aimé Giron distinguishes between two kinds of Magdalens in art:
This Magdalen belongs, he says, to the latter class.
According to Giron, "This Magdalen … holds the first place among the small Correggios." He gives the following ecphrasis:
This work was executed for the Dukes of Este, who kept it in a silver frame studded with precious stones and used it as an ornament for their bedrooms, and when they travelled, they took it with them in a casket. When the King of Poland became its possessor, he gave it a second boxing of glass with lock and key. In 1788, this masterpiece having been stolen, 1,000 ducats were promised for its discovery, and, in consideration of that sum, the thief denounced himself. Cristofano Allori, the greatest Florentine painter of the Decadence, made an admired copy for the Offices.[2]
This painting, for many years assigned to Correggio, was considered by some 19th century critics to be by some Flemish artist.[3] Giovanni Morelli gave it as his opinion that the smooth and affected grace of the creation was due, not to any Italian painter, but to some Fleming of the end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century. He further pointed out that no artist had painted upon copper before the end of the sixteenth century, and concluded by saying that a careful examination of the picture inclined him to attribute it to Adrien van der Werff, a master whose every characteristic appeared in the work, notably his colour, as in the crude dazzling blue of the drapery, his treatment of landscape, as in the miniature rendering of every stone and leaf, his peculiarities of type, as in the long nails, their edges catching the light. Even the surface cracks, he remarks, agree exactly with those in Adrien van der Werff's pictures.[4]
Deferring, however, to some lingering doubt, he adds the following: "It may be, perhaps, that the picture was not painted by Van der Werff himself, but by some contemporary and fellow-countryman. In no case, however, can it be accepted as the work of an Italian; much less of an Italian who flourished in the first thirty years of the sixteenth century. It may, however, be a copy by some foreign artist of the seventeenth century, from an original of the school of the Carracci."[5]
The picture at Dresden was also thought not improbably a copy of a lost work by Correggio.[6] Numerous copies of this work exist elsewhere under Correggio's name, or as school-pictures (e.g. Palazzo Corsini, Rome).