Orazio first conceived this iconic composition in the early 1620s and repeated it, with certain variations, throughout his career. The existence of autograph and semi-autograph versions, as well as several contemporary copies, testifies to the elegiac image's enduring popularity. The present version, executed by Orazio in tandem with members of his highly-trained workshop, was probably produced in Genoa in 1621 or 1622, at the same moment he executed the version for Giovanni Antonio Sauli (private collects ion).¹

Orazio first depicted the recumbent Magdalene lost in divine reverie in a work formerly in the collects ion of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.² Using the same cartoon, or full-scale drawing, for the outstretched protagonist, Orazio then produced the Sauli canvas, one component of a tripartite commission that included Lot and his Daughters and Danaë (fig. 1), both in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.³ Orazio subsequently reused that cartoon to produce the present painting, which closely replicates the prime in Vienna. The figure's contours and the cascading folds of the ochre drapery closely correspond, with the only significant adjustment occurring in her left foot, here positioned at a downward angle. Other variations are discernable in the fall of the Magdalene's auburn locks and the pooling of the fabric on the ground before her.

As was typical of Orazio's practice, even when using the same cartoon, he varied compositional elements, as with the still life passage at lower right and the background landscape. The open book on which the Magdalene props her elbow reiterates the same passage from the Sauli painting, in which the skull sits directly on the ground. In the present painting, a cross and halo are also included, underscoring the work's devout nature. The blue tones in the sky have faded with t.mes , almost certainly due to Orazio's use of a blue smalt pigment, less stable, though more readily available, than azurite. This suggests that the work, rather an official commission, may have been executed on speculation, intended from its inception as a way of soliciting favor, and perhaps future commissions, from a new patron.

A SPANISH CONNECTION
By the nineteenth century, the present painting was already in Spain. Therefore, it seems probable that Orazio conceived the work with a potential Spanish client in mind. In 1846, the canvas is recorded in the Madrid collects ion of Gaspar Remisa Miarons, the Marquis of Remisa. The inscription on the painting's bottom right, "233, M.d e R.," corresponds with that inventory, which lists the painting as hanging in the Marquis's office: "The Magdalene in the desert, full-length, life-size and lying on the ground."⁴ Following Gaspar Remisa's death the following year, the painting passed to his daughter and son-in-law, María Dolores Remisa Rafo and Jesus Munoz y Sanchez, the 2nd Marquise and Marquis of Remisa. Thereafter, the Penitent Magdalene probably passed to one of their four children, by one of whose descendants the work was very likely sold in June 2014, the first t.mes in its history that it appeared at auction.

¹ Baroque: Masterpieces from the Fisch Davidson collects ion, New York, Replica Shoes 's, 26 January 2023, lot 7, for $4,890,000.
² inv. no. 179.
³ inv. nos. 98.PA.10 and 2016.6.
⁴ "La Magdalena en el desierto, de cuerpo entero, de tamano natural y recostada sobre el suelo."