ES
Advanced Search
Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalene
Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalene
Artist: Luca Giordano (Italian, 1634-1705, active in Spain 1692-1702)
Date: 1660-1665
Dimensions:
Unframed H 256.4 x W 193 x D 5 cm (H 100 15/16 x W 76 x D 1 15/16 in.)
Framed H 271 x W 217 x D 8 cm (H 106 11/16 x W 85 7/16 x D 3 1/8 in.)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Place Made:Spain
Period: Golden Age
Culture: Spanish
Not on View
DescriptionLuca Giordano (1634-1705), after Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652)
The Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalene
ca. 1660-65
Oil on canvas, 100 15/16 x 76 in. (256.4 x 193 cm)
The Hispanic Society of America, New York A76
PROVENANCE: Possibly Louis-Philippe, King of France, by 1838-1853 (Galerie Espagnole, 1838, no. 224 [1st ed.], 229 [4th ed.]); possibly Louis-Philippe Sale, Christie’s London, 13 May 1853, no. 463, acquired by “Pearce”; Prince Giuseppe de Sangro di Fondi, Naples (attributed to Murillo, no. 324); said to have been sold at auction to Sangiorgi, Rome; Galleria Simonetti, Rome, by 1906 - 1910; purchased in 1910 by Roger Fry, agent for Archer Milton Huntington, New York; presented to The Hispanic Society of America in 1911.
EXHIBITIONS: Galerie Espagnole, Louvre, Paris, 1838 and subsequent, no. 224/229 [?] (as Ribera); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, “Manet / Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting,” 2003 (as Giordano) – not included in the selection presented at the Musée d’Orsay in 2002. (See also below, Bibliography.)
This large canvas is one of three versions of The Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalene once attributed to Jusepe de Ribera. The first of these is a canvas signed by Ribera and dated 1636, now in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, which is thought to have come into Spain some time before 1680 and was inventoried at the Escorial in 1700/01. The second version was formerly in the collection of Dr.G. Martius at Bonn, Germany, and was destroyed during World War II (1942). The present example is the third version. Either the New York or the Bonn version was formerly in the Galerie Espagnole of Louis-Philippe (no. 229, 255 x 175 cm). While the Madrid version is universally accepted as one of Ribera’s most important compositions, scholars have differed on the attributions of the other two versions, with the New York canvas being assigned alternately to Ribera and to the Italian Baroque painter, Luca Giordano.
The iconography of the New York and Madrid versions is related to apocryphal legends of the Magdalene, elaborated in France during the eleventh century and codified in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine (ca. 1230-1298). These claimed that Mary Magdalene miraculously drifted in a boat to Provence, which she subsequently evangelized, spending the last years of her life there as a hermit. Voragine also reported that the saint was lifted into the air by angels seven times a day, at the canonical hours. The elevation of the Magdalene over the bay of Marseilles (seen in the background at lower right) is the subject of both the Madrid and New York pictures.
Nevertheless, as Alicia Lubowski has demonstrated, the Madrid and New York images differ significantly in their presentation of the Magdalene. In the Madrid version, the Magdalene wears a hair shirt, and the attributes carried by the putti below her stress the skull, dramatically silhouetted at the right, and the scourge, unfurled by the putto at bottom right as though ready to strike. In the New York version, the Magdalene, while still in an attitude of contrition and prayer, has lost her hair shirt. The skull, furthermore, has switched positions with her jar of ointment, and the scourge is reversed in the putto’s hand, so that the handle extends out to the right and the strands hang loosely down. (The New York Magdalene does not seem inclined to take the putto’s offer of the scourge, gazing resolutely up to heaven.) Lubowski notes that this change from an emphasis on penitence to an emphasis on spiritual triumph and love of Christ is typical of the development from early to high Baroque art, and, we may add, from the grimmer piety of the earlier Counter-Reformation period to the more relaxed yet triumphalist devotion of the Catholic Church after the end of the Thirty Year’s War (1648).
While autograph replicas are not unknown in Ribera’s oeuvre, the New York canvas presents some unusual challenges to attribution. It is a picture of surpassing quality, extremely effective in its dynamic, Baroque spirituality, and clearly the work of a master. Yet, its high Baroque qualities seem to be from a later era than the much more restrained, early Baroque elements in the 1636 Madrid composition. Already in 1908, August Mayer questioned the attribution of the New York canvas to Ribera, and suggested Luca Giordano as the author, just as in 1892, Carl Justi had attributed the Bonn version to Giordano.
Although rejected by Trapier, Mayer’s arguments have found favor with most other scholars since World War II, and the canvas was included in Ferrari and Scavizzi’s catalogue of Giordano’s works. Although the New York canvas is unlike most of Giordano’s early pictures imitating Ribera, principally in the fact that it copies, with variations, a known Ribera composition, comparison to Giordano’s works of the late 1650s and 1660s suggests many stylistic points in common. Chief among these are are treatment of the draperies, which repeat the scythe-like patterns of Giordano’s images, the play of light, and the representation of the putti, which conform to Giordano’s usage. Lubowski’s analysis of the iconography, which would imply a date after Ribera’s death in 1652, also accords well with the dates of works by Giordano most closely related to the New York canvas.
The problem remains, however, to put Giordano and the Madrid canvas in the same place at the same time. Little is known about the original location of the Madrid picture, except that it was probably in Italy and not in the Escorial before 1657, when Padre Santos published the first edition of his Breve descripción. It seems to have been in Spain by 1680, when it influenced a painting by Claudio Coello of the same subject on the main altar of the church at Ciempozuelos, Spain. Since the New York picture was in Italy prior to its acquisition by the Society, one possible scenario for Giordano’s intervention has him making a copy in Italy to replace the Madrid canvas at the time it was sent to Spain, presumably circa 1660-65. This is pure speculation as to motive, but not as to date, since the alternative hypothesis, that Giordano copied the picture during his stay in Spain, 1692-1702, seems not to conform with his much different style at the end of his career. Nevertheless, since it is known that Giordano did imitate works of art in the Spanish royal collection, including those of the Netherlandish schools (see Giordano’s Preaching of John the Baptist, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), during his tenure at Madrid and the Escorial, we cannot rule out his having made the New York picture in Spain. MBB
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following authors all attribute the work to Giordano:
Catalogues Raisonnés:
Mayer, August L., Jusepe de Ribera (Lo Spagnoletto), Leipzig, 1908, fig. 57; 1923 ed., pp. 61-62, 187-191, 196, fig. 66.
Ferrari, Oreste, and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: L’opera completa, Naples: Edizione Scientifiche Italiane, 1966, vol. 1, p. 61, vol. 2, p.70, vol. 3, fig. 120; second edition, Naples: Electa Napoli, 1992, vol. 1, pp. 51, 281, 564; vol. 2, fig. 269.
Felton, Craig McFadyen, Jusepe de Ribera: A Catalogue Raisonné, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1971, pp. 125, 228-29, 434-35, no. x-49.
Spinosa, Nicola, and Alfornso Emilio Pérez Sánchez, L’opera completa del Ribera, Milan: Rizzoli Editore (Classici dell’Arte Rizzoli) and Barcelona and Madrid: Editorial Noguer, 1979, no. 96a, pp. 107-108.
The following authors also attribute the work to Luca Giordano:
Pérez Sánchez, Alfonso Emilio, and Nicola Spinosa, Jusepe de Ribera, 1591-1652, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992, p. 109 (cf. editions of 1992 at Naples, p. 204, and Madrid, p. 290).
Ambler, William Nash, in Lenaghan, Patrick, Mitchell A. Codding, Mencía Figueroa Villota, and John O’Neill, editors, The Hispanic Society of America: Tesoros, New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 2000, pp. 308-09, ill.
Lubowski, Alicia, manuscript article in archives of the Museum Department, Hispanic Society of America, 2001; we are indebted to Ms. Lubowski for sharing her research on this object.
Burke, Marcus B., “Luca Giordano, The Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalen,” in Tinterow, Gary, Geneviève Lacambre, and Jeannine Baticle, Manet / Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting, exhibition catalogue, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
Additional selected references – authors who attribute the work to Jusepe de Ribera:
[Possible mention:] Notice des tableux de la Galerie Espagnole exposés dans les salles du Musée Royal au Louvre, Paris: De l’Imprimerie de Crapelet, 1838, first edition, pp. 60-61, no. 224. But cf. Baticle, Janine, and Cristina Marinas. La Galerie espagnole de Louis-Philippe au Louvre, 1838-1848. Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1981, lot 182, p.51.
Freund, F.E.W., “The universal art of Ribera,” in The International Studio, vol. 34, July 1926, p.18.
Ribera in the Collection of the Hispanic Society of America, New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1926, pp. 9-14, ill.
Trapier, Elizabeth du Gué, Catalogue of Paintings (16th, 17th and 18th
Centuries) in the Collection of the Hispanic Society of America, New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1929, pp.146-148, plate 39.
The Hispanic Society of America Handbook, New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1938. p.19.
Darby, Delphine Fitz, “The Magdalen of the Hispanic Society by Jusepe de Ribera,” in The Art Quarterly, vol. 5, 1942, pp. 223-30, fig. 1.
Darby, Delphine Fitz, “The Gentle Ribera: Painter of the Madonna and the Holy Family,” in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, sixth series, vol. 29, 1946, p. 157.
Trapier, Elizabeth du Gué, Ribera, New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1952, pp. 117-23, frontispiece and figs. 69, 71, 73.
Ibidem, “A Ribera Painting Restored,” in Pantheon, vol. 24, 1966, pp. 165-69, ill.
Haskins, Susan, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor, New York, San Diego, and London: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1993, p. 462 note 91 (describing iconography).
The Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalene
ca. 1660-65
Oil on canvas, 100 15/16 x 76 in. (256.4 x 193 cm)
The Hispanic Society of America, New York A76
PROVENANCE: Possibly Louis-Philippe, King of France, by 1838-1853 (Galerie Espagnole, 1838, no. 224 [1st ed.], 229 [4th ed.]); possibly Louis-Philippe Sale, Christie’s London, 13 May 1853, no. 463, acquired by “Pearce”; Prince Giuseppe de Sangro di Fondi, Naples (attributed to Murillo, no. 324); said to have been sold at auction to Sangiorgi, Rome; Galleria Simonetti, Rome, by 1906 - 1910; purchased in 1910 by Roger Fry, agent for Archer Milton Huntington, New York; presented to The Hispanic Society of America in 1911.
EXHIBITIONS: Galerie Espagnole, Louvre, Paris, 1838 and subsequent, no. 224/229 [?] (as Ribera); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, “Manet / Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting,” 2003 (as Giordano) – not included in the selection presented at the Musée d’Orsay in 2002. (See also below, Bibliography.)
This large canvas is one of three versions of The Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalene once attributed to Jusepe de Ribera. The first of these is a canvas signed by Ribera and dated 1636, now in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, which is thought to have come into Spain some time before 1680 and was inventoried at the Escorial in 1700/01. The second version was formerly in the collection of Dr.G. Martius at Bonn, Germany, and was destroyed during World War II (1942). The present example is the third version. Either the New York or the Bonn version was formerly in the Galerie Espagnole of Louis-Philippe (no. 229, 255 x 175 cm). While the Madrid version is universally accepted as one of Ribera’s most important compositions, scholars have differed on the attributions of the other two versions, with the New York canvas being assigned alternately to Ribera and to the Italian Baroque painter, Luca Giordano.
The iconography of the New York and Madrid versions is related to apocryphal legends of the Magdalene, elaborated in France during the eleventh century and codified in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine (ca. 1230-1298). These claimed that Mary Magdalene miraculously drifted in a boat to Provence, which she subsequently evangelized, spending the last years of her life there as a hermit. Voragine also reported that the saint was lifted into the air by angels seven times a day, at the canonical hours. The elevation of the Magdalene over the bay of Marseilles (seen in the background at lower right) is the subject of both the Madrid and New York pictures.
Nevertheless, as Alicia Lubowski has demonstrated, the Madrid and New York images differ significantly in their presentation of the Magdalene. In the Madrid version, the Magdalene wears a hair shirt, and the attributes carried by the putti below her stress the skull, dramatically silhouetted at the right, and the scourge, unfurled by the putto at bottom right as though ready to strike. In the New York version, the Magdalene, while still in an attitude of contrition and prayer, has lost her hair shirt. The skull, furthermore, has switched positions with her jar of ointment, and the scourge is reversed in the putto’s hand, so that the handle extends out to the right and the strands hang loosely down. (The New York Magdalene does not seem inclined to take the putto’s offer of the scourge, gazing resolutely up to heaven.) Lubowski notes that this change from an emphasis on penitence to an emphasis on spiritual triumph and love of Christ is typical of the development from early to high Baroque art, and, we may add, from the grimmer piety of the earlier Counter-Reformation period to the more relaxed yet triumphalist devotion of the Catholic Church after the end of the Thirty Year’s War (1648).
While autograph replicas are not unknown in Ribera’s oeuvre, the New York canvas presents some unusual challenges to attribution. It is a picture of surpassing quality, extremely effective in its dynamic, Baroque spirituality, and clearly the work of a master. Yet, its high Baroque qualities seem to be from a later era than the much more restrained, early Baroque elements in the 1636 Madrid composition. Already in 1908, August Mayer questioned the attribution of the New York canvas to Ribera, and suggested Luca Giordano as the author, just as in 1892, Carl Justi had attributed the Bonn version to Giordano.
Although rejected by Trapier, Mayer’s arguments have found favor with most other scholars since World War II, and the canvas was included in Ferrari and Scavizzi’s catalogue of Giordano’s works. Although the New York canvas is unlike most of Giordano’s early pictures imitating Ribera, principally in the fact that it copies, with variations, a known Ribera composition, comparison to Giordano’s works of the late 1650s and 1660s suggests many stylistic points in common. Chief among these are are treatment of the draperies, which repeat the scythe-like patterns of Giordano’s images, the play of light, and the representation of the putti, which conform to Giordano’s usage. Lubowski’s analysis of the iconography, which would imply a date after Ribera’s death in 1652, also accords well with the dates of works by Giordano most closely related to the New York canvas.
The problem remains, however, to put Giordano and the Madrid canvas in the same place at the same time. Little is known about the original location of the Madrid picture, except that it was probably in Italy and not in the Escorial before 1657, when Padre Santos published the first edition of his Breve descripción. It seems to have been in Spain by 1680, when it influenced a painting by Claudio Coello of the same subject on the main altar of the church at Ciempozuelos, Spain. Since the New York picture was in Italy prior to its acquisition by the Society, one possible scenario for Giordano’s intervention has him making a copy in Italy to replace the Madrid canvas at the time it was sent to Spain, presumably circa 1660-65. This is pure speculation as to motive, but not as to date, since the alternative hypothesis, that Giordano copied the picture during his stay in Spain, 1692-1702, seems not to conform with his much different style at the end of his career. Nevertheless, since it is known that Giordano did imitate works of art in the Spanish royal collection, including those of the Netherlandish schools (see Giordano’s Preaching of John the Baptist, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), during his tenure at Madrid and the Escorial, we cannot rule out his having made the New York picture in Spain. MBB
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following authors all attribute the work to Giordano:
Catalogues Raisonnés:
Mayer, August L., Jusepe de Ribera (Lo Spagnoletto), Leipzig, 1908, fig. 57; 1923 ed., pp. 61-62, 187-191, 196, fig. 66.
Ferrari, Oreste, and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: L’opera completa, Naples: Edizione Scientifiche Italiane, 1966, vol. 1, p. 61, vol. 2, p.70, vol. 3, fig. 120; second edition, Naples: Electa Napoli, 1992, vol. 1, pp. 51, 281, 564; vol. 2, fig. 269.
Felton, Craig McFadyen, Jusepe de Ribera: A Catalogue Raisonné, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1971, pp. 125, 228-29, 434-35, no. x-49.
Spinosa, Nicola, and Alfornso Emilio Pérez Sánchez, L’opera completa del Ribera, Milan: Rizzoli Editore (Classici dell’Arte Rizzoli) and Barcelona and Madrid: Editorial Noguer, 1979, no. 96a, pp. 107-108.
The following authors also attribute the work to Luca Giordano:
Pérez Sánchez, Alfonso Emilio, and Nicola Spinosa, Jusepe de Ribera, 1591-1652, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992, p. 109 (cf. editions of 1992 at Naples, p. 204, and Madrid, p. 290).
Ambler, William Nash, in Lenaghan, Patrick, Mitchell A. Codding, Mencía Figueroa Villota, and John O’Neill, editors, The Hispanic Society of America: Tesoros, New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 2000, pp. 308-09, ill.
Lubowski, Alicia, manuscript article in archives of the Museum Department, Hispanic Society of America, 2001; we are indebted to Ms. Lubowski for sharing her research on this object.
Burke, Marcus B., “Luca Giordano, The Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalen,” in Tinterow, Gary, Geneviève Lacambre, and Jeannine Baticle, Manet / Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting, exhibition catalogue, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
Additional selected references – authors who attribute the work to Jusepe de Ribera:
[Possible mention:] Notice des tableux de la Galerie Espagnole exposés dans les salles du Musée Royal au Louvre, Paris: De l’Imprimerie de Crapelet, 1838, first edition, pp. 60-61, no. 224. But cf. Baticle, Janine, and Cristina Marinas. La Galerie espagnole de Louis-Philippe au Louvre, 1838-1848. Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1981, lot 182, p.51.
Freund, F.E.W., “The universal art of Ribera,” in The International Studio, vol. 34, July 1926, p.18.
Ribera in the Collection of the Hispanic Society of America, New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1926, pp. 9-14, ill.
Trapier, Elizabeth du Gué, Catalogue of Paintings (16th, 17th and 18th
Centuries) in the Collection of the Hispanic Society of America, New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1929, pp.146-148, plate 39.
The Hispanic Society of America Handbook, New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1938. p.19.
Darby, Delphine Fitz, “The Magdalen of the Hispanic Society by Jusepe de Ribera,” in The Art Quarterly, vol. 5, 1942, pp. 223-30, fig. 1.
Darby, Delphine Fitz, “The Gentle Ribera: Painter of the Madonna and the Holy Family,” in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, sixth series, vol. 29, 1946, p. 157.
Trapier, Elizabeth du Gué, Ribera, New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1952, pp. 117-23, frontispiece and figs. 69, 71, 73.
Ibidem, “A Ribera Painting Restored,” in Pantheon, vol. 24, 1966, pp. 165-69, ill.
Haskins, Susan, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor, New York, San Diego, and London: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1993, p. 462 note 91 (describing iconography).
Accession Number: A76
In Collection(s)