Anonymous Castilian. Last quarter of the XVII... Lot n° 36

Anonymous Castilian. Last quarter of the XVII century. Saint Mary Magdalene'. Sculpture in carved and polychrome wood. 64,5 x 22 x 22 cm. The iconography of the penitent Magdalene, prototype of the repentant woman, was one of the favourites ones of the Baroque. Among all the representations that were made of the saint during this period, the model created and popularized by the Granada sculptor Pedro de Mena (1628-1688) stands out above all, and whose most outstanding example is the Penitent Magdalene (171 cm) that he sculpted in 1664 for the disappeared Casa Profesa in Madrid and which is currently on loan from the Prado Museum to the National Museum of Sculpture in Valladolid. The success of this sculpture, which is the quintessence of his refined and melancholic style, was due, in the words of Professor Lázaro Gila Medina, to the fact that 'it fully complied with the wishes of the Society that its works should be sufficiently useful and effective for its evangelising and catechetical work, and in this case the Magdalene was an exceptional model, given that after an easy youth, after her encounter with Christ and sincere repentance, she would become his most faithful disciple, following him even after his Crucifixion'. From the very moment of its execution, the Magdalene of the Madrid Jesuits caused such astonishment and admiration that requests for copies and reproductions followed one after another, some of which were made by Mena himself. Due to this fact, the iconographic type spread rapidly throughout much of Spain.The fame it achieved in Castilian lands, in general, and in Valladolid, in particular, was mainly due to the copy of the Magdalena (162 cm) owned by the Jesuit college of San Ignacio de Valladolid, and which was donated by Doña Magdalena de Pimentel, Marquise of Viana, in her will of 1702.Mena's model spread to exhaustion throughout the territories of the current communities of Madrid and Castile and Leon, and there are also numerous examples in the north of the peninsula (Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria and Navarra). Returning to the sculpture that concerns us, we do not know its origin, although it is most likely from a church or convent of Castile and Leon.Mary Magdalene is effigied in a moment of intense rapture and meditation before a missing Crucifix that she would hold in her left hand. On the other hand, the right hand rests delicately on her chest, as if holding her breath at the contemplation of the Crucified One.She stands upright, with her left leg forward, as if in the gesture of walking. In origin it is probable that she was located on a rocky place that evoked her hermit life, in which it is frequent that rocks, trees, streams, small hollows or caves, and diverse small animals like doves, snakes, frogs, etc.... In addition, on occasions some of her attributes can appear on the rocky ground, case of the skull or even the bottle of perfumes. He wears a palm mat that completely covers his body from the lower part of the bust to the ankles, leaving only the torso, arms and feet naked. The head, oval in shape, has facial features carved with great technical skill, highlighting the half-open mouth with thin lips, almond-shaped eyes or the nose with a straight septum and perforated nostrils to give greater credibility.The hair falls symmetrically on both sides of the face and down to below the waist in long, wavy, compact locks that evoke both her eremitic life and her femininity.Large locks cover part of her shoulders and back. From the morphological features, essentially those present in his face, it is possible to assign this work to a Castilian sculptor -probably from Valladolid- who worked at the end of the last quarter of the 17th century. We thank Mr. Javier Baladrón, doctor in Art History, for the identification and cataloguing of this work.