drawing
- Museum number
- 1912,1214.5
- Description
-
Mary Magdalene, study for a painting; the saint kneeling to left and leaning forward hugging herself
Black chalk, heightened with white
- Production date
- 1592-1640
- Dimensions
-
Height: 334 millimetres
-
Width: 242 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- The character of this intimate drawing is of one made from life, with the form rapidly established through black chalk outlines prior to the sensitive application of white heightening. In this respect it compares with a few other contemporary studies of women such as the Head of a Woman in the British Museum (T,13.63) the Seated Young Female in the Albertina (inv. no. 17652) and Young Woman in Profile (inv. 1978.18.1) which is dated to circa 1611 to 1612. The pose indicates that Rubens had in mind a work of a Penitent Magdalene when making this drawing, and that he derived inspiration from other works he had encountered. For instance, parallels should be drawn with Roman statues of the Crouching Venus, such as the Lely Venus that Rubens might have seen in the Mantuan Court (Steinberg 2012). Rubens does not, however, appear to have ever produced a painting from this study, though Rowlands tenuously linked it with the depiction of the Magdalene in the ‘Christ in the house of Simon the Pharisee’ of circa 1618 to 1620 in the Hermitage (inv. ГЭ-479).
Lit: J. Rowlands, ‘Rubens: Drawings and Sketches’, exhibition catalogue, British Museum,1977, no. 73; Corpus Rubenianum XXI, no. 42; S. Steinberg, 'Rubens, Venus, and Adonis: Anatomy of a Tragedy', exh.cat. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2012, pp.26-30
Entry from J. Rowlands, ‘Rubens: Drawings and Sketches’, exhibition catalogue, British Museum,1977:
This study, apparently done from the life, was clearly drawn with a painting of the Penitent Magdalene in mind. But, as with several other drawings of this type, no known commission can be connected directly with the kneeling nude figure. Some general similarities are to be found in the suppliant female figure bending before Christ in the 'Christ and the Penitents' in Munich, a painting of about 1618. But the pose is not sufficiently close for one to be able to assume that Rubens had this drawing particularly in mind when he designed this composition. There is an even more tenuous link with the sensuous kneeling Magdalene, who wipes Christ's feet with her hair in the painting now in Leningrad, 'Christ in the house of Simon the Pharisee'.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1977 BM, Rubens drawings and sketches, no.73
- Acquisition date
- 1912
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1912,1214.5
