For this Spotlight we focus on an interesting French allegorical portrait, dating to the reign of Louis XIV in the late 17th century.
In this painting, an aristocratic French lady is depicted in the guise of Mary Magdalene, identified by her gold ointment jar, used for anointing Christ's feet, as well as the book by her side and the grotto-like landscape behind her. According to medieval Christian legend, Mary spent the last thirty years of her life living in penitence in a cave in southern France at Sainte Baume, Provence.
The direct gaze of the sitter and her unidealised facial features, however, indicate that the present portrait is depicting a contemporary French lady dressed in classical robes and with the attributes of the Magdalene, rather than this being an actual depiction of the Christian saint.
Fig. 1: 17th century French School. Portrait of a lady as the Magdalene. Oil on canvas, framed. 57.75 x 48.5 cm. / 22.75 by 19 ins. Provenance: Private collection, UK
This painting is part of a tradition of allegorical portraits popular in France in the second half of the seventeenth century, which present aristocratic ladies and gentlemen in the guise of Graeco-Roman subjects or (as is the case here) Christian saints or martyrs.
Such portraits appealed to the morality and erudition – as well as, presumably, to the vanity – of their aristocratic sitters, who wished to be associated with the virtues or deeds of their chosen subjects and to be portrayed in eye-catching and self-aggrandising costume.
Close compositional analogies may be found in an allegorical portrait of Isabelle de Ludres, an aristocrat from Lorraine and one of Louis XIV’s mistresses, in Versailles (Musée national du Château, inv. MV897, fig. 2) (1). In that portrait, the sitter is also shown in the guise of the Penitent Magdalene, holding a gold ointment jar and in front of a very similar grotto-like background, suggesting that the Versailles painting was the inspiration for the present picture.
Fig. 2: Attributed to Jean Nocret (1615-72). Madame de Ludres en Marie-Madeleine, c.1669. Oil on canvas, 103 by 83 cm. Versailles, Musée national du Château, inv. MV897
The Versailles portrait was previously considered to be from the workshop of Pierre Mignard, but is now attributed to Jean Nocret (c.1615-1672), a notable portrait painter at the court of Louis XIV. Indeed, the facial characteristics of the lady in our painting correspond to other female portraits by Jean Nocret, such as his Portrait of Henriette d’Angleterre as Pallas (Royal Collection, RCIN 405910) (2), which can be compared in terms of the sitter’s facial type and direct gaze, as well as the colour palette and the dark background contrasting with the bright drapery.
This leads to the conclusion that the present portrait was executed by a French artist active in the late seventeenth century, who took as his inspiration Nocret’s Madame de Ludres, but was likely commissioned to make this portrait for another French aristocratic lady, who wished to be portrayed as the Magdalene.
Fig. 4: the present portrait in a gilded frame (the frame 79 by 71 cm. / 31 by 28 ins)
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(1) See Versailles website for full cataloguing: https://collections.chateauversailles.fr/#/query/65601396-4830-42d8-8e67-268ccc98c6f5
(2) See Royal Collection website for images of this portrait: https://www.rct.uk/collection/405910/henrietta-duchess-of-orleans-1644-1670