Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene

Titian's Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene from around 1565, now in the Hermitage, brings together the Virgin and the penitent sinner whose presence at the foot of the cross made her the model of redemptive love in Counter-Reformation devotion. Mary Magdalene's combination of former sinfulness, overwhelming penitential grief, and intimate knowledge of the risen Christ made her theologically central to the religious controversies of the sixteenth century; Protestants emphasized her personal faith and direct relationship to Christ, while Catholics defended her sacramental confession and the tradition of her years of penitent hermitage. Titian painted the Magdalene repeatedly as both a devotional and an erotic subject — the penitent with her flowing hair and tear-wet face combining spiritual intensity with physical beauty in ways that the tradition tolerated because her beauty was in service of repentance. The Hermitage version, later in his career, brings to this charged combination of the sacred mother and the penitent sinner the depth of personal feeling that characterizes his best late religious work.

Titian's late manner pervades the painting, with forms softened and partially dissolved by broken brushwork, creating an atmosphere of tender, mystical intimacy between the sacred figures.