santa maria maddalena

The title of this 1491 panel in the National Gallery uses the Italian — santa maria maddalena — rather than its English equivalent, and Crivelli's Mary Magdalene is among his most refined late works. Mary Magdalene occupied a complex position in late-medieval devotion: simultaneously penitent sinner and intimate companion of Christ, she offered a model of redemption accessible to laypeople who identified with her flawed humanity. Crivelli renders her with the jar of ointment that identified her across centuries of iconography, but his version is saturated with the ornamental splendour typical of his mature Marchigian altarpieces. By 1491, the year of his knighting by Ferdinand II of Naples, Crivelli was at the height of his prestige, and this panel's technical refinement reflects an artist working at full confidence.

Crivelli's Magdalene wears richly decorated garments whose gold brocade is realised through raised gesso patterning and burnished gilding, a technique requiring separate stages of preparation before any painting begins. The saint's face is rendered with the idealised sharpness that distinguishes Crivelli's female figures from contemporary Venetian painting's softer forms.