The Penitent Magdalen
Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1650 - 1655
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1632 x 1413 mm (64 1/4 x 55 5/8 in)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Kingston Lacy Estate, Dorset
NT 1257099
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, The Penitent Magdalen by Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680), circa 1650-55. A full-length view of the Magdalen, seated in a cave, her head in profile, in contemplation of a crucifix; wearing a yellow-brown cloak over a purple-brown robe, which are both falling off her shoulders, exposing her breast. The figure is the same female model used in The Rape of Europa in the Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth and The Music Lesson (Lord Dulverton version dated 1654), a version of which is in the Earl of Jersey's collection on loan to Osterley Park (NT 773366). The Earl of Jersey also owns a related drawing of a study from life which had been in the collection of Sir Francis Child in his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields since at least 1699 and was probably acquired by him at the artist's posthumous sale. This is a subject picture rather than a portrait of a court lady in disguise. Another, possibly autograph, painted repetition of the Magdalen is in the Royal Collection (RCIN 406084) probably bought by King James II. The composition, described by the original owner Ralph Bankes as 'A Magdalen in large knee Cloth don by mr Lylly' has been widened by 8 1/4 inches as there is a visible seam on the left.
Full description
Sir Peter Lely (1618–80) is best known as a portraitist who, as Charles II’s official Principal Painter, produced a huge body of work and became the chief image-maker of Restoration Britain. However, in the period after Lely arrived in England in the 1640s, he predominantly painted subject pictures with a variety of mythological, pastoral, musical and religious themes. He painted around thirty of these pictures until, mindful of his career, he realised that the English preferred buying and collecting portraits, and turned to portraiture instead. Lely’s friend, the poet Richard Lovelace alluded to this when he wrote his poem Peinture. A Panegyrick to the best Picture of Friendship, Mr. Pet. Lilly (1659), describing how the artist found the ‘un-understanding’ English would in terms of picture patronage only ‘their own dull counterfeits adore’. Kingston Lacy’s The Pentinent Magdalen is one of the religious subject pictures that the artist produced during his early years in England (and the only one of which that depicted a figure from the New Testament). In the picture, the reformed prostitute, St. Mary Magdalen, is shown sitting in the mouth of a cave, with a landscape and sunset behind her. She pensively looks downwards at a crucifix placed on a rocky ledge, next to a skull, a momento mori, to remind her of the vanities of the world that she now repents against, and that she too (like us, the viewers, looking at the picture) will die. The picture shows the saint after her contemplative time in the wilderness, and she wears plain clothes that indicate her new life. She attempts to cover herself, a sign of her recently-acquired modesty, although one of her breasts remains exposed, which to a seventeenth-century viewer would have indicated her former role as a prostitute. Lely would later use the figure of Mary Magdalen as the subject for role portraits of named sitters. The most famous of these is his c.1662 portrayal of the king’s official mistress from 1660 to 1670, Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine and later Duchess of Cleveland. The prime version of the much-copied portrait is in the National Trust’s collection at Knole and it shows the sitter with her heard resting on her hand and her long hair loose on one side. This would have evoked the figure of the Penitent Magdalen to contemporary audiences, and Lely was clearly referencing works that would have been familiar to courtiers in London, such as pictures by the Italian artist Guido Reni. A more blatant depiction of Barbara as Mary Magdalene was the printed copy of Lely’s painting, engraved by Josias English in 1667, which includes the saint’s attributes of the book and jar of ointment, as well as the skull and crucifix seen in the Kingston Lacy picture. It was at the same time that Lely completed his painting of Barbara as the reformed prostitute, that she was referred to by the poet and satirist Samuel Butler, in his The Chimney’s Scuffle, as ‘England’s Magdalen’. In 2016, cleaning of the Kingston Lacy picture has revealed the quality of Lely’s painting (this is the prime version - a copy from Lely’s studio is in the Royal Collection) as well as the colours of the picture as originally intended, such as the flushed, pink glow to Mary Magdalen’s skin across her chest. It has also revealed fascinating details, such as the red ribbon she wears in her hair and, most importantly, one of Lely’s distinctive signatures that he used on some of his canvases - the initials PL painted in monogram. The unnamed sitter that Lely painted was probably one of the artist’s social circle and she may have been a musician or actor, or indeed a prostitute, and she appears in other subject pictures by the artist. She can be seen, with the same head pose, as the eponymous heroine in The Rape of Europa at Chatsworth, where she adorns the god Jupiter, in the form of a white bull, with garlands of flowers, while he licks her exposed knee. She also appears as the student playing a guitar in Lely’s 1654 The Music Lesson, formerly in the collection of Lord Dulverton (a version, from Lord Jersey’s collection is on loan to Osterley), and there are at least two drawings by Lely that survive, which show the same sitter. The picture was probably commissioned by Ralph Bankes, one of Lely’s most important early English patrons. Bankes described the pictures as 'A Magdalen in large… don by mr Lylly' and in the 1656 list of his pictures in his chamber at Gray’s Inn, it is described as a ‘Magdalen by mr Lilly’, which three years later is noted as having cost £20.00, including its gilt auricular frame. Lely painted a number of portraits for his patron, including one of Bankes himself, which can be seen at Kingston Lacy, and another important picture there, Landscape with Herdsmen painted in 1655 by the great Haarlem landscape painter Nicolaes Berchem, was probably commissioned by Lely on behalf of Bankes. As such, Kingston Lacy is a hugely important site for viewing works by Lely, both particularly fine portraits and in the case of The Penitent Magdalen, a particularly fine subject picture.
Provenance
According to his list (1656-8) in the collection of Sir Ralph Bankes (?1631-1677) at Gray's Inn ('A Magdalen by m'lillys') with a further note in 1659 of what they cost with frames, this picture being £20:00; recorded as being restored by George Dowdney in 1731; in 1762 Kingston Hall inventory (Henry Bankes the elder) and and in Ballroom/Saloon in Kingston Lacy (Henry Bankes the younger) around 1800; recorded in 1835 inventory as being inscribed on reverse: 'Sir P. Lelys Cypher is on this Picture'; thence by descent until bequeathed to the National Trust by (Henry John) Ralph Bankes, Esq (1902-1981) together with the estate and entire contents of Kingston Lacy
Credit line
Kingston Lacy, The Bankes Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Verso: 1835 : “Sir P. Lelys Cypher is on this Picture” [Still seen?] Painted on top of the rock: The monogram 'PL' : discovered in conservation work in 2016.
Makers and roles
Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680), artist
References
Millar 1963 Oliver Millar, The Tudor Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Oxford, 1963, 2 vols., vol. 1, pp. 126-7, no. 268 Sir Peter Lely, National Portrait Gallery, London, 17 November 1978 - 18 March 1979, p. 77. no. 72 Laing 1993 Alastair Laing, ‘Sir Peter Lely and Sir Ralph Bankes’, Art and Patronage in the Caroline Courts (ed. David Howarth), Cambridge, 1993, pp.107-131, appendix; document 1, no. 8 Peter Lely A Lyrical Vision, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 11 October 2012 - 13 January 2013, fig. 55