The Subject of Savoldo's<i>Magdalene</i>

Abstract

Savoldo's admirable half-length Magdalene (first version dated ca. 1524) has been consistently regarded as a secularized, if mysteriously enticing, image of the saint. Here it is interpreted as a novel transformation of the Renaissance devotional image in light of John 20:11-18, and of narrative and formal developments in Italian painting of half-length format from the period 1475-1505. The formal aspect receives an especially close analysis: Savoldo's approach to pictorial illusion can be shown to embody a poetic of the fictive that is dependent on the rhetorical model of Alberti, but ultimately based on widespread trecento formulations about poetry's relation to painting.