CARRACI - Landscape

• Annibale Carracci, The Penitent Magdalen in a Landscape, c.1599
• Key facts

  Medium: oil on copper

  Location: Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

  Patron: From Cardinal Scipione Borghese’s Gallery Collection
• Description

  Annibale Carracci has presented the Mary Magdalen as penitent (showing sorrow or regret) in a naturalistic landscape. Mary Magdalen was a disciple of Jesus and appears in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the Bible. Mary was witness to Jesus’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection. Her harlot status has been greatly debated throughout history; however, an image of Mary like Annibale’s shown as a fallen but repentant woman was commonplace in the Western canon. Mary is shown grieving for Christ, although this denies her presence at the resurrection, in a sense.
• Iconography

  Mary is most often represented either before her conversion as a richly attired and bejewelled figure of love, or, as a penitent, in simple clothing or even naked with only long hair covering her modesty. She can be shown with the attributes of the ointment jar, crucifix, skull, and Holy book.
• The skull in Mary's lap reminds us of the inevitability of death; it has particular resonance in nature since death comes to all creatures. This Mary appears to be meditating on death with the skull in her lap. The scene brings to mind the biblical passage ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity’. Material possessions are worthless to us in the end, and this Mary seems wise to the fact, showing wisdom and thoughtfulness. The book, presumably the Bible, since it is a single book in juxtaposition with the skull, also shows her learnedness.
• In Baroque work she is more often seen meditating and raising her tear-filled eyes towards heaven. She is sometimes shown at the entrance to a cave or literally in the wilderness as was described in the legend that later in life she lived for 30 years in a grotto at Sainte-Baume in France.
• Composition

  
  

  Annibale, ever in pursuit of balance, has used nature to create a framing device with the trees; however, more specifically, by positioning Mary in the right-hand foreground, he uses the technique of repoussoir (pushing back) to direct our eye backwards into the vista beyond. It was a common technique among Mannerist and Baroque artists. The brightness in the background encourages us to consider how far removed from others Mary has become. Indeed, apart from Mary, the entire scene is unpopulated.
• Colour

  Colour is used descriptively. Mary’s flesh tones are pink and feminine and her vivid blue gown is the only saturated use of colour in the composition. Nature’s colour palette prevails: olives, dark greens and browns make Mary’s blue robes and the distant sky all the more vibrant. The palette is fairly limited and the only real ‘pop’ of colour is provided by the orange of Mary’s hair set against the complementary blue of her robe.
• Interpretation

  This scene is an obvious invention using both naturalism and imagination. This is not intended to be a topographical view. The foliage is not particular but rather generalised in fitting with the idealised scene. Italian landscapes were typically idealised at this time, reflecting a pastoral ideal inspired from Classical poetry – expressed already by the likes of Venetian artists like Giorgione and Titian. The hilly and wooded Italian landscape is recognisable as such.
• Space

  Distinct foreground, middleground and background. The composition leads our eyes all the way back to the horizon line with the use of an illuminated background. Our sight there is aided by the dip in the landscape which snakes its way to the flat mountain top. Annibale demonstrates his understanding of atmospheric perspective1 in the blue-grey tones which colour everything towards the horizon line.
• Style

  Italian Baroque; Bolognese School. Mannerism dominated Bolognese painting in the sixteenth-century until the Carracci style eschewed Mannerist complexity.
• Mary Magdalene was always an important figure in the Gospel, but she became even more so after the Counter-Reformation, when the Catholic Church encouraged devotion to the Sacraments4 , particularly penance. Mary was seen as the ideal penitent because she supposedly anointed the feet of Jesus. But the woman who did this, whoever she was, was actually unnamed in the gospel.
• Around 1580, under the influence of Passerotti and other North Italian painters, such as Correggio (ca. 1489/94-1534) and Veronese, Annibale broke away from the late mannerist style then dominant in Bologna. Annibale stressed drawing after nature with a Classical influence.
• The Carracci developed a new style that blended the rich colour, soft chiaroscuro, and warm lighting seen in the art of Northern Italian artists, like Titian and Correggio with the balanced compositions, firm drawing, and idealised forms that characterize the art of central Italian artists like Raphael and Michelangelo
• Influence

  Annibale used the Classical style after studying Raphael and when he died in 1609, he was buried, according to his wish, near Raphael in the Pantheon of Rome. Titian had a considerable influence on the work of the Carracci, and specifically his use of colour.
• Context

  Annibale Carracci was born in Bologna in 1560. His brother Agostino (1557-1602) was a painter and printmaker and his cousin Ludovico (1555-1619) was a painter.