The Repentant Magdalen
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
Free shipping, included in the price, to all eight countries we ship to. Printed to order and dispatched in 2–4 working days. If it arrives damaged, we replace it — nothing to send back.
Christmas: order by Monday 7 December for delivery in the United States before Christmas.
View in the galleryAbout this painting
She weeps, and the picture is cold. Houston reads its crisp lines and icy colors as a tone of pious sobriety, and dates Champaigne's adherence to Jansenism, a French Catholic sect of great austerity, to the latter 1640s. The canvas is 1648. Penitence as discipline, not rapture.
The jar she is known by is Luke's: a woman washing Christ's feet with her tears, anointing them from it. No Gospel puts her in a cave — Houston traces it to the legend of her retreat at Sainte-Baume.
Luke never names that woman. Gregory the Great did, in a homily of 591.
Sources: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 'The Repentant Magdalen', acc. 70.26, object record · CAA review corroborating Champaigne's Jansenist context and distinguishing the Houston Magdalen from his separate 1657 Rennes Magdalen · Museo Nacional del Prado, Alonso Cano, 'The Penitent Magdalene' (1652–1657), collection record · The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 'Mary Magdalene', Stories and Histories, collection highlights · Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend (Legenda aurea), 'The Life of Saint Mary Magdalene' — Caxton translation, Temple Classics ed., vol. 4 · The National Gallery, London, artist record: Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674) · Mary Ann Beavis, 'Who is Mary Magdalene?', Institute for Faith and Learning, Baylor University (Christian Reflection series) · Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia, Book II, Homily 33.1 (PL 76, col. 1239A), preached at Rome c. 591
And standing behind at his feet. she began to wash his feet with tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.
Luke 7:38 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner)
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 8,009 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.