Magdalen with the Smoking Flame
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
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View in the galleryAbout this painting
She is not looking at the skull. LACMA reads it, with the books and scourge, as setting the mood; the true subject is the candle she gazes at. The flame is what followers of St. John of the Cross called the living flame of love, the light out of the dark night.
Its curling smoke is the picture's subject as much as the light — a note on how fast a life burns.
La Tour's Magdalen in New York has a mirror; the Metropolitan calls it the symbol of vanity. This one has none. What she watches is burning down.
Sources: Candle/smoke as the work's true subject, read through St. John of the Cross's 'living flame of love' theology · Reads the rising smoke as an added vanitas note (life's fragility) atop LACMA's candle-as-subject reading; confirms the mirror belongs only to La Tour's other ('first') Magdalen painting, not this one · The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Georges de La Tour, 'The Penitent Magdalen', acc. 1978.517.
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 5,121 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.