Mary Magdalene

This panel dates to approximately 1480, during the period Crivelli spent working along the Adriatic coast of the Marche region in central Italy, where he had settled after his expulsion from Venice in the late 1450s. Executed in tempera and gold on panel, the work belongs to the tradition of the Italian Early Renaissance, yet Crivelli's style resists easy periodization: his linear precision, obsessive surface decoration, and love of trompe-l'œil relief elements align him as much with the lingering International Gothic as with the rational spatial ambitions of his Florentine contemporaries. The panel almost certainly formed part of one of the elaborate polyptych altarpieces Crivelli produced for churches and noble patrons throughout the Marche, where his highly individualized style found a receptive audience even as it diverged from mainstream Venetian and Central Italian developments. Art historians have long noted that Crivelli's Mary Magdalene figures are among the most elaborately dressed in the entire Renaissance canon: a theological paradox the artist exploited deliberately, contrasting worldly luxury with the saint's narrative of repentance. The painting is held in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, which acquired it as part of its Northern Italian panel holdings.