Lot 196: MICHELE TOSINI, CALLED MICHELE DI RIDOLFO DEL GHIRLANDAIO

SAINT MARY MAGDALENE

27 1/2 by 20 1/2 in.; 69.9 by 52.1 cm.

oil on panel

New York, Colnaghi, Gothic to Renaissance: European Painting 1300-1600, 1988, no. 17;
New York, Richard L. Feigen & Co., Strange Beauty: A Century of Mannerism 1520-1620, 29 January - 2 April 1999 (on loan from the present collector).

L. Rivelli, Polidoro a San Silvestro al Quirinale, Bergamo 1987, p. 79, reproduced fig. 59.

With Colnaghi, New York, 1988;
From whom acquired by a Private Collector;
From whom purchased by the present collector, by 1989.

Michele Tosini began his artistic training in Florence with Lorenzo di Credi and Antonio del Ceraiolo, and later entered the workshop of Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. By the mid-1520s, the two were frequent collaborators, and Tosini adopted the older artist's name. By the 1540s Tosini had abandoned his earlier High Renaissance style in favour of a Mannerist idiom inspired by Bronzino and Salviati. During the latter part of the 1550s, he worked with Vasari on the frescoes for the Salone del Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio, and adopted this artist's Michelangesque style. In the 1560s, Tosini worked on the decoration of the city gates of Florence and the altar in the chapel at the Villa Caserotta, near San Casciano Val di Pesa.

Typically represented either before, or at, the moment of her spiritual awakening, the solitary figure of the Magdalene was a favourite pictorial subject during the Renaissance and Mannerist periods. The present, exquisite painting depicts the worldly Mary Magdalene sumptuously attired with an elaborate jeweled headdress, her serpentine pose and alluring expression suggesting her vanity and profane sexuality. This is Mary Magdalene the prostitute, not the humble follower of Jesus Christ, and in her depiction, there is a reflection of the prevailing atmosphere of the Medici court after the middle of the sixteenth century. Typical of the maniera style are the bust-length format, classicizing features and antique costume, which all reveal and interest in - and knowledge of - ancient sculpture, considered an authoritative source for figural types and motifs.

This painting is related to several other works, including the figures of Leda and Lucretia in the Borghese Gallery, and another image of an Allegorical Figure in a private collection. Likely done as a collector's piece, Ravelli has pointed out that the figure of the Magdalene islikely based on Polidoro's Magdalene in St. Silvestro Quirinale, Rome (op. cit.).