Artwork
Hl. Magdalena
Hl. Magdalena is an unspecified painting by the Mannerist artist Giampietrino. It dates from 1520 and is held in the collection of the Bavarian State Painting Collections.
About this work
Overview
Giampietrino, identified as Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, was an active painter in northern Italy from the late 15th to the mid‑16th century. Working within the Lombard tradition and influenced by Leonardo da Vinci, he produced a religious composition titled *Hl. Magdalena* around 1520. The work is presently part of the collection of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
Subject & Meaning
The painting presents a nude female figure identified as Mary Magdalene, seated before a modest table. Her long, tightly curled hair frames a contemplative face that looks upward, suggesting a moment of spiritual reflection. A small, decorative vessel rests on the tabletop, a traditional attribute linked to the Magdalene’s penitential narrative.
Technique & Style
Executed in a mannerist idiom, the image employs Leonardo’s chiaroscuro to model the figure’s form against a dark, subtly graded background. The artist renders each curl of hair with meticulous precision, while the contrast of light and shadow gives the body a palpable sense of volume and three‑dimensionality.
History & Provenance
Created circa 1520, the painting entered the Alte Pinakothek’s holdings at an unspecified later date, where it has been displayed as part of the museum’s representation of Lombard art. No documented commissions or earlier owners are recorded in the surviving sources.
Context
Giampietrino’s work reflects the diffusion of Leonardo’s compositional devices among his followers, adapted here to a more exaggerated, mannerist sensibility. The emphasis on emotional introspection and the elegant, elongated figure align with broader trends in early‑16th‑century northern Italian painting, where devotional subjects were often rendered with heightened psychological nuance.
Artist & collection
Artist
Giampietrino, probably Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli (active 1495–1549), was a north Italian painter of the Lombard school and Leonardo's circle, succinctly characterized by S. J. Freedberg as an "exploiter of Leonardo's repertory."
