Mary Magdalene
Moretto da Brescia
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The Story
To develop his own intimate style, Fra Bartolommeo looked to the most lyrical and harmonious paintings of his fellow artists working in Florence in the first years of the 16th century, including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. When the young artist came under the spell of the ardent Dominican reformer Girolamo Savonarola in 1500, he abandoned his artistic career for several years to join the order, becoming Fra (Friar) Bartolommeo. He made this work after his return to painting in 1504, investing it with a new spirituality.
Created in 1504 during the 1500-1550 period, this work belongs firmly within the power & politics tradition. Fra Bartolommeo worked at a moment when the rediscovery of classical antiquity reshaped what a painting could mean. Every gesture, fabric, and gleam of light was decoded by contemporary viewers like a private language.
The physical object — Oil on panel, 34 × 24.5 cm (13 3/8 × 9 5/8 in.); Framed: 52.7 × 35.6 cm (20 3/4 × 14 1/16 in.) — carries its own history of handling and restoration. Fra Bartolommeo's brushwork here moves between exacting description and looser, more suggestive passages, a balance typical of Renaissance studio practice.
Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Commissioned images like this one were rarely neutral; every architectural flourish argues for authority.
Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago now holds the work, where conservators and historians continue to revisit its condition and attribution. Each generation of scholarship adds a layer to how Fra Bartolommeo's output from this period is understood.
“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”
