“completely naked and covered only with thick, long hair bound at the waist with a cord and hanging down below the knees”

This intense painted terracotta image of the repentant Mary Magdalene is unfortunately in a poor state of preservation with large-scale flaking and scratches. There are particularly evident repairs to breaks in the forearms and the top of the base carried out during past restoration. The painted surface at present is very uneven with a great deal of abrasion and missing patches. A circular piece of paper with the number 28 written in pen is glued onto the lower section of the left side by the foot. 

The work was originally in the church of Sant’Elisabetta delle Convertite in Florence, built in the 14th century on the corner of Via de’ Serragli and Via del Campuccio together with an adjoining convent used to house former prostitutes.¹ It was in virtue of this function that the complex earned the name of Sant’Elisabetta e Santa Maria Maddalena “of the Converts”.² When the order was dissolved in 1808, the structure on Via de’ Serragli was used as a school during the restoration of the Lorraine dynasty and then for other professional purposes after 1837.³ 

The terracotta Maddalena, already in a precarious condition, is documented as present in the church before 1912,⁴ when the decision was taken to restore the building and use it for the religious functions of the Istituto Pio X Artigianelli, inaugurated in 1902.⁵ 

The earliest descriptions of the work are to be found in the ministerial Catalogo generale dei monumenti e degli oggetti d’arte del regno, written between 1894 and 1915, and revised in 1939. They refer explicitly to a “painted and varnished statue of terracotta” representing the “life-sized figure in the round of Mary Magdalene”.⁶ Described as “completely naked and covered only with thick, long hair bound at the waist with a cord and hanging down below the knees”, the figure was regarded at the time as an ancient “reproduction” (possibly datable to the 16th century) of the renowned Magdalene of wood in the Spini Chapel of the church of Santa Trìnita, recalled by Giorgio Vasari as an unfinished work by Desiderio da Settignano.⁷ 

Unknown to the Florentine literature, the Convertite Maddalena is alternatively listed as located in a niche or a storeroom on the right as you enter in place of a Deposition by Bernardino Poccetti.⁸ The description in the ministerial catalogue stated that the origin of the sculpture was unknown but suggested that it might have been moved into the church from the adjoining convent.⁹ 

A note added to a typewritten description by Guido Carocci states that the holy image was restored by the Florentine Heritage Superintendency in a year unknown to the writer and that its “broken” forearms were “obviously restored”, having been repaired with plaster.¹⁰ 

Ignorance of the above information has so far prevented any adequate reconstruction of the history of the sculpture now in the Cerruti Collection. It was mentioned by Giancarlo Gentilini as a generic work “of Maianesque culture” in an essay on the techniques and repertoire of Florentine terracotta sculpture of the Renaissance.¹¹ An attribution to Francesco da Sangallo was then put forward by Francesco Ortenzi with a dating prior or close to the Madonna and Child with St Anne produced for the church of Orsanmichele in Florence (1522-26). Ortenzi refers in his study to receipt for payment on headed notepaper of the parish of San Felice in Piazza, supposedly attesting to the sale of the Maddalena in April 1944, and therefore suggests that the sculpture was originally in the church itself.¹² 

Stylistic examination reveals a marked contrast between the Convertite Maddalena and the work of Francesco da Sangallo, however, and suggests an earlier date in the late 1480s and 1490s, coinciding with the climate of religious devotion and austerity that marked the rise and subsequent fall of Girolamo Savonarola in Florence.¹³ At the same time, Federico Zeri attributed the work to an unknown Florentine artist of the 15th century, recording its appearance on the Milanese antiques market in 1981 and drawing a connection with an earlier and lost “life-size sculpture of the Magdalene with a base” consigned to Neri di Bicci on 30 October 1455 for a painting by the abbot of San Felice in Piazza.¹⁴ 

Before recent research demonstrated the presence of the Maddalena in the church of Sant’Elisabetta delle Convertite from 1894 at the latest,¹⁵ the hypothesis that it came from San Felice Piazza was at least plausible. 

Unfortunately, the Cerruti Collection Archives shed no light on the history of the work after its sale in 1944. The sole reference is in the handwritten inventory of 30 June 1993, a useful terminus ante quem for the entrance of the work into the collection. The Maddalena is listed “on a small Gothic chest” in the rectangular room on the first floor of Villa Cerruti and described as a “wooden statue in the style of Donatello”.¹⁶ 

The Cerruti sculpture forms part of the illustrious iconographic tradition of 15th-century Florentine Magdalenes that stretches from the wooden prototype carved by Brunelleschi for Santo Spirito (destroyed by fire in 1471) and the figures of Donatello and Santa Trìnita (fig. 1) to the one painted by Antonio del Pollaiolo in the Staggia Senese altarpiece (c. 1460) and the mysterious “Penitent Magdalene of clay, three and a half braccia in height” mentioned by Vasari in Santa Felicita in his life of Antonio Filarete and attributed by him to the mythical brother of Donatello called Simone.¹⁷ 

In stylistic terms, the Cerruti Magdalene displays a figurative conception that is still fully characteristic of the late 15th century, as attested both by its close connections with the examples mentioned above and by its deep and concrete incompatibility with the style of Francesco da Sangallo.¹⁸ It is consistent with the work of Benedetto da Maiano in its shaping and its naturalism. Reconsideration of the question in this light reveals similarities with the works produced by the master around the last quarter of the 15th century. In particular, the markedly realistic features of the saint’s face, accentuated by the devotional nature of the subject, recall the heads produced by the artist in his portraits around 1475 and in some of the figures datable to the 1480s and 1490s, such as the St John the Evangelist of the Correale altar in the church of Monteoliveto in Naples (fig. 2), as well as its terracotta model, now in the Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri, or even the later marble God the Father in Blessing in the parish church of San Severo in Legri, near Calenzano (Florence), datable to the final years of Benedetto’s life. 

Also consistent with the master’s style is the handling of the saint’s long hair, whose linear development in wavy locks displays evident similarities with the models adopted by the artist for the hair of the portrait of Mattia Corvino in profile (Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum, on show in the Nemzeti Galéria), the flames in the relief of St Francis of Assisi before the sultan carved for the Mellini pulpit in Santa Croce (1481-87), the hair and beard of the above-mentioned Correale Evangelist, and the hair in the late wooden crucifixes of Santa Maria Nuova in Ancarano (Norcia) and Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. The similarities also extend to the figure as a whole and in particular to the legs, which are comparable below the knees to those in the Correale St John the Baptist (1489-91, fig. 3) and the abovementioned crucifixes of his maturity.¹⁹ 

If we regard the Magdalene as originally in the complex of Santa Elisabetta, we must also assume that it was commissioned in connection with the renovation work carried out on the structure above all as from 1490,²⁰ which also saw the creation, among other things, of Botticelli’s Holy Trinity altarpiece or Pala delle Convertite (London, Courtauld Institute; predella in the Philadelphia Museum of Art). 

Gianluca Amato

¹ Consisting mostly of former prostitutes converted by Blessed Simon of Cascia, a member of the Order of Augustian Hermits, who died in Florence in 1348. See Richa 1754-62, vol. IX, 1761, pp. 89-96.

² Paatz 1940-54, II, 1941, pp. 30-40, esp. pp. 30, 32-33, 35; Amato in print.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ For details of the restoration work, see D. Mignani, “Il complesso architettonico di Santa Elisabetta”, in La chiesa di Santa Elisabetta 1996, p. 6.

⁶ For the archival references, see Amato in print.

⁷ Ibid. Vasari wrongly attributed the completion of the Santa Trìnita sculpture to Benedetto da Maiano. As the records show, the carving, commenced by Desiderio in 1458-59, was instead completed around 1490 by Giovanni d’Andrea di Domenico from the workshop of Verrocchio, now plausibly identified as Nanni Grosso (F. Caglioti, “Verrocchio scultore: la formazione, i generi figurativi, gli allievi, i seguaci”, in Caglioti, De Marchi 2019, pp. 45-46).

⁸ Amato in print.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ G. Gentilini, “La scultura fiorentina in terracotta del Rinascimento: tecniche e tipologie”, in Vaccari 1996, p. 95. The sculpture was already in Turin in the Cerruti Collection at the time (see note 16 here).

¹² Ortenzi 2006-07, pp. 50-53, fig. 51. There is no trace in the records of the parish of San Felice in Piazza of this sale, which occurred a year before the end of World War II and after the introduction of the Bottai law of 1939, the first to regulate the protection of “things of artistic and historical interest”.

¹³ Amato 2012, p. 109 note 42, p. 122 fig. 110.

¹⁴ Ibid. See Fototeca Zeri, Scultura italiana 025, fasc. 3, scheda no. 74329, inv. 145057. For the lost “Madalena di rilievo” paid for in 1455, see the Ricordanze of Neri di Bicci (Neri di Bicci 1976, pp. 39-40, 467).

¹⁵ Amato in print.

¹⁶ Cerruti Collection Archives, “Inventario dei mobili, dipinti, sculture, argenti tappeti, maioliche, porcellane e oggetti d’arte che si trovano nella villa di Rivoli alla data 30.06.1993”.

¹⁷ Vasari 1966-97, vol. III, 1971, p. 246; Amato in print.

¹⁸ Amato 2012, p. 109 note 42.

¹⁹ For the references to the works cited for comparison, see Amato in print (with bibliography).

²⁰ For the dating of these events, which were completed in 1494, see Paatz 1940-54, vol. II, 1941, p. 30; D. Mignani, “Il complesso architettonico di Santa Elisabetta” cit., p. 5; A. C. Blume, “Botticelli’s Commission for Sant’Elisabetta delle Convertite and the Courtauld Trinity”, in Jones, Matthew 2001, p. 27.