The Penitent Magdalen, 1640 Georges de La Tour (1593-1652)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Georges de La Tour also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting The Penitent Magdalen is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

We offer free shipping as well as paid express transportation services.

After adding your artwork to the shopping cart, you will be able to check the delivery price using the Estimate Shipping and Tax tool.

The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

A single candle does all the work in this room. Or rather, two flames appear to burn, doubled in the mirror, while Mary Magdalen sits so still that the air seems almost held in the lungs. Georges de La Tour makes silence visible. One feels the hush as something physical, warm near the candle, cool and heavy everywhere else.

She is turned away from us, her pale face offered in profile to the light, her body folded into a compact pyramid of white blouse, dark skirt, and that long sweep of red-orange drapery falling to the floor. The Penitent Magdalen is stripped of anecdote. No theatrical gesture, no fluttering angels, no decorative distraction. Instead there are a few grave companions: the mirror of vanity, now reflecting only flame; the skull resting under her hand; the candle, small but absolute. Baroque painting often loves movement and display. Tour, though shaped by Caravaggio and the Caravaggesque taste for stark illumination, goes in the opposite direction. He reduces. He stills. He trusts the simplest things.

Look at the hand laid over the skull. The fingers do not clutch; they barely settle, as if thought itself had weight. That small contact changes the whole picture. Mortality is not a warning placed beside her but something literally under her touch. And the mirror is wonderfully odd here. Mirrors usually promise self-regard. This one gives her back no face at all, only the candle doubled into a pair of wavering tongues. Perhaps that is the point: the old self has withdrawn, leaving contemplation in its place.

Color is disciplined to an almost monastic degree. Cream, umber, black, a muted ember-red. Georges de La Tour uses the red cloth with exquisite economy. It slips diagonally downward and keeps the composition from becoming too sealed, too inert. In the gilded frame, little ornamental flourishes catch the light with a dry gleam; they are among the few passages where the surface feels crisp rather than velvety. One might imagine the faint smell of hot wax and cooled ash.

Georges de La Tour gives penitence an unexpected dignity. Not misery, not spectacle, but concentration. Standing before this Magdalen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York USA, you may find that Tour has painted not renunciation alone, but the strange steadiness that sometimes follows it.