The Repentant Magdalen, c.1635/40 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 Repentant 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.

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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. It stands like a small, steady conscience, pushing back the brown-black hush just enough to reveal a profile, a table edge, and a few objects that suddenly feel weighty with meaning.

Mary Magdalene sits side-on, absorbed, almost immobile. Georges de La Tour gives her a stillness you can nearly hear – the kind of quiet that has its own pressure, like warm air held in a closed space. Her right hand props her cheek; the pose is ordinary, even domestic, yet the mood is anything but casual. The flame lays a soft strip of gold along her cheekbone and nose, then slips into shadow again. That measured light, so carefully rationed, is as much the subject as the saint.

On the table, her left hand rests on a skull set upon a book, and the candle’s glow catches the knuckles so they appear briefly sculpted. Look closely and you notice a small quirk: the fingers curve around the skull with surprising gentleness, not the recoil you might expect. Nearby, a mirror repeats the skull as a ghost-image, doubling the vanitas reminder that life is short and the self is slippery. This is Catholic penitence made tangible – not with theatrical tears, but with a few plain things arranged in solemn company.

Tour’s palette keeps to umbers, soot-black, and a creamy white that seems to store light rather than reflect it. Forms are simplified, firm, and almost symmetrical in their balance, a French Baroque clarity that refuses fuss. Paint handling is discreet; edges melt into darkness, but the lit passages feel patiently built, as if the candle has slowly carved the scene out of night. One might think of Caravaggio’s candlelit dramas, yet Georges de La Tour is less interested in shock than in certainty: the calm assurance that a private reckoning can be enough.

Seen at the National Gallery of Art Washington USA, The Repentant Magdalen does something quietly radical. It makes repentance look like thinking – long, steady, and human – and it leaves you listening to the flame.