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Mary Magdalene is shown here as the hermit saint she became upon giving up her life of moral decadence, after her encounter with the Savior. She kneels in prayer at the entrance to her cave and raises her eyes to heaven, eyes that are perhaps disproportionately large but that are emphatically windows to her redeemed soul and that also heighten her feminine allure.
The painting is among a group of eight full-length single-figure composition of saints by Ribera that in 1658 were in the Madrid collection of Don Jerónimo de la Torre, a member of the Royal Council and secretary of State of Flanders. The series included four pictures that are now in the Prado - this Mary Magdalene, St John the Baptist in the Desert, St Mary of Egipt, and St Bartholomew - and four others, of Sts Onophrius, Paul the Hermit, Agnes, and Sebastian.
Sometime between 1718 and 1772, the four paintings now in the Prado had a strip of canvas about 50 cm wide added to the left or right side, rendering each one almost square in format, presumably for decorative purposes. During the 1990's the added strips were removed, and the paintings were restored to their original dimensions.
An earlier, almost identical version from 1637 is in the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao.
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