Art Institute of Chicago

Mary Magdalene at the Feet of Jesus in the Home of Simon the Pharisee

Michiel Natalis (Flemish, 1610-1668)

Date

n.d.

Medium

Engraving in black on cream laid paper

Culture

Flanders

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Michael Natalis likely reproduced Peter Paul Rubens’s painting of Mary Magdalene (1618/20; the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg) without direct supervision from the artist. Rubens worked closely with a school of engravers, etchers, and woodcutters to create compositions that were organic extensions of their originals. Natalis’s work is stylistically one step further removed from its original in its stiffer handling of line and may in fact have been produced in Antwerp after Rubens’s death. The engraving’s substantial size, while smaller than the original, does however recall the scope of Rubens’s ambitions for paint and print media alike.

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