{"product_id":"1930s-penitent-magdalene-oil-painting-memento-mori-skull-bones","title":"1930s Penitent Magdalene Oil Painting | Memento Mori Skull \u0026 Bones","description":"\u003cp\u003eHere we have a woman lying down at the edge of the world, keeping company with a skull. Memento Mori is echoing off the walls. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a hand-painted oil on canvas, signed in the lower right “J. De Boeck” and dated 1933, rendered after one of the most devotional images in European history: Pompeo Batoni’s Penitent Magdalene. The original hung in the royal gallery at Dresden for nearly two centuries and then ceased to exist, incinerated in the firestorm of February 1945. What survives of that composition survives the way this piece does, in the hands of painters who loved it enough to copy it. Our 1933 De Boeck is one of those survivors.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe subject is Mary Magdalene in her penitent phase, the part of the legend where she walks away from the city and into a cave in the hills of Provence and stays there, by some tellings, for thirty years. She is young here, and barefoot, draped in a blue that has held its depth for ninety years. Beside her lie the props of her long meditation: an open book she has stopped reading, and a human skull she has not stopped looking at. Through a gap in the rock behind her, a thin sliver of green landscape, the world she left. There is even a bone in the foreground for those who like their memento mori spelled out.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat is the whole quiet argument of the painting. The book is knowledge, the skull is the end of it, and the small bright window in the stone is everything you gave up to sit here and think about both. People hung images like this in their homes on purpose, to be reminded, daily, that the clock was running. It is the original dark academia, painted in earnest and meant it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe signature is the interesting wrinkle. De Boeck is a Flemish surname, common as rain in Belgium. This is a skilled hand from 1933, an academic copyist or a serious amateur, who sat down with Batoni’s famous composition and got it right: the weight of the figure, the fall of the cloth, the patient modeling of the skull, and lack of and yet depth of her eyes. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe canvas was relined long ago, the honest fingerprint of a painting that has been cared for across decades rather than left to rot.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt comes in its original oval wooden frame, dark and ribbed, the shape doing half the devotional work before you even reach the image. A real oil, a real signature, a real date, and a subject that has been making people uneasy in the best way since the Counter-Reformation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 1930s painting came out of an old European estate. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe antique European painting measures 27” wide and 23” tall. It’s in honest antique condition. The canvas was relined at some point in its history, a standard period conservation practice that has stabilized the image. Surface shows light age and patina appropriate to a painting over ninety years old. The oval wood frame is solid with wear consistent with its years. Please see all pics as they are part of the description.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI ship FedEx to street addresses in the continental USA only (no PO Boxes). Free shipping on the antique memento mori painting. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose eyes set the edge! The vibe is strong on this one.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mad Van Antiques","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43130793066573,"sku":null,"price":750.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0116\/3637\/5610\/files\/IMG_9227.jpg?v=1781582030","url":"https:\/\/madvanantiques.com\/products\/1930s-penitent-magdalene-oil-painting-memento-mori-skull-bones","provider":"Mad Van Antiques","version":"1.0","type":"link"}