Cagnacci’s “Repentant Magdalene”: An Italian Baroque Masterpiece at The Frick

Guido Cagnacci was one of the most eccentric painters of seventeenth-century Italy, infamous for the unconventionality of both his art and his lifestyle. Born in Romagna in 1601, he lived and worked in his native region as well as in Venice, concluding his career in imperial Vienna. His works, mostly religious in subject, are known for their unabashed, often unsettling eroticism, and his biography is no less intriguing. Though his pictorial style was influenced by some of the most important Italian painters of the time—the Carracci, Guercino, and Guido Reni—Cagnacci developed an individual and immediately recognizable artistic language. The Repentant Magdalene is one of the artist’s masterpieces and has not been seen outside California since its acquisition by the Norton Simon Museum in 1982. A testament to Cagnacci’s genius, this extraordinary work will introduce New York audiences to this exceptional and forgotten artist.