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Claude Lorrain executed this painting and its companion piece, St Philip Baptizing the Eunuch, between 1678 and 1681 for Cardinal Fabrizio Spada. Following service as papal nuncio in Savoy and Paris, Spada had recently been appointed cardinal and returned to Rome. The special charm of this painting lies in the treatment of the light. A harmonious blend of green, brown and blue creates the delicately shimmering, slightly misty early light of a beautiful clear day. The rising sun is behind the hill on the left. The atmosphere generated by the light not only indicates the time of day, but also serves as an expression of what has come to pass – Mary Magdalene’s realisation of faith.

The elongated figures are especially conspicuous here, even if they have their counterparts in other paintings of Claude’s late period. In the Frankfurt painting they were considered so disturbing that they were overpainted and shortened in the nineteenth century. It was only in the 1980s that they were restored to their original form. Claude employed the elongation as a means of intensifying the mood. It brings about an aura of unreality alluding to an abstract content above and beyond the visible depiction. This is particularly true of the figure of Christ in his mythical blue garment.