Magdalene with the Night Light

About the artwork

The Louvre’s Magdalene repeats the seated figure, skull and small lamp of the Los Angeles design, but darkens and simplifies the arrangement. The coarse garment tied with a cord led Pierre Rosenberg and Jacques Thuillier to connect the image with Franciscan spirituality. That is a scholarly reading of the objects and clothing, not a surviving explanation by La Tour.

The painting’s twentieth-century history is less still than its subject. In 1941 it passed against its owner’s will to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne; in 1944 it was confiscated for French customs, and in 1949 the Louvre acquired it from that administration. The exact work carries this history alongside its repeated devotional design.

Featured in: Georges de La Tour’s Bible Paintings: The Candle Painter Hidden Under Other Names

What does Song of Solomon 3:1 mean?

Song of Solomon 3 begins with a woman seeking the person she loves at night. Her search moves from bed into the city and eventually to an encounter. The verse belongs first to a love poem; it does not name Mary Magdalene.

Christian use of this passage has connected that seeking voice with Magdalene’s search for Jesus. Song of Songs 3:1–4b is one of the readings offered for her feast in the Roman Catholic lectionary. That later devotional connection is the reason for placing the verse beside La Tour’s nighttime meditation.

The nocturnal search in Song of Solomon 3:1 offers a traditional devotional companion to Magdalene’s vigil, while remaining a love poem with its own speaker.

Sources

Musée du Louvre, Paris collection record.

Image source and rights declaration.

Song of Solomon 3 — Berean Standard Bible. The paired text read with its surrounding chapter.

Georges de La Tour’s Bible Paintings: The Candle Painter Hidden Under Other Names. Exact-work research, history and interpretive qualifications for this reading.