It was in fact on the basis of a body of work showing Mary Magdalene in half figure engaged in contemplative or musical activities that the production of this master was wrested from obscurity at the beginning of the 20th century. The saint's characteristic figure full of delicacy and deference directly reflects the feminine ideal that recurs in the painter's work, while by the same token, this standard typology rules out the possibility of a portrait in disguise. To be sure, this elegant lady in half figure view looks for all the world like a young aristocrat solemnly absorbed in her correspondence, and this is one of the most unusual aspects of this master's art. However, the discreet presence of the pot of salve, the saint's attribute, serves to identify this gentle figure. The fact that her identity remains otherwise unspecified would have been construed as an embodiment of the piety of the well-to-do patrons of a painting of this genre. In her elegant attire, her concentration and modesty, and the pensive reserve with which she holds her quill, the saint is frozen in time at the moment of a crucial choice: the decision to renounce material pleasures and comforts, in favour of devotion to the joys of the spirit. It is in this particular context that the covered chalice, the perspective afforded by the doorway as well as Mary Magdalene’s suspended gesture assumes full significance, lending a spiritual and metaphysical dimension to the natural poetry of the scene that situates the work in a direct line with the most intense masterpieces of the Flemish Primitives of the 15th century. By way of comparison, it is notable that a similar trellis with grating appears in the Mary Magdalene reading at the Louvre Museum, as well as in the work formerly in the collection of the Narodowe Museum in Poznan in which the saint is shown playing a harpsichord. Meanwhile, the topos of the perspective depth provided by the doorway is present in the Mary Magdalene formerly in the Spencer collections at Althorp House.

About MASTER OF THE FEMALE HALF-LENGHTS
In activity in Antwerp from 1500 to 1550

This master, who was active during the early XVIth century, has so far remained unidentified. He is famed above all for his ladies’s portraits, generally half-length and often richly clad. The natural elegance of his models, together with the musical and poetical elements which inspired some of his works, have led art historians to conjecture that he had some time been active in Mechlin, in the refined and highly cultured circles around Margaret of Austria, governor-general of the Netherlands from 1518 to 1530, whom we know thanks to a very fine portrait by Bernard van Orley. Our anonymous master, who may have been trained in Van Orley’s studio also painted landscapes interspersed with religious scenes. The panoramic landscapes which characterize the backgrounds of his works are indebted to the influence of Joachim Patenier who is known to have lived in Antwerp until 1524. These various clues enable us to conjecture that the Master of the Half-Length Figures was most probably active in Antwerp and Mechlin between 1527 and 1540.

The recurrence of models of the same female morphological type set him apart either from an Adriaen Isenbrant or an Ambrosius Benson, the contemporary painters to whom he has been compared for his religious subject matters in particular.

Yet, the first and foremost subject matter of this master was the portrait of a young lady in half-length. A three-quarter profile, an oval face, arched brows, a mouth with delicately shaped lips, hair often parted in the middle, slender and perfectly manicured hands: such were the features of the idealized model which the Master of the Half-Length Figures chose to represent in his paintings.

This female model is also present in the Master’s paintings with a major religious subject.