The Ecstasy of the Magdalen, 1616/1620

[1] Procaccini painted more than sixty pictures for Doria, which are all recorded in three inventories discovered in the late 20th century by Dr. Giorgio Fulco in the Neapolitan archives of the Doria D'Angri (see Hugh Brigstocke, "Giulio Cesare Procaccini: Ses Attaches Genoises...," Revue de l'Art, 85 [1989]: 45-60). The last of the inventories, made after Doria's death in 1625 and possibly after that of his wife in 1634, incorporates several works by Procaccini absent from the second inventory, which dates from between 1617 and 1620. Among the entries hitherto not identified is a picture described under number 437 as Una Madalena rapita da angeli del Procaccino, valued at 150 scudi, a relatively high figure, and exactly the same as another high quality painting, a Beheading of St. John the Baptist. Given its size and importance, and its style within the painter's oeuvre, the NGA painting, the only known instance of Procaccino painting this subject, is almost certainly the picture recorded in the third Doria inventory.

The subsequent provenance of the painting, and many others in Doria's collection, became complicated after the death of his son, Agostino, in 1644, when at least part of the collection was inherited by Gian Carlo's brother, Marc Antonio Dorio (see Procaccino, Cerano, Morrazone, Dipinti Lombardi del primo Seicento dalle civiche collezioni Genovesi, Exh. cat., Palazzo Bianco, Genoa, 1992; and Hugh Brigstocke, Burlington Magazine CXXVI [January 1994]: 35). (Information provided by the dealer's prospectus, in NGA curatorial files)

[2] According to Enrique Gutiérrez de Calderón (letter of 10 January 2002 to Philip Conisbee, in NGA curatorial files), the painting was part of the Adanero collection until it was sold after the Spanish Civil War. The collection was assembled during the second half of the 19th century, and included a vast number of Spanish, Flemish, and Italian paintings. The painting had a pendant, The Prayer in the Garden, which belonged to the Viscount of Roda, a descendant of the Count of Adanero, but its whereabouts are unknown (in 2002). When published in 1965 (Alfonso E. Pérez Sanchez, Pintura Italiana del S. XVII en España, Ph.D. dissertation, Madrid, 1965: 363), both paintings were known only by photographs, taken in 1936, in the Archivo de Recuperación del Patrimonio Artístico.

[3] When the painting was purchased from Caylus, it was sold from the United States, where it had apparently been for some time (letter of 19 December 2001 from Nicholas H.J. Hall to Philip Conisbee).