Penitent Magdalena

"On the fourth November 1894, Rusiñol scheduled the Third Modernista Festival with the official opening of the Cau Ferrat and the public presentation of the work of El Greco. The morning of that day, around fifty friends of the artist –arrived from Barcelona and from other places – were concentrated in the Station Square, amid the curiosity and excitement of a large group of villagers. From there it was organized a civic procession that Sitges remembered for many years. The cartoonist Luis Labarta and Pere Romeu, riding a horse, opened the procession, the last one wearing the flag of Cau Ferrat.

In the Magdalena of El Greco (Creta, 1541 - Toledo, 1614) there are no traces of his lust, not of the pot of ointments, but keeps his youth and his exceptional beauty, now spiritualized; nothing can guess of his body covered with a red austere mantle.

The excellent pictorial invoice is unmistakable testimony of the mastery of El Greco in the treatment of human body depictions. It is an emblematic piece among the series of solitary saints painted by the brush of El Greco."