The saint’s figure, with long blond tresses, occupies the center of the scene. Gazing at the heavens, she crosses her hands across her bosom in prayer. Her worn clothing is enveloped in large floating robes whose movement is decidedly diagonal, and the cloud on which she kneels is carried towards Heaven by Coello’s customary cherubs. Some hold the attributes that always accompany her when she is represented as a hermit, including a skull that alludes to vanity and the brevity of life and a jar of balm with which she perfumed Christ’s feet. The figures of children are repeated with marked foreshortening at the top of the canvas as part of a highly dynamic composition whose predominantly diagonal and parallel lines combine with a varied pallet to generate a sense of vibrancy.

The image presents the moment described in the Golden Legend when Mary Magdalene begins her miraculous ascent towards Heaven from the city of Marseilles. The mountainous seascape with a watchtower at the lower right may be a reference to that city, from which the saint was carried to Heaven on a daily basis to attend the Mass carried out there by the blessed. This image of Mary Magdalene was already quite frequent before the Council of Trent, but with the Counterreformation, it became even more common, as she was considered a symbol of repentance. That is why her image alludes to the sacrament of penance.

This painting from the Museo de la Trinidad, which may have been painted by a disciple or contemporary of Coello, is a copy of the large canvas signed by him in 1682 for the main altarpiece at the parish church of Ciempozuelos (Madrid). That work, in turn, is a reinterpretation, with greater compositional complexity and a fully baroque style, of the painting on the same subject by José de Ribera, now at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. Ribera’s painting was originally in El Escorial, where it was listed in the 1700 inventory and seen by Father Ximénez, Ponz and Ceán Bermúdez. Its presence in that monastery indicates that Coello, who also worked there, may have seen it. Besides the canvas shown here, there is another copy of the Ciempozuelos original at the museum in Cadiz, which Sullivan attributes to a late 17th-century painter.