"The Penitent Magdalene"

The painting depicts Mary Magdalene who spent many years in the desert atoning for her sins. She looks to Heaven, with a tearful expression. The background is very dark, specially at the left. The darkening sky, at the right, shows a tree that seems to be facing the wind. Unlike his 1531 version of the same subject, Titian has covered Mary's nudity and introduced a vase, an open book and a skull as a memento mori. Its colouring is more mature than the earlier work, using colours harmonising with character. In the background the sky is bathed in the rays of the setting Sun, with a dark rock contrasting with the brightly lit figure of Mary.

Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/90 – 27 August 1576), Latinized as Titianus, hence known in English as Titian  was an Italian Renaissance painter, the most important artist of Renaissance Venetian painting.

Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars" (recalling the final line of Dante's Paradiso), Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of color, exerted a profound influence not only on painters of the late Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western artists.

During his long life, Titian's artistic manner changed drastically, but he retained a lifelong interest in color. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his early pieces, they are renowned for their loose brushwork and subtlety of tone.