The painting, which can be placed during Caravaggio’s first period of activity in Rome, portrays Magdalen weeping, abandoned on a chair. On the ground, in the corner to the left, are depicted a small pot of unguent, a string of pearls and some coins, symbols of the vanities of the world.

Note in particular the small pearl earrings, with the small black bow, which remind us of the ears of another heroine of Caravaggio, the Judith in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in the Palazzo Barberini. In this picture too, as in the Rest during the Flight into Egypt, Caravaggio, displays his particular ability as a painter of still life.

The other fundamental characteristic of the style of the painter is the force with which he simplifies the subject: Magdalen is portrayed as a whole figure, isolated in the middle of a very bare room, while from a window on high, which we do not see, daylight filters.

As in the case of the “Rest”, the provenance of this picture is uncertain. It is mentioned, however, in an eighteenth-century inventory with a frame which displays the Aldobrandini arms, a detail which perhaps allows us to deduce that it originally belonged to the collection of Pietro.