Penitent Magdalen in a Landscape

From around the time he settled in Genoa (1691), Tavella recorded his painted compositions in meticulous outline drawings, usually bearing annotations about the size and circumstance of the work. Many of these drawings survive, including a major example of 1716 in the Suida-Manning Collection. Very few, however, can be connected with extant works. The rare case, the present drawing corresponds to a painting (at left) in the museum of the Accademia Ligustica, Genoa. The principal 19th-century artistic guide to the city calls the painting and its pendant “ovali bellissimi.” With two other paintings of the same format and conception, one of which is dated 1733, they represent the artist’s latest style.