This is a reduced copy of a painting by Correggio formerly in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, and lost – probably destroyed – towards the end of the Second World War. The painting, long identified as by Correggio, was reattributed in the later nineteenth century to an unknown seventeenth-century Dutch artist, by the Italian art historian Giovanni Morelli. More recently, its authorship to Correggio has been reasserted.¹ The present copy, which is approximately the same size as the lost Dresden work (which is on copper), is one of many and dates probably from the nineteenth century.

In the inventory of 1928, when it hung in the Study, the picture was described as: ‘Oil painting – The Reading Magdalene after Coregio [sic] (Dresden Gallery) 10in by 15in’.