[1] Aimé Giron distinguishes between two kinds of Magdalens in art: I. the Repentant, emaciated, growing ugly, disfigured by tears and penitence at the end of her life, with a skull in her hand or before her eyes, not having had even—like the one sculptured in the Cathedral of Rouen—"for three times ten winters any other vesture than her long hair", according to Petrarch's verse; II.

the Sinner, always young, always beautiful, always seductive, who has not lost any of her charms nor even of her coquetry, and with whom the Book of Life takes the place of the Death's Head.

"[2] He gives the following ecphrasis: In a solitary spot, but attractive with its verdure and rocks, on a grassy knoll the saint is stretched out at full length, with her shoulder, her bosom, her arms, and her feet adorably bare.

Leaning on her right elbow, her hand, half hidden in her hair, supports a charming and meditative head, while her other arm is slipped under an open manuscript.

[5] Giovanni Morelli gave it as his opinion that the smooth and affected grace of the creation was due, not to any Italian painter, but to some Fleming of the end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century.

He further pointed out that no artist had painted upon copper before the end of the sixteenth century, and concluded by saying that a careful examination of the picture inclined him to attribute it to Adrien van der Werff, a master whose every characteristic appeared in the work, notably his colour, as in the crude dazzling blue of the drapery, his treatment of landscape, as in the miniature rendering of every stone and leaf, his peculiarities of type, as in the long nails, their edges catching the light.