[2] Vasari's Lives of the Artists mentions several copies of the Penitent Magdalene,[2] the oldest of them (the only pre-Tridentine of the four) was then in the 'guardaroba' of the Duke of Urbino and later came to Florence as part of Vittoria Della Rovere's dowry in 1631.

[2] Another version was acquired by a Venetian nobleman for 100 ducats, forcing Titian quickly to produce a third variant in 1561 to meet a commission from Philip II of Spain - this showed the saint clothed and later passed to a British collection, where it was destroyed by fire, though a copy by Luca Giordano survives in the Escorial.

[5] In 1734 it and the rest of the Farnese Collection were moved to Naples straight after being inherited by the family's last heir Elisabetta then by her son Charles.

[5] When the Parthenopean Republic was declared in 1799 French troops looted the Magdalene as one of around 300 paintings with Farnese provenance from the Capodimonte (it then solely housed works from that collection).

[5] In 1800 Ferdinand IV ordered emissary Domenico Venuti to get back all the works thus taken from Naples - he managed to find the Magdalene as well as Titian's Portrait of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese.