Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and Mary Magdalen by Matteo di Giovanni

This is "Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and Mary Magdalen" by Matteo di Giovanni, painted around 1500. It lives today in a museum collection, but for centuries it likely hung in a Sienese church, appearing to be an entirely conventional Renaissance sacred panel.

The painting presents four figures: Madonna holding the Christ Child, with Saint Jerome and his book on the left and Mary Magdalen with her ointment jar on the right. The child reaches toward Magdalen, a gesture that animates an otherwise static, balanced composition. The three halos form a golden band across the top, with the dark void background isolating the sacred group from any worldly context.

The trouble started with Magdalen. X-ray and infrared imaging have revealed that her robe was originally painted slipping from her shoulder, exposing more skin than ecclesiastical taste allowed. At some point after Matteo completed the panel, possibly on a bishop's order, possibly at the request of the commissioning family, a second painter altered the drapery to cover the shoulder entirely. The woman we see today is a censored version.

It is the quietest kind of censorship: a single painted fold that changed a saint from alluring to demure. The panel was accepted, displayed, and forgotten for five hundred years, hiding its secret until a conservation lab looked under the surface.