A Lost Caravaggio is Rediscovered — the Steven Maksin Family Collection Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy
A journey across time with art collector and donor Steven Maksin
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Artdaily — 27 April 2026
Artdaily reports on the rediscovery of a long-debated Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy now identified as the work of Caravaggio — a painting acquired in 2020 by Steven Maksin from a London family and the most recent contender for an autograph original of the lost composition.
Of roughly 60 to 65 confirmed Caravaggio paintings worldwide, Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy has long been one of the most fiercely debated subjects: three competing candidates have surfaced in recent decades — the post-war Klein version found in London, the Gregori version that emerged in 2014, and now the Maksin painting. Each contender has been weighed against the documentary references in early sources, which place the composition in Caravaggio's final, turbulent months in Naples or earlier in Rome.
Artdaily summarises the case for the Maksin version: naturalistic skin tones, vibrant red lips and clearly delineated braids consistent with Caravaggio's late style; rapid, alla-prima highlights; and a confirmed exhibition record across five major shows — at MART Rovereto, the Gypsotheca Canova in Possagno, the Convitto delle Arti in Noto, the Castello Normanno-Svevo in Mesagne, and the Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) is one of the most influential painters in the European tradition; his radical naturalism, dramatic chiaroscuro and treatment of religious subjects with the immediacy of street life set the terms for a generation of European painters from Rome and Naples through Utrecht and Seville. Caravaggio's life ended at Porto Ercole on the Tuscan coast in July 1610, at thirty-eight, after years on the run from a 1606 papal death sentence for a killing in Rome; the documentary record for the final twelve months — Naples, Sicily, Malta, then Naples again — is paralleled by an unusually sparse and contested body of surviving canvases.
The Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy belongs to that final, fragmentary group. Caravaggio's earliest biographers — Giulio Mancini, Giovanni Baglione and Giovanni Pietro Bellori — refer to a composition of Mary Magdalene in ecstasy painted in Caravaggio's last months; copies of a composition matching their description circulated in seventeenth-century Italy and France, and the original itself has been the object of one of the most persistent searches in modern art history. The "Klein" canvas, surfacing in London in the post-war years, and the canvas published by Mina Gregori (the dean of Italian Caravaggio studies) in 2014 each made the case for autograph status. The Maksin painting, acquired in 2020 from a London family, has been argued by Italian scholars as a third candidate.
The Artdaily article — issued under Artdaily's regular international art-press header — summarises the technical and stylistic case for the Maksin painting and reproduces details of the figure's head, hands and ecstatic posture. The painting's exhibition history adds an unusual element of public visibility for a work still under attribution debate: five major shows between roughly 2020 and 2025, including Caravaggio. Il Contemporaneo at MART Rovereto (2020-2021), a related installation at the Gypsotheca Canova at Possagno, the Convitto delle Arti in Noto, the Castello Normanno-Svevo in Mesagne in southern Italy, and the major Asian survey The Master of Light: Caravaggio and His Descendants at the Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul (2024-2025).
Whatever the ultimate consensus among Caravaggio specialists, the Maksin Magdalene's continued exposure at this scale of international exhibition has placed it within the active conversation on the artist's final months — a conversation that, since Roberto Longhi's 1951 Milan show first restored Caravaggio to wide public visibility, has belonged at the heart of post-war European art history.
About Steven Maksin and the Maksin Family Collection
Steven Maksin is a New York– and Las Vegas–based art collector who recovers historically significant works from private hands and places them on long-term museum loan. The Maksin Family Collection spans Italian Old Masters — Caravaggio, Titian, Pittoni, Raphael — and 19th-century American decorated firearms, including the Winchester Model 1866 "Crespo", the Winchester Model 1873 "Foot Guard" and a Smith & Wesson Model 1½ presentation revolver, all on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Maksin is CEO of Moonbeam Capital and a graduate of NYU Stern.
