Magdalena Ventura with Her Husband and Son

In 1631 the Spanish viceroy of Naples, the third Duke of Alcalá, heard rumours of an Italian woman from the Abruzzi mountains who had grown a full black beard, and he sent for Ribera to record her. She is Magdalena Ventura, and the Latin inscription on the stone slab beside her calls her a great wonder of nature, noting that she was 52 and had grown the beard around the age of 37, after bearing three sons. Ribera paints her without ridicule. She stands and calmly nurses an infant while her much fainter husband hovers in the shadow behind. On the ledge sit a spindle and a snail shell, the ordinary tokens of a woman's household work, set beside a face the age had no category for.