Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew

By 1644 Jusepe de Ribera had spent more than 20 years in Spanish-ruled Naples, where he was known as lo Spagnoletto, the little Spaniard. No painter of the century returned to this scene as often as he did, the flaying of the apostle Bartholomew, and more than a dozen versions are documented. Here the saint is stripped and roped while a burly executioner sets to work with a knife, half smiling. On the ground lies a broken classical statue, a reminder that Ribera's Naples read this Christian death through the old fable of Marsyas, the satyr flayed alive for challenging a god. The light falls hard and close, the way it did in the Caravaggio-shaped world Ribera had grown up inside.