Philosopher with Spectacles

This man is meant to be a philosopher of the ancient world, and he is wearing spectacles. Eyeglasses were an Italian invention of the late 13th century, so no Greek thinker ever looked through a pair. Luca Giordano put them on him anyway, along with a torn shirt hanging open over his chest, and turned a figure from antiquity into someone a Neapolitan of his own day might have passed in the street. He holds a sheet of paper in one hand. His head is bald and his beard rough.

The Louvre gives him no name. He was painted as a type, the poor man who reads, and nobody has ever managed to say which philosopher he was supposed to be. In 2010 the theatre and film director Patrice Chéreau, invited to put together an exhibition at the Louvre about faces and bodies, chose this canvas for it.