Portrait of a Musician

Ribera spent his working life in Naples, then ruled by Spain, painting saints and philosophers with the hard, honest light he took from Caravaggio. The roll of paper in this man's hand marks him as a musician, and someone once proposed he was Trabaci, director of music at the Neapolitan royal chapel where Ribera worked. But Trabaci was in his sixties by 1638, and the sitter looks far younger, so the name fell away. What is left is the face, the light catching a cheekbone above the loose collar, the paint dragged on thick enough that you can read the brush in the skin. Ribera signed and dated it in 1638. The roll of music is still the only clue to who sat for him.