Saint Bartholomew

Half-length apostles, one saint to a canvas, were a steady line of work in Spanish Naples in the early 1630s, and Jusepe de Ribera supplied a good many of them. A composition that worked could be painted again. This Saint Bartholomew, which the museum dates to 1633, follows in its main lines a Bartholomew by Ribera now in the Prado in Madrid. The old man is already grey. In his right hand he holds a knife, the instrument of his martyrdom, for tradition says he was flayed alive. A light from outside the picture falls across the dark ground and picks out the deep wrinkles of his face and his hands, and his clean white robe seems to glow. The canvas came to the gallery in 1861, bought from the estate of Gündter, one of the gallery's own curators.