Saint Christopher

The story here is older than the painting by more than 1,000 years. Christopher was a giant who wanted to serve only the most powerful lord alive, and he ended up carrying travelers across a river on his shoulders. One night a small child asked to cross, and grew heavier with every step, because the child was Christ and the weight was the whole world. Ribera, a Spaniard who spent his career in Naples under Spanish rule, painted this in 1637, and he uses the legend to push two extremes together: the huge weathered body of the ferryman, every vein worked in hard light, and the delicate child on his shoulder holding a globe. Ribera was known for painting saints as ordinary laboring men, and here the holy giant is, first of all, a porter near the end of a difficult crossing.