Saint Jerome

By the time Ribera painted this, around 1638, he had spent two decades in Naples, then ruled from Spain, and had made himself the city's leading painter in the manner of Caravaggio: strong light, deep shadow, and figures drawn from real, aged bodies rather than ideal ones. His subject is Saint Jerome, the scholar who translated the Bible into Latin, shown not at his desk but as an old penitent who had withdrawn to the desert. The skull beside him stands for human vanity, and the stone in his hand is the one he beat against his chest in remorse. Look at the thick book he is about to write in. Ribera signed his own name along its spine. In Naples they knew him by a nickname, Lo Spagnoletto, the little Spaniard.