Saint Paul the Hermit

By 1639 Ribera had been in Naples for more than 20 years. He was a Valencian who never went back to Spain, working in one of the largest cities in Europe and, by then, the painter everyone in it wanted. Ragged old hermits were a subject he returned to for decades. This one is Paul of Thebes, who was said to have fled a Roman persecution into the Egyptian desert and stayed there for the rest of his life, fed each day by a raven that carried him half a loaf of bread. That story reached the 17th century through a short life of Paul written by Saint Jerome. The canvas itself only came to Palermo much later, sent up from Naples as a gift from Ferdinand II, king of the Two Sicilies.