The Flagellation of Christ

Ribera was a Spaniard who came south and settled in Naples around 1616, a city then ruled by Spain and still electric with the memory of Caravaggio, who had worked there a few years earlier and died young. You can feel that inheritance here. A single raw light falls across Christ's back as he is tied to the column, and everything else drops into darkness. Ribera was in his late twenties and building the reputation that would soon make him the leading painter in Naples. For a long time the picture went by the wrong name, Ecce Homo, until scholars recognized the moment as the flagellation. A tailor who collected art left it to this church in 1622, and it has hung here ever since.