The Trinity

Ribera was a Spaniard who spent his working life in Naples, then ruled by the Spanish crown, and by 1635 he was the city's leading painter. Here he takes on one of the hardest things to picture, the whole Trinity in a single image. God the Father, an old king in a heavy robe, holds up the body of his dead son for us to see, and the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers between them. What stops you is the corpse. Ribera paints the bluish skin, the blood at the side, the dead weight of the arms with the plain honesty he had taken from the Caravaggesque painters of the south. This was made for private devotion, an image meant to be knelt in front of rather than admired.