Vision of Saint Francis of Assisi

An angel holds up a glass flask of perfectly clear water, and Francis of Assisi stands looking at it. The water stands for the purity expected of any man who wants to be ordained a priest. In the story, Francis decides he will never reach it and turns the priesthood down, remaining a deacon for the rest of his life. That was a welcome subject in the 17th century, when the Catholic church was pressing hard on the purity of its clergy, and it was painted over and over. Ribera sets out the rest of the saint's humility around him: the skull he contemplates, a scourge left on a stone, the coarse serge habit. He worked on the canvas between 1636 and 1638, deep into his maturity, and still lit the figures out of a brown gloom. By 1747 it was hanging in the Buen Retiro palace in Madrid, among pictures brought there from the archbishop's houses.