San José con la vara florida

Jusepe de Ribera painted this in Naples in the early 1630s. A Spaniard settled in that city, then ruled by Spain, he had built his name on Caravaggio's hard light and unsparing realism, and you can still see it here in the old man's lined hands and weathered face. The rod he holds has burst into flower: in the old story, Mary's suitors each brought a staff to the temple, and Joseph was chosen when his alone bloomed. This was a saint on the rise. The Counter-Reformation church was pushing Joseph forward as a model father, and painters were starting to show him less as a bent greybeard and more as this, a still-strong man holding the sign that had marked him out.