Lamentation sur le Christ mort

Ribera was a Spaniard who spent his whole career in Naples, then ruled by Spain, and the Neapolitans nicknamed him lo Spagnoletto, the little Spaniard. He painted this in 1637 for a chapel in the Certosa di San Martino, the Carthusian monastery on the hill above the city, and it still hangs there. The dead Christ lies stretched along the front of the picture, close enough to touch, his skin drained pale against the dark. Around him the mourners lean in, and Mary Magdalene's open-handed gesture is one Ribera returned to more than once in these years. He gives the grief no grand setting, just bodies and shadow pressed up against the surface.