Il piede storto

A barefoot boy stands against a low horizon, his crutch slung over one shoulder, grinning straight out at us. Ribera painted him in Naples in 1642, near the end of his own life, in a city crowded with the poor. The boy has a deformed foot, and in his other hand he holds a slip of paper. On it, in Latin, are the words, give me alms for the love of God. That paper is the point of the picture. In the Spanish-ruled kingdom of Naples, a licence like this was what allowed a person to beg legally, and the fact that he holds it out in writing suggests he could not ask aloud. Ribera places him low, so we look up at him against a wide sky, giving a street beggar the scale a painter of the time would give a saint or a prince.