São José

Jusepe de Ribera was a Spaniard who spent his whole career in Naples, then ruled by Spain, and there he took up the dark, raking light that Caravaggio had brought to the city a generation before. Around 1635 he painted this Saint Joseph. The staff in Joseph's hand has burst into flower, and that is the whole story. An old tale told outside the Gospels said that Mary's suitors each brought a rod to the temple, and the one whose rod bloomed would marry her. Joseph's did. Ribera gives him no glory for it, only a weathered face and heavy, working hands lit hard against the black.