São Paulo Eremita

The year Ribera signed this, 1647, his adopted city of Naples exploded: a fisherman named Masaniello led the poor into the streets against Spanish taxes, and for days the city belonged to the crowd. Ribera, who worked for those same Spanish rulers, turned instead to the oldest quiet in Christian legend, Saint Paul the Hermit, who fled to the Egyptian desert and lived on the half loaf a raven brought him each day. Ribera was near 60 and in failing health. He paints the old man kneeling with both hands on a skull, a book and a crust of bread beside him, the weathered skin lit in the warmer, brighter tones he had come to late, far from the deep shadow of his early work.