São Sebastião

Ribera was a Spaniard from near Valencia who spent almost his whole career in Naples, then a Spanish-ruled city and one of the largest in Europe. Early on in Italy he had fallen under the spell of Caravaggio, and he kept that taste for a hard light dragged across a body out of the surrounding dark. Here he paints the martyrdom of Sebastian, an officer of the Roman guard and a secret Christian, condemned to be shot through with arrows and left to die. Ribera gives him a single twisting pose, the body turned to show the strain of the muscles, the lips parted and the eyes lifted and wet. In the later part of his life his colors warmed and lightened, easing the harsh contrasts of his younger work, and something of that gentler light rests on this figure.