哀悼基督

Ribera was born in Spain but built his entire career in Naples, then ruled by the Spanish crown, and he never let anyone forget where he came from. On the stone at the lower right of this Lamentation he signed himself Jusepe de Ribera, Spaniard, and dated it 1633. The scene is stripped to a few figures pressed close around the dead Christ in a shallow, cave-dark space, lit as if by a single hard lamp, the manner Ribera took from Caravaggio and pushed to something harsher and more physical. The 1630s were his richest years, and he returned to this subject more than once. Two other versions of nearly the same Lamentation survive, one in Naples and one in London, each worked out a little differently.