圣母子

Ribera was a Spaniard who spent his whole working life in Naples, the biggest city the Spanish crown held and one squeezed hard for taxes to pay for Spain's wars. He painted this in 1646. In July of the following year a new duty on fruit brought the city into the streets behind a young fisherman called Masaniello, and Ribera, a painter attached to the Spanish court, moved his family into the royal palace for safety. Naples did not forgive that. His commissions thinned, his health gave way, and he died in 1652 leaving his family in debt. The picture belongs to his late manner, the hard black and white contrasts of his early years replaced by a warm, diffused light. It came to Philadelphia with the collection of the lawyer John G. Johnson, left to the city in 1917.