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A group of four men with pale skin, shown from the waist up, almost fill this square painting. Light pours onto the scene from the upper left and falls across the upturned face of the bearded, bare-chested man, Saint Bartholomew, who is situated with his back facing us and his arms spread wide. In the top right corner, his right wrist is lashed to a pole that extends off the top edge of the painting. His other arm is bent at the elbow near the lower left corner, and he holds that hand palm up. His profile, facing our left, is bright against the shadowed background. His mouth is slightly agape, and his eyebrows are raised as he looks up toward the light that bathes his lithe, muscular body. His long beard is streaked with gray, and he has receding black hair. A second, broad-shouldered man, draped in a brown cloak, stands facing us behind and just to our left of Saint Bartholomew. The younger man holds a knife in one hand resting against a black, rod-like sharpener held in the other. He turns his head to gaze at Saint Bartholomew, his eyes deep in shadow. He also has a furrowed brow and a craggy, ruddy complexion. Two more men stand behind him, to our left, filling the left side of the painting. The man on the far left has smooth skin, a trimmed beard, and short brown hair. He stands in profile looking to our right and wears a cranberry-red cloak. Barely visible beyond him, to our right, is a man wearing a gray-green hood hiding half his face. His features are loosely painted and faint, but he also looks up, either toward the young man or the light from above. All four are surrounded by deep shadows against a brown background.

Jusepe de Ribera

The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, 1634

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 29

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 104 x 113 cm (40 15/16 x 44 1/2 in.)

framed: 134.6 x 143.8 x 10.2 cm (53 x 56 5/8 x 4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of the 50th Anniversary Gift Committee

Accession Number

1990.137.1

Artists / Makers

Jusepe de Ribera (artist) Spanish, 1591 - 1652

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Overview

A popular subject in Counter–Reformation Italy and Spain, Ribera's profoundly moving work portrays the apostle's final moments before he is to be flayed alive. The viewer is meant to empathize with Bartholomew, whose body seemingly bursts through the surface of the canvas, and whose outstretched arms embrace a mystical light that illuminates his flesh. His piercing eyes, open mouth, and petitioning left hand bespeak an intense communion with the divine; yet this same hand draws our attention to the instruments of his torture, symbolically positioned in the shape of a cross. Transfixed by Bartholomew's active faith, the executioner seems to have stopped short in his actions, and his furrowed brow and partially illuminated face suggest a moment of doubt, with the possibility of conversion.

The use of sharp light–dark contrasts and extreme naturalism reveal the influence of Caravaggio, whose work Ribera would have seen both in Rome and in Naples, where he lived from 1616 until the end of his life. Yet unlike Caravaggio, Ribera has enlivened the canvas with a variety of brushstrokes and textures, allowing the viewer to become further involved with this psychologically charged painting.

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, which is available as a free PDF https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/italian-paintings-17th-and-18th-centuries.pdf

Inscription

lower right: Jusepe de Ribera español / F. 1634

Provenance

Bought in Italy c. 1810 by Richard Barré Dunning, Lord Ashburton (of the first creation) for his uncle-in-law George Cranstoun, Lord Corehouse [d. 1850], Corehouse, Scotland; by descent to Colonel Alstair Joseph Edgar Cranstoun of that Ilk by 1960;[1] (his sale, Sotheby's, London, 6 July 1983, no. 30). Private collection, London; (sale, Sotheby's, London, 4 July 1990, no. 83); purchased by NGA.

[1] According to the Sotheby's catalogues, which identify Dunning simply as Lord Ashburton. The Scots Peerage, 9 vols., Edinburgh, 1904-1914: 2:598, gives his full name and lists his marriage to Corehouse's niece Anne Selby Cunningham in 1805.

Associated Names

Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
Cranstoun, Alstair Joseph Edgar, Colonel
Cranstoun, Lord Corehouse, George
Dunning, Lord Ashburton, Richard Barré
Private Collection (NGA Former Owner)
Sotheby's
Sotheby's

Exhibition History

1883: Loan Exhibition of Works by Old Masters, Edinburgh, 1883 (cat. not located).

1991: Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991, 64-65, color repro.

1992: Jusepe de Ribera 1591-1652, Castel Sant'Elmo, Certosa di San Martino, Naples (no. 1.52, color repro); Museo del Prado, Madrid (no. 61, color repro.); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (no. 30, color repro.), 1991-1992 (cat. by Nicola Spinosa).

1999: Caravaggio's 'The Taking of Christ': Saints and Sinners in Baroque Painting, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999, brochure, no. 3, repro.

2003: Darkness & Light: Caravaggio & His World, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003-2004, no. 47, repro.

2016: Beyond Caravaggio, The National Gallery, London; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2016-2017, no. 29, repro.

Technical Summary

The support is a twill fabric prepared with a thin, smooth reddish brown ground. Over this is a second, dark layer, black or possibly brown, with a rough texture that suggests application with a palette knife only under the main area of the composition, as visible in x-radiographs. The paint was manipulated skillfully to express different textures. Thin wispy strokes were used to modify the fluidly applied flesh tones, which also show the wet-into-wet application of black paint. A pointed object was dragged through the still-wet paint of the executioner's beard to create the texture of the hair. X-radiographs reveal two artist's changes. Saint Bartholomew's right forearm has changed position, with the previous arm left unfinished, without a hand underneath it. The fingertips of the right hand were also slightly shifted.

The original tacking margins have been removed, but cusping is present along all four sides. Two long tears in the fabric support have been repaired, which can be seen in x-radiographs. Aside from losses associated with these tears, there are only minor and carefully inpainted losses scattered throughout and some abrasion in the executioner's chest. The varnish is clear. The painting was treated most recently by Herbert Lank after 1983.

Bibliography

1971: Felton, Craig. "Jusepe de Ribera: A Catalogue Raisonné." 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1971: 2:451, no. X-87 (rejects attribution to Ribera).

1978: Spinosa, Nicola. In L'opera completa del Ribera. Milan, 1978: 129, no. 259, as Workshop of Ribera.

1991: Gingold, Diane J., and Elizabeth A.C. Weil. The Corporate Patron. New York, 1991: 108, color repro.

1991: Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 325, color repro.

1992: Felton, Craig. "Out of the Shadows: Jusepe de Ribera." Apollo 136 (1992): 144.

1992: Jordan, William. "Naples, Madrid, New York: Ribera." [Exhibition review] The Burlington Magazine 134 (1992): 625.

1992: Pérez Sánchez, Alfonso E. and Nicola Spinosa. Jusepe de Ribera, 1591-1652. Exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1992: 105, no. 30.

1995: National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of A rt, Washington, Rev. ed. Washington, D.C.,1995: 88, repro.

1996: De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 214-218, color repro. 215.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 156-157, no. 117, color repro.

2010: Glendinning, Nigel. "The 'Terrible Sublime': Ribera in Britain and Ireland." In Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland, 1750-1920: Studies in Reception, In Memory of Enriqueta Harris Frankfort. Edited by Nigel Glendinning and Hilary Macartney. London, 2010: 191, fig. 40.

2013: Harris, Neil. Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience. Chicago and London, 2013: 420-421.