“Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew”. Painting on vellum. Based on a model by Ribera and Cucó, José (Játiva, 1591 – Naples, 1652). The composition is organised around the diagonal drawn by the trunk of the tree to which the old man is tied. The soldier on the right is skinning him, while another figure on the left balances and harmonises the painting. This is how Bartholomew the Apostle was martyred: according to tradition, the king of Armenia, Astyages, ordered him to worship his idols, which he refused to do, ordering him to be skinned. Almost all the elements of the work can be related to the Italian school, while the composition follows common models of the 17th century Baroque. The colouring shows the work as very far from the Caravaggesque tenebrism that was common at the time, and it also does not present light contrasts, as well as being reminiscent of works more in the line of classicist Baroque or even of earlier Mannerism. José de Ribera y Cucó was a painter and engraver born in Spain who developed his entire career in Italy, where he was known as Giuseppe Ribera and by the nickname “Lo Spagnoletto”. His style evolved from the tenebrism of Caravaggio towards a much more luminous aesthetic influenced by figures such as Van Dyc, and he contributed greatly to the creation of the “Neapolitan school” (in which Giovanni Lanfranco, Luca Guiordano stand out…). He was born in Játiva, and it is possible that he learned with Francisco Ribalta, and, while still a teenager, he went to the north of Italy (Cremona, Milan, Parma), then to Rome, where he came into contact with classicist works (Reni and Ludovico Carracci); he ended up settling in Naples. His work is preserved in important private collections around the world, as well as in institutions such as the Museo del Prado and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, the Museo de Capodimonte in Naples, the Louvre in Paris, etc. The work is reminiscent of an oil on canvas painted by José de Ribera between 1617 and 1619 for Pedro Téllez Girón III, Duke of Osuna and Viceroy of Naples at the time, now housed in the Museum of Sacred Art in Osuna, Seville (Old Collegiate Church of Osuna). It was part of a group of five paintings (Saint Sebastian, Saint Peter Penitent, Saint Jerome, the Angel of Judgement and Calvary, the latter being a commission by the Duchess and completed in 1618) that were seen in the Collegiate Church as early as April 1627. This group is considered one of the most important from the beginning of her career. However, it is possible to relate it much more closely to another work that presents a similar composition: one of the four etchings that Ribera made between 1624 and 1628: the one of the “Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew” is signed, dated (1624) and dedicated to Prince Manuel Filiberto of Savoy, nephew of Philip III and viceroy of Sicily. In this engraving and in the work on vellum, a figure on the left looks at the spectator, holding two rods in his hands; the saint looks up, with his arms tied above his head, bent, and his legs drawn up, while a man skins him, holding a knife in his mouth; on the vellum, however, the male figures on the right that are in the engraving are not shown; the sky is also different. As already noted, the main differences are the colour and the lighting, which place the present work closer to Baroque classicist currents.
· Size: 10,5x15 cms. / 22x26,5 cms.
ANTIQUES
