Jusepe de Ribera, called Spagnoletto

Private collection, Naples;

Private collection, Europe;

Anonymous sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 15 October 2013, lot 563, for €146,700;

Where acquired by the present owner.

N. Spinosa, Ribera. La obra completa, Madrid 2008, pp. 458–59, under no. A321, reproduced (as dated circa 1643).

In this deeply moving work, Jusepe de Ribera depicts Saint Francis in a moment of profound spiritual meditation. Cloaked in a coarse, dark brown habit, the saint is shown half-length, his hands clasped in prayer before a crucifix resting on a skull. The stark background isolates the figure, intensifying the sense of inward reflection.

We are grateful to Riccardo Lattuada for endorsing the attribution to Ribera on the basis of digital images. He dates the painting to circa 1620 or shortly thereafter, the period in which Ribera painted his celebrated series of Apostles for the Church and Convent of the Girolamini, Naples,¹ and his Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg.² By contrast, Nicola Spinosa suggest a later date of circa 1643, drawing a comparison with Ribera's Saint Francis of Assisi in the Galleria Palatina, Florence (see Literature).³

¹ Spinosa 2008, pp. 328–29, nos A45–A47; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamini,_Naples

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Peter_and_Saint_Paul_(Ribera)

³ https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/francis-ribera-palatina#gallery-1