“Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew”. Painting on vellum. After a model by Ribera and Cucó, José (Játiva, 1591 – Naples, 1652). The composition is organized around the diagonal line formed by the tree trunk to which the old man is tied. The soldier on the right is flaying him, while another figure on the left balances and harmonizes the painting. This is how Bartholomew the Apostle was martyred: according to tradition, the Armenian king Astyages ordered him to worship his idols, which he refused to do, and had him flayed alive. Virtually all the elements of the work can be linked to the Italian school, while the composition follows common models of the 17th-century Baroque. The coloring shows the work to be far removed from the Caravaggesque tenebrism that was common at the time, and it also lacks contrasts of light, instead recalling works more in line with the classicist Baroque or even earlier Mannerism. José de Ribera y Cucó was a painter and engraver born in Spain who spent 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 Dyck, and he contributed greatly to the creation of the Neapolitan school (which included Giovanni Lanfranco, Luca Guiordano, and others). He was born in Játiva, and it is possible that he apprenticed with Francisco Ribalta. As a teenager, he traveled to northern Italy (Cremona, Milan, Parma), and then to Rome, where he came into contact with classical works (Reni and Ludovico Carracci). He eventually settled in Naples. His work is held in important private collections around the world, as well as in institutions such as the Prado Museum and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, the Louvre in Paris, and others. 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 that time, now housed in the Museum of Sacred Art of Osuna in Seville (the former Collegiate Church of Osuna). It was part of a group of five paintings (Saint Sebastian, Saint Peter Penitent, Saint Jerome, the Angel of Judgment, and Calvary, the latter commissioned by the Duchess and completed in 1618) that were already known to be in the Collegiate Church by April 1627. This group is considered one of the most important works from the beginning of Ribera's career. However, it is possible to relate it much more closely to another work with a similar composition: one of the four etchings Ribera produced between 1624 and 1628. The etching of the “Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew” is signed, dated (1624), and dedicated to Prince Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, nephew of Philip III and Viceroy of Sicily. In this etching and in the work on vellum, a figure on the left looks at the viewer, holding two rods in his hands; the saint looks upwards, his arms tied above his head, bent, and his legs drawn up, while a man flays him, holding a knife to his mouth. In the vellum, however, the male figures on the right, present in the etching, are absent; the sky is also different. As already noted, the main differences are the color and the lighting, which place this work closer to Baroque classicist currents.
· Size: 10,5x15 cms. / 22x26,5 cms.
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