Saint Andrew
Ca. 1631. Oil on canvas.Room 063B
A man stands before a dark background, portrayed more than half-length with his torso bare and his hair and beard white from age. With his left hand he holds a cross and with his right he holds a hook caught in the mouth of a fish. Both motifs allow us to identify him as the apostle Saint Andrew. The X-shaped cross recalls the one on which he was crucified and the fish with a hook is a reminder that, before he joined Christ, he was a fisherman. Just as his iconographic attributes unmistakeably identify Saint Andrew, the style of the painting leaves no doubts about the identity of the artist and approximate date of the canvas. The marked tenebrism of the work; the contrast between light and shadow that makes the figure of the saint stand out against the dark background, producing a sense of volume through the modelling on his face and body; the brushwork that is both minutely detailed and possessed of enormously descriptive force; and the powerfully classical composition that creates such equilibrium in the way the figure is arranged on the painted surface - all of this is characteristic of Jusepe de Ribera at his best, allowing us to place this work in the last years of the 1620s or early 1630s. This was a period in Ribera´s career when he explored the possibilities of tenebrism extensively, using dark backgrounds to draw attention to the corporeality of his human figures, as one can observe in several of his philosopher portraits from around 1630 and in works such as The bearded woman (La mujer barbuda; Fundación Medinaceli, Toledo) or Saint Roch (San Roque; P1109), both 1631. The human type depicted here, and the painting´s composition, are notably similar to Ribera´s philosopher now housed at the Palazzo Durazzo-Pallavicini in Genoa. Like that figure -and unlike his other philosophers, apostles, and the majority of the saints he painted in those years- Saint Andrew is half-nude. The narrative justification for this is found in the presence of the fish and the painter´s desire to refer to Andrew´s work as a fisherman. From a purely pictorial standpoint, Ribera has made an excellent decision in presenting the saint with his torso bare. In contrast to the monotony of the clothing worn by saints and philosophers -even when the latter are clad in rags- Saint Andrew´s nude torso allows Ribera to demonstrate how he was one of the most skilled artists of his time in describing human anatomy. The choice offers him the opportunity to lose himself in the representation of a thousand details in the saint´s worn, aged flesh. He is also, in this way, able to create a very believable and organic sense of continuity between the torso and the head, which, with its angular features, conveys an impression of great nobility. The saint´s body, his head and hands, all produce a very effective emotional atmosphere. The fingers of his left hand grasp the cross of his martyrdom and his wrinkled skin contrasts with the smoothness of the wood, drawing the viewer´s attention to this object. At the same time, the right side of his body is exposed to the greatest amount of light and is likewise an important focus of attention. Cross and flesh are related through the process of suffering and martyrdom; Saint Andrew´s intensely contemplative expression only serves to underscore that relationship. Ribera´s masterful ability to create a work full of emotional content, based on an apparently simple compositional scheme with a reduced colour palette, helps explain his popularity among realist artists from the nineteenth century, for many of whom he was a guide. Prominent among them is Mariano Fortuny whose Elderly nude man in the sun (P2612) owes much to his admiration for the seventeenthcentury painter from Valencia (Barón, J.: Portrait of Spain. Masterpieces from the Prado, Queensland Art Gallery-Art Exhibitions Australia, 2012, p. 258).
