Saint John the Evangelist

Saint John the Evangelist in the Louvre, painted around 1607, is attributed to Ribera's very earliest period, when he was still a young man finding his way between his Spanish training and the revolutionary Italian Baroque he encountered on his travels. The apostle's youthful face and inspired expression represent the beloved disciple of Christ, the author of the fourth Gospel, the Book of Revelation, and three epistles — the New Testament writer with the most extensive surviving body of work. Ribera painted his saints with unflinching naturalism rooted in his early study of Caravaggio's Rome before settling in Naples in 1616. Working under Spanish viceregal patronage, he would produce devotional images combining brutal physical realism with profound spiritual intensity, and this early John reveals the painter beginning to develop the tenebrism and character observation that would define his career.

The youthful evangelist is dramatically lit against a dark background. The early Caravaggesque manner establishes the tenebrism that would characterize Ribera's career.