St. Andrew

Saint Andrew at the Prado, from the early apostle series around 1601, is among Ribera's earliest surviving works, created when the young painter was still developing his style under the influence of his Spanish training and early encounters with Italian art. The apostle who brought his brother Peter to Christ, and who was later crucified on an X-shaped cross that bears his name, is shown here with the x-cross as his attribute. 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 Andrew reveals the painter at the beginning of the trajectory that would make him the dominant figure in Neapolitan Baroque painting.

The apostle's rugged features emerge from dramatic chiaroscuro in the Caravaggesque manner that characterized Ribera's formative style.