(Játiva 1591–1652 Naples)
Saint Joseph,
oil on canvas, 74.5 x 63 cm, framed

Provenance:
probably collection of Giuseppe Carafa (died in 1647), according to the seal of the Carafa della Stadera family on the reverse;
probably by inheritance to his wife, Eleonora Carafa dei Principi di Colubrano (1620–1649);
and thence by descent;
where acquired by the present owner;
European Aristocratic collection

Probable Documentation:
post mortem inventory of Giuseppe Carafa, 1648: ‘n. 5, uno San Giuseppe di quattro palmi e cinque con cornice inorata e figurata di mano di Gioseppe de Rivera’;
inventory of Eleonora Carafa dei Principi di Colubrano (1649)

We are grateful to Nicola Spinosa for confirming the attribution of the present painting after examination in the original and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

We are also grateful to Craig Felton for independently confirming the attribution on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph. They both date the present painting to the 1640s.

Ribera was influenced by the realism of Caravaggio, however from the early 1630s he introduced a lighter, more radiant tonal range to his pallet, lending his paintings a softer character. The present Saint Joseph fits into this context and was most probably originally made for private devotion.

Other versions and derivations of this composition are known, among them one is conserved in the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal (see C. Felton, Jusepe de Ribera, a Catalogue Raisonné, 1971, pp. 342, 343, II, no. S12 - as workshop of Ribera, possibly under his supervision, and N. Spinosa, Ribera. L’opera completa, Naples 2006, p. 322, no. A169, 72.4 x 62.9 cm) and another in the Pinardi collection, Milan (see op. cit. Spinosa, 2006, p. 322, 67 x 60 cm). The iconography of Saint Joseph was broadly diffused both in Italy and Spain, and the traditional presence of the flowering staff was signalled in the apocryphal Gospels, in relation to the miracle recounting how Saint Joseph’s staff came into bloom, when he contended for Mary’s hand in marriage.

The painting here under discussion is characterised by a gentle flow of natural light over the draperies and flesh tones alike, drawing attention to the truthful semblance of solidity. The luminescent colour of the warm toned paint layers describing the subject’s features and silver hair and beard are equally characteristic. The saint’s features are similar to those of other figures represented by Ribera during the mid 1630s, such as God the Father in the Trinity with the dead Christ in the Museo del Prado (inv. no. P001069). In the present Saint Joseph however, Ribera particularly appears to have executed a portrait from life, because the same elderly man with whitened hair and beard appears in the Saint Andrew conserved in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, with which it also shares a similar three-quarter view composition.

The painting presented can presumably be identified as the work listed in the 1648 post mortem inventory of the prestigious collection of Giuseppe Carafa (see documentation), wherein the measurements should, as was customary, include those of the lost original frame. This work appeared again in the 1649 inventory of the property of Giuseppe’s widow, Eleonore Carafa dei Principi di Colubrano. The painting’s provenance from this illustrious Neapolitan family is confirmed by the presence, on the stretcher, of a red wax seal bearing the coat-of-arms of the Carafa della Stadera family.

Giuseppe Carafa, who owned a significant collection of paintings, was murdered on 10 July 1647 during the anti-Spanish uprisings led by Masaniello; this episode is recorded in a painting by Domenico Gargiulo conserved in the Museo della Certosa di San Martino, Naples.

It has been suggested that in the present painting of Saint Joseph Ribera elected to represent a man ‘from life’, in a form of portraiture. According to verbal tradition the saint here under discussion represents Giuseppe Carafa, and if so it would confirm a dating of this painting to before 1647. The identification of Saint Joseph (Giuseppe) with the Neapolitan noble Giuseppe Carafa, as well as the work having once belonged to the celebrated Carafa collection, may support this hypothesis. The fact that the painting belonged to the celebrated Carafa collection, which was open to young artists for purposes of study can also explain the versions and copies of this work.

Technical Report by Gianluca Poldi:

This work is painted on a thick canvas with a brown ground, with the artist´s typical final paint finish created by thin brush strokes, close to one another in a very controlled manner

The brown ground is constituted of ochre and earth, with the addition of black and green particles and is left unpainted in small areas such as in the hair or inside the eye, iris, used as a half shadow.
Some broken thin black lines were detected using multispectral IR reflectography and these can be considered as traces of underdrawing and no significant change in the composition can be noticed,

Pigments, studied by means of non-invasive spectroscopies and optical microscopy, include lead white, carbon black, brown natural iron oxides, green pigments, vermillion, a lead-based yellow, yellow ochre, red lake. More than the palette, the mixtures used in this work are interesting and unusual as well as the grain size of some pigments. A green pigment and brown ochre are added to black in the background, while a mixture of verdigris and yellow pigment, together with finely grinded red particles, make up the green leaves of the flowering rod. Light flesh tones are created by mixing lead white and different amounts of vermillion and iron oxides, including coarsely grinded yellow ochre, while green earth is added in the shadows and a thin layer of red lake is used for the lips.