Workshop of José Ribera, 17th century

Workshop of JOSÉ RIBERA (Xátiva, 1591-Naples, 1652), XVII century.
"Sage with compass".
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 80 x 75 cm.

The painting represents, on a brown neutral bottom, a mature man, of half body, in attitude of study or measurement, with a compass in his right hand and a sheet of paper in the left one, in which geographical divisions and numbers can be distinguished. The head, slightly inclined, is chiseled by an intense light that highlights the thoughtful and concentrated gesture of the character. The frown and the forehead furrowed by wrinkles reveal the intensity of the intellectual effort. The light strongly models the features, creating an expressive chiaroscuro that confers a dramatic and meditative charge to the scene.

This "Sage with a Compass" is fully inserted in the iconography developed by Ribera throughout the 1630s and 1640s: portraits of sages, philosophers, mathematicians and hermits, often anonymous or identified with figures such as Archimedes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus or Diogenes, painted with a mixture of crude realism, baroque theatricality and stoic dignity. They coincide in the austere clothing, the neutral environment and intellectual isolation. In this sense, the painting in question can be compared with the "Archimedes with compass" (preserved in the Prado Museum).

A remarkable quality can be appreciated in this archetypal portrait of a wise man in the naturalistic and tenebrist line that José Ribera championed, based on the Neapolitan school of the Baroque period.