Italian school; 17th century.

Italian school; XVII century.
"Santiago Apostle".
Oil on canvas.
It has frame of the nineteenth century.
Measurements: 46 x 38 cm; 71 x 61 cm (frame).
The work presented here is coherently ascribed to the school of José de Ribera, one of the greatest exponents of Tenebrist naturalism of the seventeenth century and a key figure in the spread of the Caravaggist language in the Neapolitan area. The painting shares the stylistic features that defined the master's artistic environment: an intense conception of the human figure, a dramatic use of light and a desire to penetrate the psychological and spiritual dimension of the character represented.From the formal point of view, the apostle appears cut out against a dark and undefined background, a characteristic resource of Ribera's tenebrism, which concentrates all the attention on the face and hands. The lateral illumination strongly affects the physiognomy, emphasizing the bony anatomy, the wrinkles and the beard, treated with severe realism and without idealization.
In the Bible he is usually referred to under the name of Jacob, a term that passed into Latin as Iacobus and derived in names such as Iago, Tiago and Santiago (sanctus Iacobus). James of Zebedee or James the Greater was one of the first disciples to shed his blood and die for Jesus. Member of a family of fishermen, brother of John the Evangelist -both nicknamed Boanerges ('Sons of Thunder'), because of their impulsive temperaments- and one of the three disciples closest to Jesus Christ, the apostle James was not only present at two of the most important moments in the life of the Christian Messiah - the transfiguration on Mount Tabor and the prayer in the Garden of Olives - but was also part of the restricted group that witnessed his last miracle, his resurrected appearance on the shores of Lake Tiberias.