Skin: On Jusepe de Ribera’s Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew

Abstract

Chapter Three explores the relationship between corporeality and paint in Jusepe de Ribera’s Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew (1644). By tracing the critical reception of Ribera’s art, the chapter identifies a common tread in locating the violence of his paintings in paint’s potentiality to become flesh. Ribera thus confronts beholders with a violence that is inflicted upon the painting as a body. This complicates the act of martyrdom to the extreme. For unlike in previous versions of the canvas where Bartholomew is shown facing a redeeming light, in this last surviving painting, Ribera shows facing us the beholders in an unresolved act of disturbing violence. For this is not a violence that will end soon with the saint’s demise – and the promise of divine redemption – but continues to be enacted forever on the painted canvas.