Portrait of Jesuit Missionary

The work had belonged to the Milanese collector Carlo Castelbarco. Ribera was a Spanish painter who came to Italy very young. In 1615 he was in Rome, and the following year he moved to Naples, where he worked extensively for Neapolitan viceroys, Spanish nobility, and churches and convents in the city. This portrait was executed at the same time that the artist was engaged in decorating the Charterhouse of San Martino and is considered one of the masterpieces of seventeenth-century portraiture.The elderly clergyman, a Jesuit, holds his right hand resting gently on the mane of a large lion. The muzzle, mane, clawed paw, and tail of the fair were rendered by the artist with quick brush strokes.
Great attention has been paid instead to the hands and face of the figure, which stand out against the dark background and ink-black dress and are highlighted even more by the white of the cuffs and collar.The light behind the left shoulder outlines the outline of a solid, imposing figure. The deep shadows under the chin and on the left side of the face and the use of a thicker impasto in the brighter areas make the portrait extraordinarily vivid.The identity of the elderly Jesuit priest is not certain.
The presence of the tamed lion suggested that he was a missionary. In Christian iconography however, the lion is commonly used as a symbol of Christ; thus in this case it would symbolically represent the same Society of Jesus to which the cleric belonged.