Bernardo Cavallino, 'Saint Bartholomew', about 1640-1645

Saint Bartholomew sits alone in the wilderness. His expression is one of grim determination, at once horrified and resolved. Enveloped in the folds of his mantle, he turns towards us, unable to look at the knife clasped in his left hand. This will be the tool of his martyrdom, for Bartholomew was flayed alive.

One of the twelve apostles, Bartholomew was said to have preached the gospel in India and in Armenia. When he refused to make a sacrifice to the local gods, he was horribly killed, first stripped of his skin and then beheaded. Gruesome depictions of Bartholomew’s martyrdom were popular in seventeenth-century Naples and often showed the act of flaying in progress.

This painting’s power comes from how extremely it has been pared back. Bartholomew is the sole protagonist in this almost monochromatic, intensely psychological picture. Stark light illuminates the mantle and the flesh, which provides the only colour in a work otherwise composed of silvery grey tones. We are not confronted here with violence: rather, it is the threat and imminence of violence that is so menacing. White highlights gleam on the blade and handle of the knife; the rope, which will be used to bind the apostle, dangles ominously above. Instead of witnessing Bartholomew’s flayed flesh, the picture is dominated by the creamy mantle, whose folds are so elaborate that they cannot help but make us think of skin. Whether in the crisply delineated edges of the fabric or the strong sense of outline created by pulling the white paint right up to the flesh, everything seems to allude to layers and unpeeling, the act of incision unseen but ever-present. The skin itself is beautifully painted, the visible brushmarks on the shoulder, for example, giving it a strikingly realistic texture.

One of the leading Neapolitan artists of the seventeenth century, Cavallino was renowned for his harmonious colours, virtuoso brushwork and dramatic compositions. Extraordinarily little is known about his life, and only one of his paintings is signed and dated. He was strongly influenced by Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652), and seems to have mostly worked for private patrons, producing small, sensitive paintings of mythological and Biblical subjects.

This life-size depiction of Saint Bartholomew, with its drama and intensity, is one of Cavallino’s masterpieces. Although we do not know for whom he painted it, its size and grandeur suggest it was an important commission. It probably dates from the latter years of the artist’s life, in which he became increasingly focussed on the emotional power of his works.