This volume is devoted to the scholarly study of an unpublished and unfinished painting by Jusepe de Ribera depicting a half-length Apostle holding a staff, datable to the artist’s mature Neapolitan period, around 1630. The work, preserved in a private collection and previously unknown to scholarship, is here presented and examined for the first time through a combination of stylistic, iconographic, historical, and technical analysis.
 
The book brings together contributions by leading specialists in Ribera studies, including an introduction by Nicola Spinosa and an extensive iconographic enquiry by Francisco Camacho Herrera. Central to the investigation is the question of the subject’s identity—whether the figure represents Saint James the Greater or Saint Joseph with the flowering staff—set within the broader context of early modern devotional imagery and Apostolic iconography. The study situates the painting within Ribera’s production of Apostles, philosophers, and sages, comparing it closely with works from the Apostolado series in the Museo del Prado and with related figures in paintings now in major public collections.
 
A distinctive feature of the volume is its focus on Ribera’s workshop practice and the recurring use of living models, addressing the long-debated issue of the artist’s collaboration with his brothers during his Roman and Neapolitan years. Through systematic visual comparison and documentary evidence, the book explores the presence of a specific model repeatedly employed by Ribera across several decades, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of authorship, repetition, and serial production in his studio.
 
The study is further supported by a detailed technical examination, including diagnostic imaging and conservation analysis, which sheds light on Ribera’s working process, painterly technique, and material choices. Particular attention is paid to the handling of flesh, impasto, and chiaroscuro, key elements of Ribera’s naturalism and expressive language.
 
By presenting a rigorously documented case study of an unpublished work, this volume contributes significantly to ongoing debates surrounding Ribera’s artistic development, workshop organization, and the boundaries between finished and unfinished painting. It offers scholars a new point of reference within Ribera’s oeuvre and a broader reflection on naturalism, seriality, and artistic identity in seventeenth-century Neapolitan painting.