Six cherubs in the clouds

Executed in Ribera’s scratchy yet expressive style, the sheet is a new addition to the artist’s catalogue of preparatory drawings. Recognized by Viviana Farina, the sheet is a study for the cherubs in the clouds in the top register of Ribera’s Holy Family and Saints known as Trinitas terrestris originally in the church of the Santissima Trinità delle Monache, Naples (now at the Museo di Capodimonte). Ribera kept the ‘V’ shaped arrangement of the cherubs in the painting, while reducing the number of heads from six to four. According to Farina’s chronology, the Trinitas terrestris was executed between 1626 and 1628, a date that places the newly attributed sheet with two drawings of the late 1620s: the Boy with a basket in the Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, and the Sleeping nymph in the Fitzwilliam Museum (G. Finaldi, Jusepe de Ribera. The Drawings, Madrid, 2016, nos. 64, 67, ill.).