ABSTRACT
A man with a neatly trimmed beard and a red, pointed hat props himself up in bed, his right leg sticking out from under the heavy covers. The protruding limb is clearly unhealthy, raw and enflamed, and has been bandaged, geometrically, in strips of white linen. Gathered around the sick man are three small children, praying anxiously. The room, with its rather grand architectural setting, is sparsely though elegantly furnished. Attention is focused on the bed: a large canopied affair with heavy white drapes lined in blue. The white linen sheets and pillowcases set off the red bedspread. In the foreground, a woman dressed in black and white in the Spanish fashion prays to the Virgin, who is holding the Christ Child and is buoyed up by a cloud – visible to all who believe in her. Before the praying woman is a small table on which there stand a metal pitcher and a bowl of fruit. There is one other object of note: a rosary made of chunky black beads held purposefully within the suffering man’s hands. This is the sick-room of an elite Neapolitan man at the end of the sixteenth century.1
