Ribera's Portrait of Magdalena Ventura and the Symbolism of the Spindle

To pose for Ribera, the 52-year-old Doña Magdalena Ventura was lodged in the palace of the Duke of Naples. It is believed that at this time she had just given birth to a child who, in the opinion of many art historians, is not depicted in the portrait: he was still a newborn, whereas the artist put an older infant into the model's arms. In the portrait Magdalena is shown together with her elderly husband. The explanatory inscription is carved on the blocks of stone to the left of the central figure. On the stones lies a spindle, evidently as a symbol of everyday female domesticity and of the femininity of those years, alongside the wedding ring and the cap, and, on the other hand, as a simultaneous hint at hermaphroditism: barva (spindle) sounds like barba (beard). Some hold that the spindle lies inside a seashell, which in itself symbolises hermaphrodites, though it seems to me that it is simply a skein of thread.