AgProv: I was shown this by an FB friend. It's a portrait of a Spanish married couple in the late 1500's by a bloke called Ribera. Apparently the wife (for it is she in the picture) was blessed by the LORD with a full black beard at the age of thirty-five so a...

2015-05-07T21:34:28Z

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I was shown this by an FB friend. It's a portrait of a Spanish married couple in the late 1500's by a bloke called Ribera. Apparently the wife (for it is she in the picture) was blessed by the LORD with a full black beard at the age of thirty-five so as to honour Him. the husband is standing to rear-right looking bemused, probably at the fact that she could have sorted it all out by buying a shaving razor, or something. But hasn't.

Anyway. with nothing else in the portrait to give a sense of scale, and the couple looking a little bit wider because of the clothes, my first association was - Discworld dwarf women. Take a look. That slightly hangdog gloomy existential Scandinavian expression, the weathered face, the beard.... OK, so she's breastgeeding in public, which I doubt a Discworld dwarf would do, and she's wearing no armour. But the face and the expression are perfect...

File:Ribera.jpg - Revision history

AgProv: I was shown this by an FB friend. It's a portrait of a Spanish married couple in the late 1500's by a bloke called Ribera. Apparently the wife (for it is she in the picture) was blessed by the LORD with a full black beard at the age of thirty-five so a...