This painting shows the finale of a brutal encounter between two female fighters. The woman on the right has attained the upper hand over her opponent, who has fallen injured to the ground, and is about to administer the coûp de grace. In the background, to the left, is a man in Roman military dress resting on a staff, and behind the wall of the arena stand soldiers and male civilians watching the spectacle. The composition is framed by diagonally arranged spears which emphasise the military character of the scene. But what in fact is the subject of the picture?

The early Prado catalogues record that the painting shows a duel that took place in 1552 in the presence of the Viceroy of Naples, the Marquis of Vasto, between two Neapolitan women, Isabella de Carazi and Diambra de Petinella, over their love of a handsome youth named Fabio de Zeresola. However, there are difficulties with the proposal: none of the figures in the background can be reasonably identified as either the Marquis of Vasto -whose likeness was well known in Ribera’s time and who by 1552 had been dead for six years- or with de Zeresola. Isabel Mateo in 1990 proposed that Ribera had conceived the painting as a political allegory reflecting the nationalist conflict between Neapolitans and their Spanish overlords (which would eventually explode in Masaniello’s revolution of 1647); but this, too, seems highly unlikely given Ribera’s close relationship with the viceregal court, where he occupied an official position. If one considers that the painting was probably commissioned from the artist for King Philip IV through his Neapolitan viceroy, the Conde de Monterrey, it is inconceivable that it represents anti-Spanish or anti-royal aspirations.

André Stoll has suggested that Ribera’s painting should be understood as an allegory of Counter-Reformation feminine virtue over courtly vice, but it is more likely is that it was commissioned as part of the group of works showing ancient Roman subjects, specifically circus games, which were being painted in the mid 1630s by Giovanni Lanfranco, Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, Andrea de Lione and others to decorate the halls of the newly built Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid. The imagery is perfectly compatible with Ribera’s vision of the ancient world, as reflected in his scenes of the martyrdom of the Apostles and in his large painting of Saint Janarius emerging unscathed from the Furnace, 1646 (Cappella di San Gennaro, Naples), which is set in the second century AD. This work is first recorded in the Alcázar Palace, Madrid, in 1666. Female gladiators were not uncommon in ancient Rome. The Roman historians Dio Cassius and Suetonius describe games held in honour of the Emperors Nero and Domitian in which women fought each other, and Juvenal in one of his satires thunders in disgust against this particular spectacle. While it is unlikely that Ribera knew ancient images of female gladiators (very few actually survive), he must have known the print of women fighters in Justus Lipsius’s Saturnalium (1604), an illustrated compendium of Roman gladiatorial practices used as a source by other artists engaged in Buen Retiro commissions. Ribera gave the women classicising hairstyles and flowing Roman style robes. The composition is severe and monumental and the main figures have been invested with a classical solemnity, apparent in the profile view of the standing gladiator.

The skilful restoration of the work carried out in 1991-92 brought out its remarkable chromatic richness, especially the bright orange and elegant mauves of the women’s robes, which reflect Ribera’s interest, from the mid 1630s onwards, in Venetian Cinquecento painting (Text drawn from Finaldi, G.: Italian Masterpieces. From Spain´s Royal Court, Museo del Prado, 2014, p. 202).