National Gallery's Ribera Gift; $5 Million Baroque Painting Fills Gap in Collections

The National Gallery of Art has acquired a major painting by the southern baroque master Jusepe de Ribera, gallery Director J. Carter Brown announced yesterday.

The 1634 painting, "The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew," was purchased by an agent on behalf of the gallery's 50th Anniversary Committee at Sotheby's in London last summer for 2.75 million pounds ($4.9 million). It is the first Ribera to enter the museum's collection.

"This is the end of a long quest," said Brown. "We wanted to get something worthy of our collections and needed by them. In the context of the art…