With his portraits of philosophers Luca Giordano successfully continued a fashion in Neapolitan Baroque painting that had been established a few decades earlier by Jusepe de Ribera, whom he admired. The naturalistically portrayed figure, depicting a scholar studying written documents and with a globe, is demonstratively poorly clad. This could therefore be a representative of the Cynic school of philosophers who strove to return to a natural state of existence through an ascetic lifestyle.