José de Ribera (Játiva, Spain; baptized 17 February 1591 – Naples, Italy; 3 September 1652)[1][2] was a Spanishpainter, draftsman and engraver of the 17th century, who developed his entire career in Italy, initially in Rome and later in Naples. He was also known by his Italianized name Jusepe Ribera and by the nickname Lo Spagnoletto because he asserted his origins, and ("The Little Spaniard") because of his short stature. He commonly signed his works as Spanish, Valencian and Setabense (from Játiva),[3] or else simply as Spanish. On occasion he did so using the Latin terminology "Josephus Ribera. Hispanus. Valentinus. Setaben. (or Civitatis Setabis)", to which he sometimes added "accademicus Romanus" and above all "Partenope", in allusion to his place of residence.
He cultivated a naturalist style that evolved from the tenebrism of Caravaggio toward a more colorful and luminous aesthetic, influenced by Van Dyck and other masters. He contributed to forging the great Neapolitan school (Giovanni Lanfranco, Massimo Stanzione, Luca Giordano...), which recognized him as its undisputed master; and his works, sent to Spain from a very early date, influenced local painters in technique and iconographic models, among them Velázquez and Murillo. His prints circulated through half of Europe, and it is recorded that even Rembrandt knew them. A prolific and commercially successful author, his fame revived during the flowering of Realism in the 19th century; he was an essential reference for realists such as Léon Bonnat. Some of his works were copied by painters of several centuries, such as Fragonard, Manet, Fortuny and Henri Matisse, among others.
Ribera is a prominent painter of the Spanish school, although his work was made entirely in Italy and, in fact, no certain examples of his beginnings in Spain are known. Long labeled as a gruesome and somber creator, mostly because of some of his paintings of martyrdoms, this prejudice has faded in recent decades thanks to multiple exhibitions and research, which vindicate him as a versatile creator and skilled colorist. Recent discoveries have helped to reconstruct his early production in Italy, a stage to which the Museo del Prado devoted an exhibition in 2011.
José de Ribera was born in Játiva, where he was baptized in the parish of Santa Tecla on 17 February 1591. The son of Simón Ribera, a shoemaker by profession, and Margarita Cucó, at the baptismal font he received the name Joan Josep.[4][5] He had a brother named Juan who also must have devoted himself to painting, although very little is known about him. Very little is known about the family, but it is assumed that the Riberas lived in relative economic comfort; the profession of shoemaker was esteemed, since footwear was an article of clothing of a certain luxury at that time.
Judgment of Solomon, 1609–1610. Galleria Borghese, Rome. This oil painting, previously attributed by Roberto Longhi to a presumed, unidentified "Master of the Judgment of Solomon",[6] has been discovered to be the first documented painting by José de Ribera, when he was working in Rome at around eighteen or nineteen years of age, based on the research of Gianni Papi in 2002.[7]
Ribera decided to go to Italy, where he would follow in the footsteps of Caravaggio. While still an adolescent he began his journey; first to the north, to Cremona, Milan and Parma, and then on to Rome, where the artist came to know both the classicist painting of Guido Reni and Ludovico Carracci and the harsh tenebrism developed by the Dutch Caravaggisti residing in the city. The recent identification of several of his youthful works shows that Ribera was one of the very first followers of Caravaggio; it has even been conjectured that he may have known him personally, since his move from Valencia to Italy must have taken place several years earlier than experts believed, possibly in 1606.
Finally, Ribera decided to settle in Naples, perhaps sensing that he would attract a larger clientele; the region was a Spanish viceroyalty and was going through a period of commercial opulence that fostered artistic patronage. The Catholic Church and private collectors (several of them Spaniards like himself) would be his main clients.
In the summer of 1616 Ribera landed in the famous metropolis in the shadow of Vesuvius. He soon settled in the house of the elderly painter Giovanni Bernardino Azzolini, a painter who was not very well known at the time, to whom a work in the church of Sant'Antonio al Seggio in Aversa is attributed: The Coronation of the Virgin between Saints Andrew and Peter. Only three months later Ribera married Azzolini's daughter, Caterina Azzolino, sixteen years of age.
His journey had ended, but the apogee of his art was beginning. Within a few years, José de Ribera, whom they called lo Spagnoletto, acquired European fame, thanks in large part to his prints; it is known that even Rembrandt owned some.
The use of Caravaggio's tenebrism was his strong point, although in his maturity he would evolve toward a more eclectic and luminous style. He began an intense production that kept him away from Spain, to which he never returned, but he felt bound to his country thanks to the fact that Naples was a Spanish viceroyalty and a meeting point between two figurative cultures, the Iberian and the Italian. It is said that when Ribera was asked why he did not return to his country, he replied: "In Naples I feel well appreciated and well paid, so I follow the well-known adage: whoever is well off should not change." And he explained: "My great desire is to return to Spain, but wise men have told me that there respect for artists is lost when they are present, for Spain is a most loving mother to foreigners and a cruel stepmother to her own children."
The support of the Viceroys and of other high officials of Spanish origin explains why his works arrived in abundance in Madrid; the Museo del Prado currently owns fifty-six of his paintings, another seven attributed ones and eleven drawings, which altogether make up one of the largest and finest compendiums of his work, including several masterpieces.[8] Already in his lifetime he was famous in his homeland, and proof of this is that Velázquez visited him in Naples in 1630.
The fusion of Italian and Spanish influences gave rise to works such as the Drunken Silenus (1626, today in Capodimonte) and The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew (1628, in the Museum of Fine Arts of Budapest). The rivalry then began between Ribera and the other great protagonist of the Neapolitan 17th century, Massimo Stanzione.
In later centuries, the appreciation of Ribera's art was conditioned by a black legend that presented him as a funereal and unpleasant painter, who obsessively painted subjects of martyrdoms with gruesome verism. One writer stated that "Ribera soaked his brush in the blood of the saints". This mistaken idea prevailed in the 18th and 19th centuries, in part because of foreign writers who did not know his entire production. In reality, Ribera evolved from his initial tenebrism to a more luminous and colorful style, with influences from the Venetian Renaissance and from ancient sculpture, and he was able to capture the beautiful and the terrible with equal success.
His range of colors lightened in the 1630s under the influence of Van Dyck, Guido Reni and other painters, and despite serious health problems in the following decade, he continued producing important works until his death, which occurred on 3 September 1652.
Ribera's early years have remained shrouded in questions because of the lack of documentation about him and the apparent disappearance of all his works from that period. But in the last decade, several experts have managed to identify as his more than thirty unsigned paintings, which help to reconstruct his youth immersed in the tenebrism of Caravaggio, of which he must have been one of the first disseminators (see The Denial of Saint Peter).
The oldest signed work known to be his is a Saint Jerome currently held in Toronto, Canada (Art Gallery of Ontario), from around 1614; in the signature Ribera proclaims himself a "Roman academician". But despite the inscription, this painting was disputed by experts until recently, since it differed considerably from the known style of the master.
The first youthful works by Ribera generally accepted as autograph are four oil paintings from a series of The Five Senses (c. 1615), which are now dispersed among four different collections: the Franz Mayer Museum (Mexico City), the Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena), the Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, U.S.) and the Juan Abelló Collection (Madrid). A large painting, The Raising of Lazarus (c. 1616), was acquired by the Museo del Prado in 2001, when its authorship was still disputed. Mention must also be made of a Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence recently authenticated in the Basilica del Pilar in Zaragoza and a rare example of a female nude, Susanna and the Elders (acquired in 2021 by the San Diego Museum of Art[10]). The Galleria Borghese in Rome owns The Judgment of Solomon, a work that was attributed to an anonymous artist and whose assignment to Ribera has indirectly made it possible to reattribute several more works to him. An important painting of Saint Martin Sharing His Cloak with the Beggar, painted in Parma, was lost, although a copy of it survives.
Between 1620 and 1626 hardly any pictorial works are dated, but most of his prints, a technique he cultivated with mastery, belong to this period.
At this time he already shows his taste for models from everyday life, of rough presence, which he renders with tight, delimiting brushstrokes in a manner similar to that of the Northern Caravaggisti, who exert a great influence on his works through his contact with them in Rome. From 1626 onward, there are abundant dated works that bear witness to his mastery. His paint becomes denser, modeled with the brush and highlighted by light in an almost obsessive search for the material, tactile truth of reality and its relief.
The years of the decade from 1620 to 1630 are, without doubt, those in which Ribera devoted the most time and attention to etching, leaving some prints of exceptional beauty and quality: Saint Jerome and the Angel (1621), Saint Jerome Reading (1624), The Poet and Drunken Silenus (1628; which repeats his painting in the Museo di Capodimonte). A total of 17 plates are attributed to him, all but one prior to 1630, and it is said that he engraved them only for promotional purposes, to spread his art and attract commissions for paintings. Once he achieved success, Ribera would stop engraving. With some exceptions, these prints repeat compositions previously painted, although they are not faithful copies, but rather introduce variations that improve their composition.
Between 1626 and 1632 he produced more emphatic works that show his most tenebrist phase. They are severe compositions of great luminous diagonals that fill the surface, always underlining the solemn monumentality of the whole with elements of powerful horizontality, such as thick stone slabs or enormous tree trunks. Notable is the series of "Saint Peters" that he painted over those years.
In 1629 the Duke of Alcalá, Fernando Afán de Ribera, became the new Viceroy, and he was to be the painter's new patron; he commissioned from him works such as The Bearded Woman (1631) or a series of Philosophers, in which he leaves testimony of his most radical naturalism: models of an almost wounding vulgarity, rendered with an extremely intense truthfulness.
The 1630s are Ribera's most important decade, both for the apogee of his art and for his commercial success. The painter lightens his palette under the influence of Van Dyck and Venetian painting of the previous century, without lowering the quality of his drawing and his naturalist fidelity. A large Immaculate Conception, painted for the Convent of the Agustinas in Salamanca, is considered one of the most important versions of that subject in European painting, and it is believed that Murillo took it into account for his popular later versions.
His pictorial subjects are mostly religious; the artist renders in a very explicit and intensely emotional way scenes of martyrdom such as the Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew (1644, MNAC in Barcelona) or the Martyrdom of Saint Philip (1639; Museo del Prado), as well as individual half-length or full-length representations of the apostles (Apostolados), especially those of Saint Peter.
However, he also produced works of a secular character: figures of philosophers (Archimedes, 1630, Museo del Prado), mythological subjects such as the Drunken Silenus of 1626 in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples (his first signed and dated painting), allegorical representations of the senses (Allegory of Touch of 1632, Museo del Prado, known as The Blind Sculptor), a few landscape paintings (two have been identified in the Monterrey Palace in Salamanca) and some portraits such as The Bearded Woman (1631, Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli, Hospital de Tavera, Toledo).
The 1640s, with the interruptions due to his illness, perhaps a thrombosis (despite which the activity of the workshop did not stop), brought a series of works of a certain classicism in composition, without renouncing the energy of certain individual faces. In his last works he also once again undergoes a stylistic change that returns him to a certain extent to the tenebrist compositions of his first stage; the causes may have been his unfortunate personal circumstances. He remained a commercially successful and prestigious artist, and he was the master of Luca Giordano in his Neapolitan workshop, influencing his style.
The economic crisis that followed the revolt of Masaniello in Naples (1647) affected Ribera's pictorial production, and he would furthermore become involved in a scandal.
To suppress the revolt, Spanish troops had come to Naples under the command of Don Juan José de Austria, the natural son of Philip IV. Ribera painted a portrait of Don Juan José on horseback (Royal Palace of Madrid), which he later repeated as a print; it was the last etching he produced, and in late editions it was modified to give it the identity of King Charles II. A coat of arms of the Marquis of Tarifa, datable to around 1629–33, was also attributed to Ribera, in which the Valencian artist may have engraved the cherubs at the top; however, the latest studies reject this authorship.
Around 1647 the scandal that shook the artist's old age took place: according to tradition, one of Ribera's daughters, Margarita, was seduced by Don Juan José, an illicit relationship since they were an unmarried couple. Today it is believed that the young woman in question was not Ribera's daughter but a niece, but the fact is that after the revolt and the family vicissitudes, Ribera, ill, considerably reduced his work.
His workshop saw a reduction in the number of assistants, who had fled Naples for fear of reprisals, and yet he still signed some of his masterpieces in the very year of his death and brought to completion long-meditated cycles.
Examples from this period are The Immaculate Conception (1650, Museo del Prado), Penitent Saint Jerome (1652, Museo del Prado) and a large Holy Family (Metropolitan Museum, New York), whose tenderness and richness of color are in tune with Guido Reni.
Drunken Silenus (1626). The canvas is in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples. Ribera made an engraved version of it, with slight variations. This painting depicts Silenus lying on a cloth surrounded by various figures: a donkey and a young satyr with a cup in his hand, another satyr pouring wine into Silenus's cup, and a third. On the ground there is a staff, a tortoise and a seashell. Some authors believe that this painting is an interpretation of a bacchanal in the course of a festivity to crown Bacchus; others, however, are of the opinion that it reflects the classicist profile, since they associate it with Apollo, the god who in Renaissance and Baroque iconography is associated with Silenus.
Saint Andrew (1630). It is in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The saint is represented against a dark background embracing the cross of his martyrdom and with a thick fishhook in his hand, to which a fish is attached. This detail alludes to his trade as a fisherman. He appears with his torso bare, and the figure is seen lit from the left. By representing this isolated figure with simplicity and a realist sense, the painter creates an image of profound emotional impact.
The Bearded Woman (Magdalena Ventura with Her Husband) (1631). Until a few years ago the canvas was in the Hospital Tavera in Toledo (Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli), and it is currently on deposit at the Museo del Prado. It is one of the most unusual paintings of 17th-century European painting, since it depicts the woman with a masculine appearance due to her suffering from hirsutism. The work brings out the psychological drama of the woman transformed into a man and the resignation of the husband.[11]
Saint Peter in Penitence (c. 1630–1640). The painting portrays the apostle Saint Peter as an old man in profile against a dark background, with brighter-colored clothing, his hands joined and clasped in a gesture of repentance or prayer, while his gaze is directed toward heaven in a profound religious gesture.[12]
The Immaculate Conception, c. 1630 (Museo del Prado).The Immaculate Conception (c. 1630). The painting is in the church of the Convent of the Agustinas Recoletas in Salamanca, located opposite one side of the Monterrey Palace. It is a traditional representation: it dresses the Virgin in a blue mantle and white tunic and incorporates the angels around her. But it is striking for its unusual format and its chromatic exuberance. Dirty and in poor condition for a long time, it was restored on the occasion of the Ribera retrospective held at the Museo del Prado in 1992. It is considered an essential work of the Spaniard's phase of most intense painterliness and luminism and a masterpiece of Neapolitan and Spanish Baroque painting. It was a personal commission from the Count of Monterrey and Viceroy of NaplesManuel de Zúñiga Acevedo y Fonseca, for his burial pantheon, which was the Church of the Convent.
The Trinity (1635–1636). This painting is in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. There is a replica of almost identical quality in the Monastery of El Escorial. In this canvas he combines the tenebrist style of his youthful years, which can be seen in the violent illumination of the body of Christ, with a refined painterliness.
Assumption of the Magdalene (1636). This painting was in El Escorial but today is in the Academy of San Fernando. It appears in an inventory of 1700 as a "Magdalene with a gilded frame three and a quarter varas long". In this work Ribera, although he represents one of the most important symbols of the sacrament of penance in the world of the Counter-Reformation, created an image that exalts the beauty and feminine fascination of the saint.
The Martyrdom of Saint Philip, 1639 (Museo del Prado).Martyrdom of Saint Philip (1639). This painting is exhibited in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. It represents the moments before the martyrdom of Saint Philip, the apostle who preached in the city of Hierapolis and was crucified. Ribera emphasizes the drama, insisting on the violence of the executioners and the suffering of the martyr. The subject of this painting was for a long time interpreted as the martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew. However, various elements show that it is Saint Philip.
Jacob's Dream (1639). This painting is in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. It narrates the episode of the dream of Jacob. The dreamed ladder is a symbol of the contemplative life, according to the Benedictine interpretation. In the 17th century versions of the episode with the ladder are frequent, although Ribera preferred to insist on the humanity of the Shepherd.
The Clubfoot, El patizambo, El lisiado or El zambo (1642). This canvas is in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The painting represents a young beggar of humble appearance. Ribera shows the figure of the cripple in an almost monumental manner, with almost monochrome tones and a simple compositional structure. Many details are realistic, for example, the deformed foot. This canvas is a faithful testimony of a critique of scientific culture and of human misery.
Portrait of Don Juan José de Austria on Horseback, 1648 (Gallery of Royal Collections).Portrait of Don Juan José de Austria on Horseback (1648). It is the only equestrian portrait painted by Ribera. Juan José de Austria is represented victorious, riding a horse in a curvet, holding a baton and invested with the crimson sash of captain general, after having suppressed the Naples rebellion of 1647 and having been appointed Viceroy by his father Philip IV of Spain. In the background of the painting the Castel Sant'Elmo and the gulf that bathes the city can be seen. Lost in the Fire of the Royal Alcázar of Madrid and recovered a century later by Isabella II for the Royal Palace, the portrait is currently exhibited in the Gallery of Royal Collections.
Saint Mary of Egypt (1651). This painting is in the Museo Civico Gaetano Filangieri in Naples. It is part of the large series of male and female saints that constituted the favorite subject of a clientele deeply marked by the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. Ribera treated this subject several times; in the final stage of his life, the artist, marked by various existential difficulties, managed to express the emotions of his figures more intensely than ever, portraying them with a great spirit of humanity. The vigorous naturalism of his early works gives way to a more delicate painterliness, and the chromatic range is toned down to earthy hues. As in the mature works, the strong chiaroscuro contrasts are replaced by a more natural use of light.
Prado Apostolado, a set of 11 works, whose common subject is the Apostles and Christ the Savior. Of very similar characteristics and dimensions, they were painted in oil on canvas between 1630 and 1632. The collection is currently held in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
Legacy
Ribera is one of the capital figures of painting, not only Spanish but European, of the 17th century and, in a certain way, one of the most influential, since his forms and models spread throughout Italy, Central Europe and the Holland of Rembrandt, leaving a great mark in Spain.
But the special circumstance of being a foreigner in Italy has caused him to be seen as a person alien to its tradition and its tastes. On his arrival in Italy the Caravaggesque novelty was at its full apogee, in tension with the Roman-Bolognese renewal that revived the classicist taste. For this reason, he adopted the tenebrism offered by the Flemish and Dutch painters present in Rome, but he did not fail to see and assimilate something of the beautiful forms of the classicist world.
Self-portrait of José de Ribera, engraving by Hamlet Winstanley (1729).Saint Cecilia, 1647 (c.), considered one of the most beautiful drawings of his entire production.[13] Museo del Prado, Cabinet of Drawings and Prints.
Lord Byron said of Ribera that he painted with the blood of the saints, because of the intensity of his stroke, his harrowing anatomy and the gruesomeness of some of his subjects. But Ribera is neither crude nor primitive; he completed his training by enriching himself with other works of Italian culture that soon became familiar to him. Above all, the study of the great painting of the Renaissance. In Ribera's education there is another element that distances him from Spanish artists: the study of classical antiquity, in the way that the European Renaissance and Baroque masters did. He took an interest in mythological subjects (although he did not receive many commissions of this kind) and studied the sculptures of the ancient Roman Empire. His extraordinary quality as a draftsman and his mastery of anatomy also set him apart from the Spanish painters of his time, who were mostly limited by their religious clientele and by questions of morality.
Throughout his works, we can see that Ribera was not to be a painter of a single register; rather, his language would adapt with admirable precision to each of the events depicted. Having overcome his initial tenebrism, he would return to intense contrasts of light and shadow when certain subjects required it or when the iconography called for it.
We can say that he is an extraordinary creator, since he possesses the capacity to create images throbbing with true passion in the service of a religious exaltation that is not only Spanish but belongs to the whole of the Catholic and Mediterranean Counter-Reformation; his mastery as a colorist, which gathers all the sensual opulence of Venice and Flanders, while at the same time being capable of harmonizing the most refined ranges set out with the most intimate lyricism; and his inexhaustible capacity as an "inventor" of humanistic types that lend their severe reality to saints and ancient philosophers with identical gravity, make him one of the summits of his century.
In the last thirty years studies have been carried out, with which new exhibitions arose that were held in 1992 in Naples, Madrid and New York. A precedent for this was the publication, in the series Clasici dell´Arte, of an almost complete catalog of the paintings attributed to him. This made available to everyone an enormous wealth of works that made it possible to undertake the study of this great artist and to overcome the prejudices that distorted his assessment. In 2011, an exhibition in Madrid and Naples presented the latest discoveries about the artist: his initial stage in Italy. More than thirty unsigned oil paintings have been identified as his, which demonstrate his precocious mastery and place him among the first disseminators of Caravaggio's tenebrism.
References
↑Pérez Sánchez, Alfonso E. "José de Ribera". Diccionario Biográfico Español (in español). Real Academia de la Historia.
↑Seis siglos de arte. Cien grandes maestros (in español). México: Museo Soumaya-Fundación Carlso. 2006. p. 37. ISBN968-7794-30-5.
↑Portús Pérez, Javier. "Santa Cecilia [Ribera]". In Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado (ed.). Enciclopedia del Museo del Prado (in español) (2006 ed.). Retrieved September 26, 2017.
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