RIBERA, Jusepe de

This late work of the artist is less somber and more monumental the paintings from his early period.

Ribera, Lo Spagnoletto, was active in Naples where, influenced by the followers of Caravaggio, the master of tenebroso, he built up a pictorial world based on dramatic contrasts of light and shade. In representing a psychological phenomenon or a tragic situation he liked to utilize the possibilities offered by the wrinkles of the face. Like all painters of his period, particularly Spanish artists, he usually depicted religious themes. But he also liked to paint old people - for example imaginary portraits of writers and the sages of antiquity; and because he used brownish tints and emphasized the contrasting light and shade caused by facial wrinkles Ribera used to be called ‘the Rembrandt of the South’.

Although all such comparisons are usually pointless, it is true that Ribera’s portrait of the old woman indicates an approach not unlike that of Rembrandt. It is a study of a character highly typical of the age, for in the seventeenth century money-lenders played an important role in the economic life of the country, in Italy as in the Netherlands. A money-lender not only lent money, he also changed money and acted as a banker.

“Oh, what is my repentance ! Oh, a flute is not worth all that ! Despite his cries, his skin is torn off his whole body; (..) his naked muscles become visible; a convulsive movement trembles the veins, lacking their covering of skin.” (Ovid: Metamorphoses, Book VI, verses 386-390). This is how Apollo punishes Marsyas, the satyr who dared to question the superiority of the melody of the divine lyre over the worldly sensuality of his flute.

This masterpiece by Jusepe de Ribera was painted in 1637, when his style had reached maturity. The passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses depicted here is the fruit of the aesthetic atmosphere that prevailed at Naples, considered the capital of painting of the time. It is in this context that the painter highlights the confrontation between the divine and the earthly, with the form of representation underlining the content. From his Caravaggesque beginnings, Rivera preserved the expressiveness and the modelling provided by chiaroscuro. But the contrasts characterising this manifestation of Neapolitan Baroque are no longer limited to the clashes of light. De Ribera goes further, achieving a sense of the tragic through every item in the canvas. Like Caravaggio, he made use of popular sources and of real life situations in order to represent the expression of faith. In this way his paintings of figures who, like Marsyas, could have come from the alleyways of Naples, had already achieved renown right across Europe.

The figure of the god is marked by the classicism which was then in fashion in Naples. His anatomical perfection, his youth and his idealised beauty are surrounded by flowing, airy draperies which accentuate the diagonal thrust of the composition. In the spirit of the baroque, the roughness of Marsyas’ body and the shape of the tree contrast with this classicism. As in his famous depictions of martyrs, Ribera places the victim foreshortened in the foreground. The structure is balanced by a group of forest inhabitants who watch on powerless as the god bears down on his victim.

Ribera painted several versions of the mythological theme.

Ribera’s image of Aristotle is one of a series of six imaginary portraits of ancient philosophers commissioned in 1636 by the Prince of Liechtenstein.

Standing in a sweeping landscape, dressed in hatcbed brown clothes, barefoot and shouldering a crutch, his disability is evident: his deformed foot is at the centre of the spectator’s field of vision. In his left band, this pitiable creature holds a note with the inscription: “DA MIHI ELIMO/SINAM PROPTER/ AMOREM DEI” (“Give me alms, for the love of God”).

Described in this way, the painting would appear to be an image of misery, humiliation and begging. Yet what meets the eye, contradicts such an unequivocal statement. The boy whose face is aged beyond his years stands proud and upright againt the landscape in the background. He looks directly downwards at the spectator with a relaxed gaze of experience and superiority. The boy’s mouth is opened in a relatively unattractive gummy grin that permits no patronizing sympathy. Ribera has created a monument to the justice of God. He shows up our hierarchical thinking, our worldly expectations of the gratitude of the poor, to whom we give alms. The apparently miserable, valueless individual stands here like a monument admonisbing us to remember that all creatures are equal before God. This boy is not begging for mercy. He is claiming his right to it.

The painting is one of the most celebrated of Jusepe de Ribera’s so-called ragged philosophers. He appears to have been largely responsible for the invention of the subject in the mid 1610s, and it enjoyed great success in Italy over the course of the seventeenth century in the hands of artists such as Salvator Rosa and Luca Giordano.

The philosopher depicted here was traditionally identified as the ancient Sicilian mathematician Archimedes, since he holds a compass and a sheaf of papers displaying geometric designs, and is surrounded by books. However, in a learned article on the iconography of ancient philosophers published in 1962, Delphine Fitz Darby proposed that he should be identified as Democritus (c.460-c.370 BC) - the laughing philosopher who mocks the folly of human behaviour - on account of his grin. Democritus is usually paired with Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher who despairs at the absurdity of the world. It has to be said that Ribera rarely made a special effort to identify his philosophers.

The philosopher is shown here as a toothless old Spaniard. His weathered, wrinkled face has none of the marbled pallor of scholarship. In one thin hand, he holds a pile of papers and in the other a compass. His nails are dirty, his dress unkempt, and an old cloak is thrown carelessly over his undershirt, open to reveal his chest. He looks at us with a broad grin, and seems as close to the everyday life of Ribera’s contemporaries as the artist’s paintings of the saints. We find no monumental dignity here, only the dignity of a strong personality.

The most famous of the Cynics, the philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, who died in 323 BC, is provided here with a lamp by way of an attribute. According to his own statement, he used it in broad daylight to find a ‘genuine person’ on a bustling marketplace. The subject was much loved throughout Baroque Europe, although it appears that the Italians preferred to depict the philosopher alone, as with this and another painting by Ribera, while the densely populated scenes were more popular in the Netherlands.

Ribera was interested in studying different types of people, and even his religious paintings seem to be populated with figures taken from the everyday world about him, in the tradition of Caravaggio. The subject of this portrait must have prompted this depiction of an eccentric outsider, his hair tangled, his beard unkempt, his hands work-worn, dressed in simple apparel, and directing a penetrating gaze at the beholder.

In this large depiction of Hercules resting from his labours, the giant’s massive figure is shown seated and accompanied by his club and lion skin, his brow furrowed after his exertions.

Since the overall quality of the canvas is not homogenous, the contribution of studio assistants to the execution is assumed.

The Trinity shows Ribera’s confidence in his pictorial possibilities. The tragedy of the scene is emphasized by the use of light and a sumptuous palette. The bluish cadaver of Christ, marked by blood that runs down his side, staining his loincloth and shroud, contrasts with the hieratic appearance of God the Father, who shows us his dead Son, accompanied by the dove of the Holy Ghost. This work’s message, Christ’s death and suffering for Humanity, is extraordinarily clear.

There is another, slightly different, version of this work at the Monastery of El Escorial.

Ixion was one of the four legendary figures (Ixion, Sisyphus Tantalus, Tytius) who are customarily linked in Greek mythology and in art, because they all underwent punishment in Hades. Ixion, a king of Thessaly, murdered his father-in-law. He also attempted to seduce the goddess Juno, but her husband Jupiter foiled him by making an image in her likeness from the clouds and the drunk Ixion embraced this instead. His punishment was to be bound to a fiery wheel which turned forever.

This painting narrates an event from chapter 27 of Genesis, in which Jacob tricks his father, Isaac, in order to obtain the blessing that should rightfully go to his older brother, Esau. Jacob’s mother, Rebecca, helps him dress in Esau’s clothes and cover his arm with a sheepskin that resembles his brother’s abundant body hair. He then takes food to his elderly, blind father, Isaac, thus inducing him to confuse him with Esau. This was a very common subject among 17th-century Italian painters, but was rarely depicted in Spain.

This work by Ribera has particular interest because it conspicuously avoids the usual iconography of Jacob’s dream, involving a ladder. Instead, the dream is suggested merely by vaporous, golden figures who might almost be part of the real sky. But the setting of the dreamer, and the play of light on his sleeping face, impart a portentous and mysterious mood to the scene.

In this quiet, strangely powerful scene, Ribera turns the rigorous geometry of the Roman classical style into the lyric poetry of naturalism.

Under the influence of the Roman, Ribera experimented briefly with a new type of painting, the landscape. The Landscape with Shepherds is a splendid example of his landscapes. Ribera often included simple if evocative vistas in his backgrounds, which consist of little but distant mountains under a limpid, blue sky streaked with cirrus clouds. In these extensive landscapes of 1639, he creates compositions of a powerful simplicity and compelling atmosphere which imply a knowledge of landscape painting in Rome. Ribera does not truly imitate Claude and his followers, but rather applies their warm effects of light to the sterner, architectonic compositions of the Bolognese practitioners, such as Carracci and Domenichino. This synthesis is new and original, and provided the initial inspiration to Salvator Rosa, who was then just starting his career in Naples.

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Franz Schubert: Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock) D 965

Ribera painted this picture, his most unusual work in 1629 at the request of the duke of Alcal�, one of Ribera’s major viceregal patrons. A lengthy Latin inscription, which describes the circumstances of the commission, implies that it was executed to record a wonder of the natural world. Magdalena Ventura was from the Abruzzi, a region in the kingdom of Naples, and began to grow a beard when she was thirty-seven. Fifteen years later, the woman and her husband, a timid sort wearing an understandably befuddled expression, produced the infant she holds in her arms. As the inscription further attests, the picture was completed on 16 February 1631 by “JOSEPHVS DE RIBERA HISPANUS CHRISTI CRVCE INSIGNITVS,” a characteristic reference to Ribera’s prized nationality and to the Order of Christ received from POpe Urban VIII on 29 January 1626. In this unforgettable image Ribera’s uncompromising realism permits no escape from the unsettling force of this aberrative family portrait.

This painting was traditionally considered to represent the martyrdom of St Bartholomew, who was crucified and flayed while alive. Based on the fact that the attribute of the saint, the knife is lacking in the picture, recent research established that the painting represents the martyrdom of St Philip who was one of the first disciples to follow Jesus. He preached the Gospel in Phrygia and died at Hierapolis, first stoned that crucified.

St Philip apostle was Philip IV’s patron saint and presumably Ribera painted the canvas upon royal commission. Like Caravaggio in his Crucifixion of St Peter, Ribera contradicts the canonical concept of the heroic martyr who bears his torture with quiet patience and the serene assurance of salvation. Philip, apostle and preacher is portrayed by Ribera as a weak elderly man, whose fear of death and desperation are clearly written in his face. The louts dragging him up by a beam before the eyes of the curious onlookers are concentrating fully on their task. The question of guilt and innocence remains unanswered for the incident is still very much in the present.

The beautiful Mary Magdalene Penitent is a replica of the work kept in the Prado Museum that forms part of a series of four compositions in which youth and old age in man and woman are contrasted; Magdalene is compared with Saint John the Baptist adolescent and Saint Mary of Egypt is compared to Saint Bartholomew.

The pictorial space in this solemn and monumental composition is arranged in the form of a triangle. The thick squared ashlars on which the saint is leaning pay tribute to the most classical of painters from Bologna, Annibale Carracci, who used them in his Pietà, a work that was made widely accessible through prints.

This Mater Dolorosa is from the period of Rivera’s creative maturity, productive of his most important works. The influence of Titian, revered by Ribera as by other great masters of the High Renaissance, can still be clearly seen.

Mary Magdalene is shown here as the hermit saint she became upon giving up her life of moral decadence, after her encounter with the Savior. She kneels in prayer at the entrance to her cave and raises her eyes to heaven, eyes that are perhaps disproportionately large but that are emphatically windows to her redeemed soul and that also heighten her feminine allure.

The painting is among a group of eight full-length single-figure composition of saints by Ribera that in 1658 were in the Madrid collection of Don Jer�nimo de la Torre, a member of the Royal Council and secretary of State of Flanders. The series included four pictures that are now in the Prado - this Mary Magdalene, St John the Baptist in the Desert, St Mary of Egipt, and St Bartholomew - and four others, of Sts Onophrius, Paul the Hermit, Agnes, and Sebastian.

Sometime between 1718 and 1772, the four paintings now in the Prado had a strip of canvas about 50 cm wide added to the left or right side, rendering each one almost square in format, presumably for decorative purposes. During the 1990’s the added strips were removed, and the paintings were restored to their original dimensions.

An earlier, almost identical version from 1637 is in the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao.

Although the precise identity of the Jesuit is unknown, the presence of a lion on which the man rests his hand suggests that he might have been a missionary.

This type of St Jerome appears frequently in Ribera’s early works, and the subject as well as the painting technique indicate that Ribera executed it after settling inNaples in 1616. In the present painting St Jerome, immersed in the translation of the Vulgate, is depicted in a balanced and perfectly proportioned composition. The fall of light masterfully outlines the contours of the figure, the virtuoso brushwork is quick and brilliant.

Ribera studied in Francisco Ribalta’s workshop in Valencia, but when still young he went to Naples, then under Spanish rule, where he worked for the rest of his life. He was called there as Lo Spagnoletto. He obtained most of his commissions from the Spanish Viceroy and his entourage, but he also completed a good many paintings for the churches of the city.

The influence of Caravaggio was felt throughout southern Italy and there can be little doubt that Ribera was the artist with the strongest and most independent personality of all his followers. Ribera represented crude reality boldly and without embellishment. The construction of his pictures is monumental and he reveals a strong sense of drama, empahasized by means of strongly contrasting light and shade. The poor inhabitants of Naples and the peasants of southern Italy were his models, and he depicted them without flattery or idealization as enormous figures clothed in rags. The painting of Saint Onufri also shows the influence of Caravaggio.

Ribera’s stay in Rome lasted only a few years. Only a handful of pictures from his Roman period has been identified, of which the most important is a set of the Five Senses, supposedly made for a Spanish client. The Sense of Taste, which typifies these pictures, is an ingenious representation of a theme made popular in the Netherlands during the late sixteenth century. Northern artists treated the subject as an allegory with classicising figures. However, Ribera rejects this model and takes a direct, naturalistic approach, embodying the sense of taste in a beefy, gluttonous type, poised to descent on a bowl of pasta and wash it down with a jug of wine.

Throughout his career, Ribera was an avid draftsman in pen and ink and in red chalk, and the chalk drawings in particular evince the approach of an artist trained in an Italian workshop. In this study of St Albert Ribera solves a problem of figure drawing with an ease that is rarely matched by Spanish painters of the period. The technique is Italianate as well: thin, closely spaced lines and soft shadows are used to delineate the body and musculature.

This is an early painting by Ribera executed shortly after his arrival in Naples from Rome. Ribera’s early style owes much to what the artist had learned from Caravaggio in Rome.

Ribera was trained in Valencia, but in about 1616 he moved to Italy, settling in Naples. A clever draftsman and a master of composition, his numerous paintings are more varied than the legends concerning him might lead one to suppose. In his better work the dominant colors, browns and reds, contrast with cruel lighting, which sometimes appears to do violence to the forms. In Ribera highly refined ecxecution and realistic modeling, particularly the marvelous flesh tints of his saints, are combined with a marked preference for dramatic themes, as may be seen in his St Andrew, in the Prado, or better in the painting of the martyrdom of the same saint, now in Budapest. His Crucifixion, in the collegiate church od Osuna, and his Martyrdom of St Bartholomew (1630) in the Prado, are similar in intention and technique.

A preference does not imply total exclusion, and there is evidence that Ribera was also a sumptuous colorist. His style evolved from an early preoccupation with ‘tenebrist’ techniques, through a period of experiment with a silvery light, to a final stage characterized by warm and golden tones. One of his most beautiful paintings is the Holy Family in the Metropolitam Museum of Art in New York. Ribera also practiced engraving and his influence was considerable, both in Italy, where he lived in Naples when it was ruled by Spanish viceroys, and in Spain. Much of his work was intended for Spanish patrons and was an object of admiration as well as a stimulus to Spanish painters.

According to legend, the giant Ophorus carried the infant Christ across a river at night, and was pressed down below the surface of the water by the weight of the child, thereby being baptized. Thereafter he received the name Christophorus (“bearer of Christ”). In this night scene, Ribera reiterates the legend, but he adds more: he brings life to the figure of the giant, lending him an expression of incredulity and astonishment at the sight of the infant Christ. His physical power is evident in the drawing of his muscles of arms and shoulders. Paradoxically yet fittingly, Ribera has given him the flickering shadow of all-devouring ecstasy that predominates in a heightened form in his depictions of monks. It is a scene of superficial poverty without the brilliance of colour and luminosity. The miraculous experience of Christophorus is neither majestic nor historic, but is a sacred occurrence repeated daily before our very eyes.

This canvas stands out due to its bold naturalism, an example of the vigorous “tenebrism” that is typical of the youthful work of Spanish painter, Jusepe de Ribera, softened here by the artist’s greater sensitivity to color and light, as a result of the neo-Venetian and Van Dyck influences he absorbed from the 1630s. The dark, solid background highlights the saint’s figure, which is surrounded by an intense light of great atmospheric value, fading from the lighter tones around the head and the greater shadows and solid tones in the background. The painting has an obvious naturalistic feel, even in such details as the appearance of the bleeding injury on the ribs and the stigmata on the hands, depicted with an absolute adherence to the testimonies handed down from Franciscan sources, and the almost tactile representation of the cloth and patches on the robe, sewn on in pale thread. The skull in the foreground IS painted in an extraordinarily fluid style.

The painting is ssigned and dated half way up on the right-hand side.

During his time in Rome, Ribera painted a number of half- and three-quarter-length Apostles and Philosophers, including the present St James.

Ribera treated this subject on several occasions.

The image of St Jerome, one of the four Fathers of the Church and a favourite subject of popular religious devotion, was also one of Ribera’s favourite themes. In fact, according to the most recent historiography, he painted forty-four different versions of this subject.

In this painting the saint looks up from his writing, believing that he has heard the sound of the trumpet of doom. A scream seems to be issuing from his mouth and reaches us as if in a dream: there is no sound and yet it can be heard.

The date on the painting has been wrongly read as 1629 or 1639, whereas it is undoubtedly 1637 (the year in which Ren� Descartes published his Discours de la m�thode). This is the period in which the majority of his signed and dated works were produced and thus marks the peak of the career of this artist of Spanish origin, who was active chiefly in Naples and had close ties with the culture of that city. In that year the painter, aged forty-six, started to work for the monks of the Charterhouse of San Martino, for whom he produced his most remarkable works, including the Pietà located in the sacristy of that church.

The choice of humble models, the warm light, the thick and soft paint, the lively colours, the exaggerated chiaroscuro, and the crude and impassioned realism of his interpretation of dramatic events form the basis of his popularity. But above all it was through his unflinching immersion in the tragic reality of humanity that Ribera’s art came, with Luca Giordano serving as an intermediary, to influence the esthetics of the Venetian tenebrosi.

This painting was executed for Santa Trinità delle Monache. The immediate source is Ribera’s own print of 1621, which has been altered to heighten the dramatic impact of the angel, who rouses the saint from his studies by sounding the trumpet of the Last Judgment. More important is the level of technical maturity, as evinced in the richly textured brushwork that enlivens every square millimetre of the surface. The powerful contrast of light and shadow produces what contemporary theorists most admired about Ribera’s painting - his “relievo,” that ability to make two-dimensional objects seem as if they were projecting outward from the canvas. The brilliant red drapery over the saint’s leg also provides the composition with an electrifying accent.

This composition was inspired by Caravaggo’s painting in the Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome.

In the 1620s Ribera began to experiment with etching, he soon mastered. For Ribera, this medium was a sideline that did not long hold his interest; all but one of his eighteen prints were created between 1620 and 1630, in the hope of attracting new patrons.

The painting is among a group of eight full-length single-figure composition of saints by Ribera that in 1658 were in the Madrid collection of Don Jer�nimo de la Torre, a member of the Royal Council and secretary of State of Flanders. The series included four pictures that are now in the Prado - Mary Magdalene, St John the Baptist in the Desert, St Mary of Egipt, and St Bartholomew - and four others, of Sts Onophrius, Paul the Hermit, Agnes, and Sebastian.

Sometime between 1718 and 1772, the four paintings now in the Prado had a strip of canvas about 50 cm wide added to the left or right side, rendering each one almost square in format, presumably for decorative purposes. During the 1990’s the added strips were removed, and the paintings were restored to their original dimensions.

This canvas belongs to the intensely realistic and direct portrayals of the Apostles for which Ribera is justly famous. The choice of ordinary men as models for his series of Saints and Apostles brought an immediacy to his paintings.

The painting is signed and dated lower right: Jusepe de Ribera/espanol, F. 1632.

The seventeenth century was a very productive period for Spanish painting. Spain’s extensive trade links brought with them an interchange of artistic ideas, particularly with Italy. Jusepe de Ribera played an important role in this. He began his studies with Ribalta but left Spain early on and went to Italy, where he discovered the work of Caravaggio. His style is characterized by strong light and shade, together with a realistic portrayal even of religious themes, as seen in his St Paul the Hermit of 1647.

In this large canvas, the figure of the saint lies naked on the ground, one arm still suspended from the tree of martyrdom. The holy women Irene and Lucilla tend the saint, one of them removing the arrows and the other holding the jar of ointment. Two little angels bearing the crown and the palm of martyrdom hover above them. Without abandoning realism, Ribera is an unquestionable master of realistic tenebrism.

This painting is one of Ribera’s early works, related to the version commissioned by the viceroy of Naples, duke of Osuna (1616-18, Collegiate Church of Osuna) and that in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg (clearly dated 1628).

This signed and dated work, depicting St Teresa of �vila (1515-1582), is typical of Ribera’s production from the 1640s. St Teresa was a theologian and reformer of the Catholic Church, founding the Discalced Order of the Carmelites with St John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz).

Ribera is known primarily for his religious subjects, but he painted a number of mythological and historical scenes. This painting represents a true story, a duel between two women, Isabella de Carazzi and Diambra de Pottinella for the love of Fabio de Zeresola. Probably the unusual or grotesque nature of the story attracted Ribera; altenatively he wished to satirize duels for honour, a common phenomenon in the Naples of his time. Ribera employs the warm colouring typical of his mature work.

Ribera was a sumptuous colorist. His style evolved from an early preoccupation with “tenebrist” techniques, through a period of experiment with a silvery light, to a final stage characterized by warm and golden tones. One of his most beautiful paintings is the Holy Family in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Especially notable is the beautiful still-life as well as the brilliant rendition of the fabrics and the tender expressions.

A characteristic feature of Ribera’s work is his extremely realistic mode of presentation, as can be seen in the pale face of Christ and the face of his grieving mother.

The Apostle St Andrew, Peter’s brother, preached to the Scythians, that is the inhabitants of the region around the Black Sea; in this way he became the apostle of Byzantium and later of the Russian Empire. According to medieval legend he was crucified on two beams joined together in the form of an X; thus what has come to be known as the cross of St Andrew found its way into the nag of the Tsars’ army and also the Union Jack.

In this painting, as in his most famous picture, The Martyrdom of St Bartholomew now in Madrid, Ribera chose the most dramatic moment of the cruel event: the moment before the crucifixion when the saint still had the chance to choose between apostasy and martyrdom. In dim, cave-like surroundings, the saint is depicted in silent debate with a priest who holds up a pagan idol. The body of St Andrew is strongly illuminated in contrast to the rest of the picture thus emphasizing the saint’s decision; this is primarily conveyed, not by the expression on his face, but by the convulsive tension of the muscles of his enfeebled body, the involuntary movements of a man who in his mind is resigned to death: he throws back his arms to assist his executioners.

The present work is one of numerous ‘beggar-philospher’ pictures produced by Jusepe de Ribera and his studio during the 1630s. The origin of these works relate to a commission undertaken by Ribera for Don Fernando Enr�quez Af�n de Ribera, 3rd Duke of Alcal� (1583-1637), when the latter was viceroy of Naples between 1629 and 1632. It is suggested that the present canvas depicting Thales was part of the original Alcal� series.

Ribera’s inspired fusion of naturalism and classicism reached a peak in 1643. Around 1644 he was stricken with an incapacitating illness. The exact nature of his affliction is not clear, but it continued to plague him for several years, making it impossible for him to work except intermittently. The Vision of St Bruno was executed before his illness.