Seventeenthcentury Spanish Artists Were Influenced by the Powerful Dramatic Art of

Portrait of Archimedes (1630)
Prado Museum, Madrid.

Detail from The Holy Trinity (1635)
Prado Museum, Madrid.
A perfect example of Caravaggism.

Jusepe (Jose) de Ribera (1591-1652)

Contents

• Introduction: Spanish Realism
• Biography
• Ribera's Painting Career
• Ribera'southward Style of Painting

Introduction: Spanish Realism

During the second half of the sixteenth century the most progressive tardily Spanish Renaissance artists were ostensibly trying to master the clandestine of Renaissance grace and grandeur. What they were really doing, from the evolutionary point of view, was learning a new technique with which things seen could be represented with greater truthfulness - witness the constant intrusion into their grandiose compositions of incompatible, realistic features. During the era of the Castilian Baroque, this was to culminate in the work of Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), just before him the tradition was carried by several others, notably the Naples-based Spanish painter Jose Ribera, famous for his intense Christian fine art, and his contribution to the Vatican'south propaganda campaign of Catholic Counter-Reformation Art. Strongly influenced by Caravaggio's tenebrism, Ribera became i of the greatest Spanish exponents of Baroque painting, and - along with El Greco, Velazquez and Zurbaran - one of the peachy exemplars of religious Baroque art. (See also: Spanish Baroque Artists.) He was one of the leading contributors to painting in Naples during the early seicento and his piece of work paved the mode for the Neapolitan Baroque in the 2d one-half of the 17th century. Amongst his famous religious paintings are Holy Trinity (1635, Prado, Madrid), The Immaculate Conception (1635, Augustinian Convent, Recoletas, Salamanca), St Agnes (1641, Gemaldegalerie, Alte Meister, Dresden) and The Adoration of the Shepherds (1650, Louvre). See also: Classicism and Naturalism in Italian 17th Century Painting.

ARTS AND AESTHETICS
For a guide to the meaning
and categories of art,
see: Definition of Art.

WORLDS Meridian ARTISTS
For top creative practitioners, see:
Best Artists of All Time.
For the greatest genre-painting, see:
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For the top allegorical painting,
see: Best History Painters.

Biography

Ribera was born at Xativa, most Valencia. He came from a distinguished family. His father was aide at the important outpost, Castelnuovo, Naples. Ribera studied with the adept Valencian painter, Francisco Ribalta (1565-1628), who was somewhat influenced by Caravaggio's tenebrism. Probably at Ribalta's proposition, Ribera went to Italy, passing time in the north, at Parma, Padua, and probably Venice. After he moved to Rome where, according to legend, a Cardinal noticed him cartoon from the frescoes outside a palace in Rome, and gave him lodgings. At any rate, Ribera lived in Rome from 1613-16, mixing with other Caravaggisti, including Gerrit van Honthorst (1592-1656) and Hendrik Terbrugghen (1588-1629). According to Giulio Mancini, he so moved to Naples, to avert his creditors.

At this point, the Kingdom of Naples was a colony of Spain, ruled past Spanish Viceroys. Ribera's Spanish nationality gained him admission to the small-scale Castilian ruling group in the metropolis, and to the merchant community, that included notable fine art collectors. This allowed Ribera to concenter the attention of the Viceroy, the Duke of Osuna, who awarded him a number of major commissions.

Few paintings have survived from 1620 to 1626, although he did produce a number of splendid etchings designed to promote his art across Naples. His painting career seems to take resumed in the late 1620s, and thereafter he became accepted as the foremost Neapolitan artist, being especially popular with departer Spanish collectors. While in Naples he would have encountered many other Italian masters including: Battistello Caracciolo (1578-1635), Domenichino (1581-1641), Lanfranco (1582-1647), and Mattia Preti (1613-99). In addition, his own works had an impact on his successors, including Luca Giordano (1634-1705) and Francesco Solimena (1657-1747).

From 1644 onwards, Ribera seems to have been plagued past ill-health, which reduced his output, athough his workshop continued to be busy. In 1651 money issues forced the auction of his big house and by his death in 1652 he was in serious financial difficulty.

Ribera'southward Painting Career

Ribera's artworks, mainly Christian art, portraits and genre-works, are traditionally grouped into three periods.

The first period runs 1620-35 when, strongly under the influence of Caravaggio, he favoured dark backgrounds and violent contrasts of low-cal and dark: run into Drunken Silenus (1626, Capodimonte, Naples), Martrydom of St Andrew (1628, Museum of Fine Fine art, Budapest), Christ Disputing with the Doctors (1630, Kunsthistorisches, Vienna).

The second period is 1635-9, when the influence of Van Dyck acquired him to lighten his backgrounds, soften his chiaroscuro and make his shadows more than transparent: meet St Joseph and the Budding Rod (1635, Brooklyn Museum, New York), The Holy Trinity (1635, Prado, Madrid), Apollo Flaying Marsyas (1637, Museum of Fine art, Brussels), Isaac Blessing Jacob (1637, Prado, Madrid) and The Martyrdom of St Philip (1639, Prado, Madrid).

Tertiary, 1640-52, a period characterized past looser modeling and silvery tones of colour: see The Club Footed Boy (1642, Louvre, Paris), St Jerome (1644, Prado, Madrid), Adoration of the Shepherds (1650, Louvre, Paris) and Communion of the Apostles (1651, S. Martino, Naples).

Italian influence was present in Ribera's art throughout his life but with varying effect. That of Correggio and the Venetian Renaissance he soon shook off, but Caravaggio's proletarian Tenebrism influenced him permanently, though he adult a technique of his own. See also: Caravaggio in Naples (1607-10).

Style of Painting

Similar Caravaggio, Ribera chose his models from humble folk. He liked the grapheme of old men, which had through the years corrugated their bodies and heavily lined their faces. From such models he multiplied character studies. These Riberas are peradventure too unpleasantly aggressive. Although executed with every regard for construction and character, there is little concern with limerick, colour and the refinements of picture making mostly. A superior case of these character studies is the nearly nude A Hermit (Prado, Madrid). Superficially, in its deep shadows and broad areas of low-cal, the work resembles Caravaggio, merely only superficially. Where Caravaggio effaces the brushwork, Ribera asserts it. The surface is heavily loaded and streaked, and this produces a positive coruscation quite different the smooth painting of Caravaggio. The method is very similar to that of his contemporary Francisco Herrera (1590-1654), and it is possible that Ribera had studied Herrera'southward pictures earlier going to Italia. Ribera's color in these early on pictures is hot and unpleasant and lacks harmonious relations with the sparse accessories and simple backgrounds. We accept to do rather with powerful studies than with good pictures.

When Ribera paints subject-pictures, he chooses the most sensational themes. St. Jerome Hearing the Last Trump, Naples, the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew (1630, Prado, Madrid), the Martyrdom of St. Andrew (1628, Museum of Fine Art, Budapest), are still character studies with dramatic effect. Composition is obvious and unstudied. There is enough of calorie-free, but no air. The construction is massive and powerful, merely also disagreeably lumpy. The class is thrust out at you, every bit the expression was insisted on in the character studies. With all these defects, the Martyrdom of St Bartholomew is a very powerful and sincerely felt flick, the expression of a unique talent, while the Martyrdom of St. Andrew is finely dramatic and, for Ribera, of unusual decorative beauty. It is 1 of the best Baroque paintings of the Neapolitan School of Painting (1600-56) and a masterpiece of its time and class.

It was work similar this that won Ribera in 1626 the honour of election to the Academy of Fine Art in Rome (St. Luke's). The scholar and critic, Jusepe Martinez, tried to get him to return to Spain, and he retorted that "Espana was a tender mother to foreigners, but a cruel stepmother to her own people."

When Ribera was in his late forties, 1635, his manner changed for the better. The colour becomes cooler and more harmonious, the structure less ambitious, the composition more carefully considered. Ribera's leading biographer, Dr. A. 50. Mayer, dates this alter from the Immaculate Formulation, of 1635, at the Augustinian convent in Salamanca. Information technology is not a good picture, the Virgin Mary existence singularly dwarfed by the wide margins crowded with tumbling cherubs, and the baroque swirl of Her robe is overcomplicated, only at least nosotros take a reasonable distribution of light and shade and an approach to pictorial unity. It is interesting to compare this Assumption with the after more successfully operatic and sentimental versions past the Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-82) and his contemporaries.

Perchance the greatest movie of this mature sort is the Lamentation for Christ, at S. Martino, Naples. It is large in feeling, poignant without sentimentality, and the faces are near enough to the model to keep the upshot idiomatic and Neapolitan, without waiver of nobility.

The portrait art and character studies of this period are more restrained and more constructive than their predecessors of some twenty years earlier. The magnificent bust-portrait of a Musician, formerly in the Strogonoff Drove, now at Toledo, would live comfortably in whatsoever company. The St. Mary of Egypt, at Montpellier, has the utmost intensity of ascetic character, and the relation of the gaunt effigy to the craggy groundwork is very handsome. But Ribera's bear upon and taste are however uncertain. The very famous St. Agnes, at Dresden, is painfully sentimental. There is much pleasance-giving quality in the sturdy and lucid prose of one of his latest pictures, the Admiration of the Shepherds (1650, Louvre, Paris). In information technology we have an fine art of plain statement, without overtones of any sort, and information technology shows the normal mellowing of his harsh talent in former age.

To the end Ribera interpreted his task rather narrowly, as emphatic construction of form and assertion of facial expression. He seems to lack vision of the picture equally a whole. Velazquez visited him in 1649 and doubtless was polite and complimentary to his famous senior. 1 would like to know what Velazquez really thought about Ribera'southward work. Ribera died in 1652 one of the greatest of Spanish Old Masters and total of honours, leaving his stamp upon his Neapolitan contemporaries in detail and on seventeenth century Spanish painting in general.

Most his retentivity grew upwards a legend of arrogance and violence. He was accused of forming a selfish protectionist clique, known every bit the "Cabal of Naples", in order to monopolize Neapolitan art commissions, using threats of violence to scare off competitors. See: Painting in Naples (1600-1700). However, although not known for his well-counterbalanced temperament, at that place is probably a certain exaggeration in these stories. It is the view that one might expect Naples to accept of a very successful foreigner who was e'er called La Spagnoletto or "little Spaniard".

Paintings by Jusepe de Ribera can be seen in many of the all-time art museums throughout the world, notably the Prado Museum in Madrid and the Capodimonte Museum in Naples.

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Source: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/old-masters/ribera-jusepe.htm

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