Jusepe de Ribera

by

Hannah Friedman

• LAST MODIFIED: 23 September 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920105-0183

Introduction

Jusepe or José de Ribera (b. 1591–d. 1652), nicknamed “lo Spagnoletto,” was a prolific painter, draftsman, and printmaker whose art was a vital part of the visual and intellectual cultures of both Italy and Spain in the first half of the seventeenth century. A shoemaker’s son from the city of Játiva in the Kingdom of Valencia, Ribera moved to Italy in 1606, and settled in Naples in 1616 after a period of residence in Rome and travels in Northern Italy and Emilia, including short residence in Parma. The focus of his art is the human figure, though one finds brief forays into landscape painting and brilliant passages of still life within his oeuvre. Unlike many of his peers in the ranks of elite painters in his day, he seems never to have worked in fresco. His considerable stylistic range, the evolution of his art over the four decades of his career, and the difficulties that these pose for securely delineating his catalogue, have been central preoccupations of Ribera scholarship. Literate without being literary, Ribera has next to no written legacy, but his art evinces connections to the period’s intellectual culture in several areas, including antiquarianism, natural science, theology, philosophy, and literature. Ribera enjoyed elite patronage from an early date, particularly from the Viceroys of Naples. Many of his signatures advertise both his Spanish (and Valencian) roots and his Italian credentials, as for instance he was a member of the Roman Accademia di San Luca and a Knight of the Order of Christ. His biography suggests a social standing combining highs and lows, in which the central motif is his success in establishing himself as the dominant artistic voice in the highly competitive (and by no means peripheral) context of Naples, where he became the head of a substantial workshop and trained or influenced many of the next generation’s foremost painters. The city’s status as the capital of a wealthy Spanish viceroyalty, and Ribera’s extensive work for the Spanish nobility and royal court, provided him with a highly placed audience and a considerable impact in Spain during his own lifetime. In scholarship, Ribera has often been perceived, both despite and because of his success in Italy, as exemplifying a kind of essential Spanishness and viewed through the lens of stereotypes regarding religion and violence in early modern Iberia. Such views however, coexist with a varied corpus of nuanced, substantive understandings of the artist.

General Studies

The single most useful resource in Ribera studies remains the catalogue of the 1992 monographic exhibition (the year after the 400th anniversary of his birth), the best edition of which is Pérez Sánchez and Spinosa 1992a. It is typical of both the richness and the difficulties of Ribera studies that this catalogue exists in three largely overlapping but not at all interchangeable editions. While consulting a single version is adequate in some cases, scholars conducting in-depth studies will require all three. The readily accessible English edition, Pérez Sánchez and Spinosa 1992c, lacks key essays and catalogue entries on some of Ribera’s most important public commissions. Even essays that may appear equivalent across catalogues present significant differences: for instance Nicola Spinosa’s essay in the English edition, “Ribera and Neapolitan Painting,” is a modified and much-edited translation, with different citations, from his corresponding contribution to the Italian edition Pérez Sánchez and Spinosa 1992b, “Ribera a Napoli.” Similar gaps and redundancies often occur in Ribera scholarship (see the section Catalogues Raisonnés). To some extent, these redundancies illustrate longstanding difficulties—given Ribera’s insistence on his Iberian identity along with his permanent residence in Italy—in maneuvering around histories of art traditionally organized by national or regional schools. This ubiquitous issue is ably addressed in the accessible monograph Portús Pérez 2011. Benito Doménech 1991 presents a decidedly Valencian Ribera, a viewpoint that finds support in Milicua’s chapter in the 1992 exhibition catalogues, but has by and large been undeservedly sidelined in a field where Italian and Spanish views of the painter predominate. Art historical approaches vary, as for instance Farina 2014 exemplifies a connoisseurial tradition focusing on Ribera’s stylistic relationship with his Italian contemporaries, while Brown 1998 emphasizes cultural context within a study that foregrounds Ribera’s importance in Spanish art history. A contextually rich understanding of Ribera’s art within the broader culture of 17th-century Naples is provided in Cassani 1984, while an engaging shorter proposal for defining key aspects of Ribera’s artistic approach is in Pisani 2016. The research and scholarship that went into establishing what is now known of Ribera’s origins, training, and travel prior to his residence in Rome are usefully summarized in Estevez 2020, though it should be noted that Cocconi 2022 (see the section Documentary Studies of Ribera’s Origins and Career) is also essential reading on this early stage of Ribera’s career.

• Benito Doménech, Fernando. Ribera : 1591–1652. Madrid: Bancaja, 1991.

  A solid overview of Ribera’s work, from a markedly Valencian point of view. Benito Doménech’s expertise in Valencian art makes this an essential contribution to the field, and one that is too frequently overlooked. Can be usefully read as a counterpoint to the predominantly Italian stylistic interpretations of Ribera such as Spinosa 2006 (cited under Catalogues Raisonnés: Paintings).

• Brown, Jonathan. Painting in Spain: 1500–1700. Yale University Press Pelican History of Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

  A standby and a kind of unofficial textbook in undergraduate teaching on the history of Spanish art that includes a chapter on Ribera (see also the Oxford Bibliographies article “Spanish Art”). Useful for undergraduates or newcomers to the topic in search of a short but sound scholarly overview.

• Cassani, Silvia, ed. Civiltà del seicento a Napoli. 2 vols. Naples: Electa, 1984.

  Landmark exhibition covering numerous aspects of culture and society in 17th-century Naples. Outstanding resource for understanding the time and place in which Ribera spent his career, with essays that situate him in a key role within Neapolitan culture in this period.

• Estevez, Lisandra. “Ribera’s Northern Italian Nexus.” In Artistic Circulation between Early Modern Spain and Italy. Edited by Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio and Tommaso Mozzati, 131–151. New York: Routledge, 2020.

  Helpful summary of Ribera’s early life, training, and transition from Játiva to Naples, with further bibliography on an aspect of Ribera studies that has posed many challenges, mostly due to the ubiquity of Ribera’s name. The bibliography includes the essential updates to Finaldi 1992a and Finaldi 1992b (both cited under Documentary Studies of Ribera’s Origins and Career) for this period of Ribera’s activity. Note that some minor points are presented here as certain that remain open to question.

• Farina, Viviana. Al sole e all’ombra di Ribera : questioni di pittura e disegno a Napoli nella prima metà del Seicento. Castellammare di Stabia, Italy: Nicola Longobardi Editore, 2014.

  An example of the emphasis on traditional connoisseurship and stylistic history in many Italian-language studies of Ribera. Though many attributions are questionable, a merit of Farina’s study is the holistic approach to Ribera’s work across media, with substantive consideration of the drawings in particular. Convincingly situates Ribera’s art within a more diverse conversation with his contemporaries than previously supposed, particularly with Agostino and Annibale Carracci (see the Oxford Bibliographies article “Annibale Carracci”), and Giuseppe d’Arpino.

• Pérez Sánchez, Alfonso E., and Nicola Spinosa, eds. Ribera, 1591–1652. Madrid: Museo del Prado, 1992a.

  The bible of Ribera studies, with exhaustive bibliography and essays providing detailed guides to key aspects of his life and work, such as his origins and training, his activities as a draftsman and etcher, and the broad strokes of his career in the contexts of Naples and Spain. The most complete of the three catalogues generated for the same 1992 exhibition, and the best single source of information on Ribera.

• Pérez Sánchez, Alfonso E., and Nicola Spinosa, eds. Jusepe de Ribera, 1591–1652. Naples: Electa, 1992b.

  Nearly as complete as Pérez Sánchez and Spinosa 1992a, but omits the important essay by Ruotolo on Ribera’s clientele in Naples. The Madrid edition, Pérez Sánchez and Spinosa 1992a, also contains a slightly different and expanded catalogue, as well as addenda regarding attributions at the end of Spinosa’s essay on Ribera in Naples that are not included in this version.

• Pérez Sánchez, Alfonso E., and Nicola Spinosa, eds. Jusepe de Ribera, 1591–1652. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art : Distributed by Harry N. Abrams, 1992c.

  The most readily accessible of the three versions (available for free online from the Met Museum and Google Books) but also the most incomplete, lacking many catalogue entries (about half of the drawings, for instance) and no fewer than four essays (by Pierre Rosenberg, Renato Ruotolo, Angela Madruga Real, and Nicola Spinosa, the latter regarding Ribera’s work at San Martino) as compared to Pérez Sánchez and Spinosa 1992a.

• Pisani, Salvatore. “‘Zerrümpft, schrekbar, crudel’: Das Schauspiel des Körpers bei Jusepe de Ribera.” In Caravaggios Erben. Barock in Neapel. Edited by Peter Forster, Elisabeth Oy-Marra, and Heiko Damm, 128–143. Munich: Hirmer, 2016.

  A historically resonant all-around perspective on Ribera’s art, proposing that the human body, especially the skin and the face, were handled by the artist as the expressive stages or screens on which the inner being and emotions of the person could be played out or concealed.

• Portús Pérez, Javier. Ribera. Barcelona: Polígrafa, 2011.

  An intelligent, well-illustrated, and accessible overview of Ribera’s life and work for a non-specialist audience, this book still retains a core bibliography and a scholarly ethos to the writing. Useful for undergraduates, particularly in studio art, interested in a readable and concise synthesis.