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Ribera the Artist
Ribera's artworks, mainly religious history
paintings, 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 light and dark: see Drunken
Silenus (1626, Capodimonte, Naples), Martrydom of St Andrew
(1628, Museum of Fine Art, Budapest), Christ Disputing with the Doctors
(1630, Kunsthistorisches, Vienna).
The second period is 1635-9, when the influence
of Van Dyck caused him to lighten his
backgrounds, soften his chiaroscuro
and make his shadows more transparent: see 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).
Third, 1640-52, a period characterized
by 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 developed a technique of his own.
Like Caravaggio, Ribera chose his models
from humble folk. He liked the character 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 perhaps
too unpleasantly aggressive. Although executed with every regard for construction
and character, there is little concern with composition, colour and the
refinements of picture making generally. A superior example of these character
studies is the nearly nude A Hermit (Prado, Madrid). Superficially,
in its deep shadows and broad areas of light, the work resembles Caravaggio,
but only superficially. Where Caravaggio effaces the brushwork, Ribera
asserts it. The surface is heavily loaded and streaked, and this produces
a positive coruscation quite unlike 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's pictures
before going to Italy. Ribera's colour in these early pictures is hot
and unpleasant and lacks harmonious relations with the sparse accessories
and simple backgrounds. We have 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 plenty
of light, but no air. The construction is massive and powerful, but also
disagreeably lumpy. The form is thrust out at you, as 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 picture, the
expression of a unique talent, while the Martyrdom of St. Andrew
is finely dramatic and, for Ribera, of unusual decorative beauty. It is
the masterpiece of its time and class.
It was work like 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 "Spain
was a tender mother to foreigners, but a cruel stepmother to her own people."
When Ribera was in his late forties, 1635, his style changed for the better.
The colour becomes cooler and more harmonious, the construction less aggressive,
the composition more carefully considered. Ribera's leading biographer,
Dr. A. L. Mayer, dates this change from the Immaculate Conception,
of 1635, at the Augustinian convent in Salamanca. It is not a good picture,
the Virgin Mary being singularly dwarfed by the wide margins crowded with
tumbling cherubs, and the baroque swirl of Her robe is overcomplicated,
but at least we have a reasonable distribution of light and shade and
an approach to pictorial unity. It is interesting to compare this Assumption
with the later more successfully operatic and sentimental versions by
the Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-82) and his contemporaries.
Perhaps the greatest picture of this mature sort is the Lamentation
for Christ, at S. Martino, Naples. It is very large in feeling, poignant
without sentimentality, and the faces are near enough to the model to
keep the effect idiomatic and Neapolitan, without waiver of nobility.
The portrait
art and character studies of this period are more restrained and more
effective than their predecessors of some twenty years earlier. The magnificent
bust-portrait of a Musician, formerly in the Strogonoff Collection, now
at Toledo, would live comfortably in any company. The St. Mary of Egypt,
at Montpellier, has the utmost intensity of ascetic character, and the
relation of the gaunt figure to the craggy background is very handsome.
But Ribera's touch and taste are still uncertain. The very famous St.
Agnes, at Dresden, is painfully sentimental. There is much pleasure-giving
quality in the sturdy and lucid prose of one of his latest pictures, the
Adoration of the Shepherds (1650, Louvre, Paris). In it we have
an art of plain statement, without overtones of any sort, and it shows
the normal mellowing of his harsh talent in old 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 as a whole. Velazquez visited him in 1649 and doubtless was
polite and complimentary to his famous senior. One would like to know
what Velazquez really thought about Ribera's work. Ribera died in 1652
one of the geatest of Spanish Old Masters
and full of honours, leaving his stamp upon his Neapolitan contemporaries.
About his memory grew up a legend of arrogance
and violence. He was accused of forming a selfish protectionist clique,
known as the "Cabal of Naples", in order to monopolize Neapolitan
art commissions, using threats of violence to scare off competitors. However,
although not known for his well-balanced temperament, there is probably
a certain exaggeration in these stories. It is the view that one might
expect Naples to take of a very successful foreigner who was always called
La Spagnoletto or "little Spaniard".
Paintings by Jusepe de Ribera can be seen
in many of the best art museums throughout
the world, notably the Prado Museum in Madrid.
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