Spanish Painter and Print engraver , 1591-1652 Information concerning the life and personality of Jusepe de Ribera is sparse. He was born the son of a shoemaker in Jetiva, Valencia Province. He appears to have gone to the city of Valencia while still a boy, but nothing is known of his possible artistic training there. As an adolescent, he traveled to Italy and spent time in Lombardy. Next he was in Parma, from which, it is said, he was driven by the contentious jealousy of local artists. He located himself in Rome until an accumulation of debts forced him to flee. Finally he settled in Naples, where in 1616 he married Caterina Azzolino, the daughter of a painter, by whom he had seven children between the years 1627 and 1636. The Academy of St. Luke in Rome elected Ribera to membership in 1625, and 6 years later the Pope conferred upon him the Order of Christ. It is understandably speculated that Ribera revisited Rome for these events. Being sought after in Naples by the Church and the various Spanish viceroys who ruled there in the name of the Spanish monarchy, he dismissed the idea of returning to his homeland. He was quoted as saying that he was honored and well paid in Naples and that Spain was a cruel stepmother to its own children and a compassionate mother to foreigners. Nevertheless, he generally added his nationality when he signed his works. This practice inspired the Italians to nickname him "the Little Spaniard" (Lo Spagnoletto). The last decade of Ribera's life was one of personal struggle. He suffered from failing health, the taunts of other artists that his fame was "extinct," and difficulty in collecting payments due him. Nevertheless, he kept it from being a tragic defeat by continuing to paint until the very year of his death in Naples. Actually, he was the victim of the local politics and finances. Naples was in the throes of a severe economic depression for which the foreign rulers, the patrons of Ribera, were naturally blamed, and the desperate citizenry was rioting in the streets. It is significant that Ribera continued to receive commissions in such a time, even if there was a dearth of payments. Ribera was inventive in subject matter, ranging through visionary spectacles, biblical themes, genre, portraits, mythological subjects, and portraits of ascetics and penitents.   Related Paintings of Jose de Ribera :. | Desposorios misticos de Santa Catalina de Alejandria | The club-foot | Andreas, Apostel | St Jerome and the Angel | Martyrium des Hl. Andreas |
Related Artists:
Adriaan de Lelie
was born at Tilburg in 1755, and was a scholar of Peeters, a painter of tapestries and ornaments, and afterwards of Quertenmont at Antwerp. He made copies of many of the portraits by Rubens and Van Dyck at Desseldorf, and also of historical pictures by Italian and Dutch masters. By the advice of Professor Camper, he established himself at Amsterdam, where he painted a great number of portraits and cabinet pictures; among the latter is one of the celebrated amateur Jan Gildemeester showing his collection to a party of ladies and gentlemen, in which the principal pictures are readily recognised. One of his best works is that representing the 'Drawing Academy' of the Felix Meritis Society at Amsterdam. His pictures are highly esteemed in Holland and Germany, where they are to be met with in the best collections. He died at Amsterdam in 1820.
Hills, Anna Althea
American Painter, 1882-1930
Henry McCarter
American 1865-1943