Ribera and the Spanish Connection.
After Caravaggio, the next important painter in Naples is Jusepe de Ribera (1592-1652) called “Spagnoletto” whose success eclipsed all other artists working in the city. Ribera was born and trained in Spain, though nothing is really known of his early training; the hypothesis that Francesco Ribalta taught him has been discarded.[1] A visit to Parma is possible, but he is definitely documented in Rome in 1615 in the circle of the northern Caravaggisti.Here he painted series on the Five Senses which were much admired. In 1616 Ribera left for Naples, possibly in the suite of the Viceroy Conde de Osuna; there he married Caterina, daughter of another artist G.B. Azzolini. After this he seldom left Naples where he enjoyed the protection of the viceroys who commissioned many works from their countryman. Ribera advanced his career quickly and enjoyed a similar favoured relationship with the aristocracy as Bernini had with the Barberini court in Rome. Of the highlights in Ribera’s oeuvre there are the Drunken Silenus (Capodimonte) above painted for the Dutch merchant Gaspar Roomer; Jacob’s Dream (Prado); and Adoration of the Shepherds (Louvre). There are many more showing his brutish realism, perfectly suited to some of the violent martyrdoms and tortures that were the stock in trade of the Counter-Reformation. Undoubtedly Ribera scored an early success, but this had its disadvantages later in his career when he was expected to turn out umpteenth saints and philosophers, and myriad versions of the martyrdom of St Bartholomew.[2] Orbiting the stellar artistic bodies of Neapolitan painting’s first division were a number of minor artists, some of whom were exhibited in the London show of 1982. Many of these were in the purlieus of Ribera’s workshop. One good example is the so-called “Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds” whose work has been compared to Ribera and Velasquez. He is named after the subject he painted of which eight versions are known including ones in Birmingham Art Gallery and the Capodimonte. He could be Spanish, or even one of Ribera’s students or one of his many followers like Bartolomeo Passante (1618-1656) who assiduously copied Ribera’s pictures.
[1] Bio in Painting in Naples, 225-6.
[2] As pointed out by Marshall, Baroque Naples, 56.
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