Jusepe de Ribera

1591-1652

Jusepe de Ribera spent nearly his entire career in Naples, where he became the dominant painter of the city and one of the greatest artists of the European Baroque. Born in Játiva in 1591, he left Spain in his late teens or early twenties and, after working in Parma and Rome, settled permanently in Naples in 1616. There he remained for the rest of his life, protected by successive Spanish viceroys and building an international reputation. Ribera painted chiefly religious subjects—saints, martyrs, and biblical scenes—rendered with stark realism and dramatic contrasts of light and shadow learned from Caravaggio. His unflinching portrayal of suffering and decay, combined with his practice of casting poor people as apostles and philosophers, gave his work an unusual dignity and emotional power. After 1630 his style evolved toward greater warmth and subtlety, though he never abandoned the intensity that made him Lo Spagnoletto—the Little Spaniard—to his Italian contemporaries.