Shadow

Jusepe de Ribera
Democritus
1630
Prado

Jusepe de Ribera
Euclid
ca. 1630-35
Getty

Jusepe de Ribera
St. Simon
ca. 1630-35
Prado

The painter now mainly known as Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) was also known in his own lifetime as Giuseppe de Ribera, as José de Ribera, and as Lo Spagnoletto. He had been baptized Joan Josep Ribera shortly after his birth in provincial Spain, but by the end of his teens had already journeyed to Italy to study art – one of that host of European culture-pilgrims drawn to Rome during the 17th century. After absorbing Raphael's High Renaissance idealism and Caravaggio's fashionable lighting, Ribera settled in Naples, which was under Spanish rule during part of the 17th century. Many of his early patrons and collectors were Spanish and much of his work was regularly shipped back to Spain. When questioned about returning, Ribera answered –

"My dear friend, I have a strong impulse to go, but judging from the experience of many well-informed and truthful persons, I find this drawback. During the first year I would be received there as a great painter, but in the second year no one would pay attention to me, because when people know you are around they lose respect for you."*     

Jusepe de Ribera
St. Jerome Writing
1615
Prado

Jusepe de Ribera
St. Joseph & the Christ Child
ca. 1632
Prado

Jusepe de Ribera
St. Christopher & the Christ Child
1637
Prado

Juspep de Ribera
Vision of St. Francis
1636-38
Prado

Juspep de Ribera
St. Peter Liberated by an Angel
1639
Prado

Jusepe de Ribera
Isaac & Jacob
1637
Prado

Jusepe de Ribera
Raising of Lazarus
1616
Prado

Jusepe de Ribera
The Savior
ca. 1630
Prado

Jusepe de Ribera
St. Peter
ca. 1630
Prado

Jusepe de Ribera
St. Jude the Apostle
ca. 1630-35
Prado

Jusepe de Ribera
Allegorical figure : a fragment
1636
Prado

* Ribera's words are quoted in a useful volume called Italian and Spanish Art, 1600-1750 : Sources and Documents / edited by Robert Enggas and Jonathan Brown (Evanston : Northwestern University Press, 1992).

Privately Related

Lucian Freud
After Cézanne
1999-2000
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Ruth Chrisman Gannett
Cabbage
ca. 1950
lithograph
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Gerald Drexler Garston
The Jaguar
ca. 1970
screenprint
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Christopher Gallego
Interior with Three Rooms
1996-2000
oil on canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Bartolomeo Gagliardi (lo Spagnoletto)
Baptism of Christ
before 1620 
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Kristian Fredrikson
Costume Design - Ravel's Scheherazade, Sydney Dance Co.
1980
gouache, ink and pastel on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Kristian Fredrikson
Costume Design - Ravel's Scheherazade, Sydney Dance Co.
1980
gouache, ink and pastel on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Michael Frary
After the Storm
ca. 1955
oil on panel
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Battista Franco after Pietro Paolo Galeotti
Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba
1560
etching and engraving
British Museum

Marvin Garner
Ochre & Red
2000
acrylic on canvas
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

Urbano Fos
St Vincent Ferrer
ca. 1648-50
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Nita Forrest
For Elizabeth
ca. 1975
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia

Carl Fielgraf
Portrait of Charlotte Müller
1822
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Janet Fisher
Il Porcellino, Florence
before 1920
color woodblock print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Antonio Forbera (Antonio Fort Bras)
Le Chevalet de Peintre
1686
oil on canvas
Musée Calvet, Avignon

Steven Ford and David Forlano
Brooch
2007-2008
polymer and silver
Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin

from Letter to Lord Byron

My last remarks were sent you from a boat.

     I'm back on shore now in a warm bed-sitter,

And several friends have joined me since I wrote;

     So though the weather out of doors is bitter,

     I feel a great deal cheerier and fitter.

A party from a public school, a poet,

Have set a rapid pace, and make me go it. 

 

We're starting soon on a big expedition

     Into the desert, which I'm sure is corking:

Many would like to be in my position,

     I only hope there won't be too much walking.

     Now let me see, where was I? We were talking
Of Social Questions when I had to stop;

I think it's time now for a little shop.

In setting up my brass plate as a critic,

     I make no claim to certain diagnosis,

I'm more intuitive than analytic,

    I offer thought in homoeopathic doses
    (But someone may get better in the process).

I don't pretend to reasoning like Pritchard's

Or the logomachy of I.A. Richards.

I like your muse because she's gay and witty,

     Because she's neither prostitute nor frump,

The daughter of a European city,

     And country houses long before the slump;

     I like her voice that does not make me jump:

And you I find sympatisch, a good townee,
Neither a preacher, ninny, bore, nor Brownie.

A poet, swimmer, peer, and man of action,

– It beats Roy Campbell's record by a mile – 

You offer every possible attraction.

     By looking into your poetic style
     And love-life on the chance that both were vile,

Several have earned a decent livelihood,

Whose lives were uncreative but were good.

You've had your packet from the critics, though:

     They grant you warmth of heart, but at your head

Their moral and aesthetic brickbats throw.

     A "vulgar genius" so George Eliot said,

     Which doesn't matter as George Eliot's dead,

But T.S. Eliot, I am sad to find,
Damns you with: "an uninteresting mind".

A statement which I must say I'm ashamed at;

     A poet must be judged by his intention,

And serious thought you never said you aimed at.

     I think a serious critic ought to mention

     That one verse style was really your invention,

A style whose meaning does not need a spanner,

You are the master of the airy manner.

– W.H. Auden (1936)