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Exhibition, The Young Ribera (5 April to 31 July 2011)
This exhibition on Ribera covers the first decade and a half of the artist’s activities in Italy, specifically in Rome and Naples.
The Prado has a collection of around 50 works by the artist,
but most of them date from the last two decades of his life.
As a result, the present exhibition complements the collection to be seen in the Museum.
Visitors can gain an idea firstly of what Ribera went on to do after the period covered by the exhibition,
and an overview of the art that was being created in Italy, in particular in Rome, while he was there.
As a typical painter of his day, Ribera was interested in the representation of expression and the emotions.
For this reason, scenes of martyrdom, torture and penitence offered him an outstanding repertoire of episodes
that could be used to study this aspect of his art. A telling example is a comparison of The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew
from the Collegiate Church of Osuna, on display in the present exhibition, and The Martyrdom of Saint Philip,
which is one of the artist’s masterpieces in the Prado’s permanent collection. The two works can be compared from various viewpoints, including a strictly narrative one
with regard to how Ribera devised a scene of martyrdom. In the case of the Saint Bartholomew, the scene is almost intimate
in nature given that it only includes the saint, the executioner and a judge who turns his gaze away from the scene of torture.
he Martyrdom of Saint Philip, in contrast, is presented as a public event,
Tallowing Ribera to depict a wide variety of reactions on the part of the onlookers.
The two works can also be compared in a particularly telling way with regard to their overall composition and use of colour.
The young Ribera, whose works can be seen in the exhibition,
used a limited colour range with a preference for earth tones.
In contrast, from the 1630s to his death he used much a much richer colour range
and more sumptuous application of pigment due to the fact
that he depicted most of his narratives in bright daylight, abandoning tenebrist contrasts
or using them in a much more nuanced way than in his earlier work.
The reconstruction of Ribera’s early career
and the confusion that prevailed for decades concerning this period
basically revolved around two series: firstly, “The Five Senses”,
which is the first group to be firmly identified from his Roman period,
and an “Apostles Series”, most of which is now in the Longhi Foundation,
and of which four works are to be seen in the present exhibition.
For decades the Longhi paintings were attributed to the Master of the Judgment of Solomon.
Just as the series of the “Senses” allows for a comparison with works from the Prado’s permanent collection,
in particular the depiction of Taste, the Longhi Apostles (previously attributed to the Master of the Judgment of Solomon but now given to Ribera)
can be compared with an important group of works by the artist in the Museum,
namely the Apostles series that he painted in the 1630s.
The Longhi Apostles constitute an extremely odd group of figures
that have little to do with traditional representations of these saints.
Some of them seem to be hiding something and in general they are depicted as timid, evasive or, in some cases, menacing.
The Prado Apostle series is much more classical and traditional:
the Apostles are accompanied by their attributes and engage in actions that correspond to the traditional iconography of depictions of these figures.
The relationship between the figures and the setting is also much more stable and less paradoxical than in the Longhi series.
Another very valuable comparison between a painting in the exhibition and the same subject in the Prado’s collection
is that of Saint Jerome. The exhibition has a signed depiction of the saint painted by Ribera around 1614 or 1615.
It is probably Ribera’s earliest known signed work.
On display in the permanent collection is the Saint Jerome of 1652, painted in the year of the artist’s death.
Thus, taken together, the exhibition and the permanent collection offer the artist’s earliest and last signed works,
both depicting Saint Jerome. In the first, we encounter a young painter, obsessed with detail
and with offering a literal description of the objects in the painting, to the degree that we can feel
the weight of the book and sheets of paper. In the version of 1652 the agitated, rapid brushstroke used to apply the pigment
and the similarly rapid way in which Ribera paints Saint Jerome’s hair and skin
has a direct effect on the devotional mood that the panting conveys.
The resulting work is more pictorial but also much more concentrated and more effective
from a compositional viewpoint. It represents the point that Ribera had reached after a relatively long and prolific career.
Now aged over sixty,
the artist was searching for a way of conveying a specific range of emotions as effectively as possible.
The presentation of this exhibition coincides with the reorganisation of the Ribera galleries in the Museo del Prado.
Until a few months ago his work was to be seen in the central gallery, but these paintings have now been moved to interior galleries.
The fact that they are displayed close to Italian Caravaggesque painting,
or at least the Caravaggesque painting that was being produced in Italy, is now the starting point for an understanding of Ribera’s art.
In addition, he is now to be seen close to works by Velázquez, Zurbarán
and El Greco.