Jusepe (Joseph) Ribera “San Girolamo” Etching-Engraving


Jusepe (José) de Ribera always asserted in the signatures of his paintings and engravings that he was a Spaniard; he frecuently added that he was a Valencian, and occasionally (most frecuently about 1682) he gave his birth-place, repeating that he was a “Setabensis”- from the city of Játiva.
By the time he left Spain he had been trained in the technique of painting by Francisco Ribalta, the most celebrated and best Valencian painter about 1600, and indeed until his dead in 1628. The fact that Palomino, Ribera’s first Spanish biographer, mentioned the apprenticeship under Ribalta would hardly suffice were it not supported by information obtained by Palomino in Valencia (where the writer-painter often worked) and by an examination of Ribera’s technique during his early period, with his Ribalta reds. Also, Juan Ribalta when working by his father’s side painted very much like Ribera, especially in the best authenticated and most remarkable of his pictures, the Crucifixion which he signed at Valencia in 1616, when he was 18.


Ribera, though he would have none of the religious art of the XVI century, was a painter of profoundly religious inspiration, after his own manner. He found, either himself or in his new surroundings, something that no other painter has had, a deep love for the heroic age of Christianity. There nothing mystic about his art, nothing complicated in his religious ideals: his apostles are sailors; his favorite saints martyrs and hermits. Ribera’s religious idea was admirably served by a rare sensitiveness which is not distinguisable at first sight, of course absent from school repetitions and imitations by his pupils, and only exists in the authentic works of his own hand. In Ribera there’s something deeper than the passion of his subjects, of the details of the scenes; this something is a living sensitiveness, at times physiological, but always living and always present in his pictures. His pictures, so strong in chiaroscuro and in their note of truth, which makes them admirable when seen from a distance, are also full, when examined closely, of an essentially vibrating energy in their workmanship; and this comes out equally well in large canvasses and in engravings.


Jusepe (Joseph) “San Girolamo” Etching-Engraving is inscribed “Ribera def”, titled “San Girolamo” and signed also by “Fabri inc”. Printed on antique laid paper with good margins and plate mark 8 by 11 inches. The work is from the final state with the Plate number VI and No 51 on the top of the plate. This is in good condition was professionally framed, ready to be framed. This would give the serious collector of Spanish Art many years of great enjoyment.


Luigi Fabri leading engraver and publisher, established in Rome Italy, born 1777 Rome — 1835, engraved this work AFTER the work of Ribera first executed in oil.