Spanish Painter and Print engraver , 1591-1652 Information concerning the life and personality of Jusepe de Ribera is sparse. He was born the son of a shoemaker in Jetiva, Valencia Province. He appears to have gone to the city of Valencia while still a boy, but nothing is known of his possible artistic training there. As an adolescent, he traveled to Italy and spent time in Lombardy. Next he was in Parma, from which, it is said, he was driven by the contentious jealousy of local artists. He located himself in Rome until an accumulation of debts forced him to flee. Finally he settled in Naples, where in 1616 he married Caterina Azzolino, the daughter of a painter, by whom he had seven children between the years 1627 and 1636. The Academy of St. Luke in Rome elected Ribera to membership in 1625, and 6 years later the Pope conferred upon him the Order of Christ. It is understandably speculated that Ribera revisited Rome for these events. Being sought after in Naples by the Church and the various Spanish viceroys who ruled there in the name of the Spanish monarchy, he dismissed the idea of returning to his homeland. He was quoted as saying that he was honored and well paid in Naples and that Spain was a cruel stepmother to its own children and a compassionate mother to foreigners. Nevertheless, he generally added his nationality when he signed his works. This practice inspired the Italians to nickname him "the Little Spaniard" (Lo Spagnoletto). The last decade of Ribera's life was one of personal struggle. He suffered from failing health, the taunts of other artists that his fame was "extinct," and difficulty in collecting payments due him. Nevertheless, he kept it from being a tragic defeat by continuing to paint until the very year of his death in Naples. Actually, he was the victim of the local politics and finances. Naples was in the throes of a severe economic depression for which the foreign rulers, the patrons of Ribera, were naturally blamed, and the desperate citizenry was rioting in the streets. It is significant that Ribera continued to receive commissions in such a time, even if there was a dearth of payments. Ribera was inventive in subject matter, ranging through visionary spectacles, biblical themes, genre, portraits, mythological subjects, and portraits of ascetics and penitents.   Related Paintings of Jose de Ribera :. | St Jerome | St Jerome and the Angel | Der Tastsinn | The Deliverance of St.Peter | El sueno de Jacob |
Related Artists:
Mikolas Ales
(November 18, 1852 in Mirotice near Pisek - July 10, 1913 in Prague) was a Czech painter. Ales was born in 1852 in Mirotice into a relatively rich family that was in debt at the time. He was taught history by his brother Frantisek until his death in 1865; he expressed interest in painting at an early age. In 1879 he got married to Marina Kailova and moved to Italy where he continued his career in painting. He moved back to Prague working on the new artwork at the Prague National Theatre; he died in Prague at the age of 60. Ales is estimated to have had over 5,000 published pictures, he has painted for everything from magazines to playing cards to textbooks. His paintings were not publicized too widely outside Bohemia, but many of them are still available, and Mikolas Ales is certainly regarded as one of the country's best painters
Workshop of Anton von Maron
Anton von Maron (January 8, 1733 - March 3, 1808) was an Austrian painter, active in Rome. Von Maron was born in Vienna, but moved at a young age to Rome. There, he studied under Anton Raphael Mengs, and became an accomplished portrait painter. He married a sister of Mengs, Therese Maron, who was a painter in her own right. He lived the rest of his life in Rome, and died there in 1808.
Walter Sickert
German 1860-1942 Walter Sickert Gallery Walter Richard Sickert (May 31, 1860 in Munich, Germany ?C January 22, 1942 in Bath, England) was a German-born English Impressionist painter. Sickert was a cosmopolitan and eccentric who favoured ordinary people and urban scenes as his subjects He developed a personal version of Impressionism, favouring sombre colouration. Following Degas' advice, Sickert painted in the studio, working from drawings and memory as an escape from "the tyranny of nature".[3] Sickert's earliest major works were portrayals of scenes in London music halls, often depicted from complex and ambiguous points of view, so that the spatial relationship between the audience, performer and orchestra becomes confused, as figures gesture into space and others are reflected in mirrors. The isolated rhetorical gestures of singers and actors seem to reach out to no-one in particular, and audience members are portrayed stretching and peering to see things that lie beyond the visible space. This theme of confused or failed communication between people appears frequently in his art. By emphasising the patterns of wallpaper and architectural decorations, Sickert created abstract decorative arabesques and flattened the three-dimensional space. His music hall pictures, like Degas' paintings of dancers and caf??-concert entertainers, connect the artificiality of art itself to the conventions of theatrical performance and painted backdrops. Many of these works were exhibited at the New English Art Club, a group of French-influenced realist artists with which Sickert was associated. At this period Sickert spent much of his time in France, especially in Dieppe where his mistress, and possibly his illegitimate son, lived