Ribera [antikvár]

José de Ribera 15^91-16^2 SPANisH artists who traveled to Italy to study in the seventeenth century usually returned to their own land. José de Ribera, born at Játiva in Valencia, never went back to Spain so that his artistic development, taking place in a foreign country, sepa-rated him somewhat from the painters of the Spanish school. And yet he interpreted Italian baroque with so strong a Spanish accent that his authentic works cannot be confused with those of his Italian contemporaries. Mass and bulk interested him more than line, for he is typically baroque. While borrowing to some extent from the Italians, he always retained his distinctive technique: loading paint on canvas with sweeping brush strokes, rarely allowing the canvas grain to show, and vigorously building up the impasto. Less dynamic than other tenebrosi, he seldom depicted figures in violent attitudes or in rapid motion. Action takes place, in a large number of his canvases, in an atmosphere of tranquil repose, figures often appearing static but never lifeless or wooden. Sincere realism saved him from over-dramatic treatment of his subject, and he placed spécial emphasis upon the value of human dignity, possibly because of his Spanish héritage. Depending almost entirely upon the model he, like Velázquez, rarely called upon his imagination. From the moment of his arrivai in Italy he became interested in the antique but never interpreted it from a literary or pedestrian point of view as did many of his contemporaries; his gods and