JOSÉ DE RIBERA School

School of JOSÉ DE RIBERA; 17th century.
"Penitent Saint Peter".
Oil on canvas.
It presents extensions on the canvas.
Measurements: 83 x 69 cm.
In this canvas we see St. Peter showing his repentance, after having denied Christ three times after his capture in the mount of Olives. The figure is worked with great naturalism, emphasising the wrinkles on the face and the expressiveness of the hands, and the tenebrist lighting used gives the figure a greater physical presence, a greater three-dimensionality and also intensity and effect. These features, as well as the chromatic range used, are typical of the naturalistic Baroque of Caravaggio and Ribera, especially with his work of Saint Peter, which is in the museum in Carcassonne. The success of the artist and the innumerable commissions he received, especially for these works of piety, justified the creation of an extensive workshop to satisfy the demand, a workshop that produced versions following the originals of the master, who sometimes participated with his masterly brushstroke in these works, creating pieces made in collaboration between the artist and the workshop. The saint is depicted half-length, slightly tilted, with his hands crossed on his chest in a pious pose. His gaze is raised towards the sky in an awe-inspiring attitude of spiritual recollection. The thick brushstroke defines a rounded figure of profound humanity, with great economy of colour, limited to the range of browns, which only serves to emphasise the message of humility and mystical simplicity that the saint advocated throughout his life.
José de Ribera, known as the Españoleto, was a key master of the Spanish Baroque and of European art history in general. Although there are no surviving documentary sources or evidence of his youth, it is thought that he trained with Francisco Ribalta in Valencia, after which he went to Italy, first to the north and later to Rome, where he became acquainted at first hand with the classicists and the tenebrism of the Dutch who settled there. He finally settled in Naples, where he arrived in 1616. This was the beginning of his period of maturity and splendour; Ribera enjoyed fame and a large studio, and his works were disseminated throughout Europe through engravings. He worked for viceroys and high-ranking officials of Spanish origin in Naples, and many of his works soon reached Spain. He was in fact famous in his native country, and in fact Velázquez himself visited him in 1630. Today Ribera's works are housed in the Prado, the Louvre, Capodimonte, the Fine Arts Museum in Budapest, the Hermitage in St Petersburg, the Kunsthistorisches and Liechtenstein Museums in Vienna, the J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles, the Art Institute in Chicago, the Metropolitan in New York, the National Gallery and Royal Collection in London, the Borghese Gallery in Rome and other leading art galleries in Europe, America and Asia.

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