From the January 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
Curator Annick Lemoine explains how the shadowy, menacing paintings of Jusepe de Ribera were often even darker than those of his idol, Caravaggio.
The term Caravaggisti carries with it a sense of disciples striving to be worthy of their master, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), or simply being unable to escape his influence and have their work seen on its own terms. But it obscures the fact that some of Caravaggio’s more talented followers were pioneers in their own right. It was probably in 1606, the year Caravaggio committed the murder for which he would spend the rest of his life in exile, that a 15-year-old Spaniard arrived in Rome and quickly began making a name for himself on the art market for his virtuoso brushwork and high rate of production. It’s possible that he met his hero during the few months that they were in the same city; what’s certain is that this young artist began extending the master’s innovations in bold, dramatic, ferociously dark directions.
Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652) was born in a town near Valencia. Little is known about his life before he arrived in Rome, though it is likely he received some kind of preparatory training; indeed, until around 20 years ago, little was known even about the decade he spent in Rome, where he developed his formidable skills. His reputation has rested largely on the work he completed in Naples, where he moved for good in his mid twenties (it was something of a home from home, since it was under Spanish rule at the time) and proceeded to hoover up many of the most prestigious commissions the city had to offer.
But Ribera’s Roman paintings are key to understanding his attitude and approach to art, which remained consistent throughout his life. Caravaggism was not the only artistic direction he could have taken. He might have become a Mannerist – it would have stood him in better stead to win the biggest commissions in Rome, the decoration of churches. He might have followed the more classical path of some of the renowned Emilian painters, such as Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni or Domenichino. Instead, Ribera set off down the most scandalous trail – the one blazed by Caravaggio.
The Denial of Saint Peter (1615–16; detail), Jusepe de Ribera. Photo: © Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Barberini/Corsini, Ministero della Cultura
This was not a path he chose lightly. Caravaggism may have become a tradition of sorts, but it was a new, radical tradition: it involved breaking free of certain ideals of beauty and classical draughtsmanship and relying more on models found in everyday life, depicting them dal naturale. Whether Caravaggio was painting a saint, a beggar or a philosopher, the sense of absolute realism remained crucial. What he wanted to show was humanity, and so anyone could be his model; a gypsy girl on the street could be a basis for the Virgin.
By the time Caravaggio left Rome he had the kind of reputation his enemies were all too willing to entrench: that of a violent hothead. But even his haters couldn’t deny his painterly prowess, which had led to numerous important commissions for churches and acquisitions by major contemporary collectors. Ribera would have seen Caravaggio’s work in the great churches and galleries of Rome, and his own The Denial of Saint Peter (1615–16), which he made towards the end of his Roman period, is a case study in his ability to transmute the older artist’s influence into something new and extraordinary.
The Denial of Saint Peter (1615–16; detail), Jusepe de Ribera. Photo: © Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Barberini/Corsini, Ministero della Cultura
Faced with this painting, it’s hard to know where to look. An emotive biblical scene apparently set in a tavern, its composition draws the eye to three soldiers playing dice at a table: the eldest soldier is placed squarely in the foreground while another looks out suspiciously at the viewer, both implicating them and warning them away. The right arms of the two soldiers almost meet on the table, forming a triangular focal point that seems to give the game a central significance. But the painting is not called Soldiers Playing Dice. Even as sharp angles and lines of vision draw attention in one direction, a concentration of light pulls the eye to the right, where a servant girl is pointing at Saint Peter, accusing him of knowing and following Jesus Christ. Peter, for his part, denies knowing the Messiah.
The painting is firmly in the Caravaggist tradition, quoting not one but two paintings by the master. Caravaggio’s 1610 painting of the same name, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York but was in Rome in the early 17th century, is a highly concentrated scene, featuring only three people: Peter, the woman who is addressing him, and a soldier. In his version of the episode, Ribera quotes the way the woman addresses Peter and the way Peter denies his connection with Jesus, touching his fingers to his heart. But it is The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599–1600), which hangs in the Contarelli Chapel of the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, that is the more profound influence. In this painting and Ribera’s, a religious event is treated as an everyday scene among the low-lifes of Rome; the main focus is on a gambling game being played out on a tavern table; the figure of the title takes up only a fraction of the canvas; the characters’ heads all occupy almost the same horizontal line; and accusatory fingers and stares direct the viewer’s gaze.
The Denial of Saint Peter (1610), Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
But to slap a Caravaggist label on The Denial of Saint Peter is to do it a disservice. For one thing, the compositional tensions belie the simple horizontality of the painting: it can be read like a frieze, from left to right, with all the faces more or less in profile. It’s even more concentrated than The Calling of Saint Matthew, giving no hint of architecture or furnishings beyond the table. For another, making the central soldier so prominent is a bold move: he is not only a link between the sacred world and the profane, but also – because he’s the foremost character – the link between the viewer and the rest of the canvas. This, together with the soldier who glares out at us, gives the work a rare immediacy.
This isn’t just painting; this is choreography. Look at the soldier at the far left of the canvas, seemingly surveying the game. His gaze alone unites the two scenes, the dice game and the denial of Saint Peter, because he’s actually looking at the saint on the opposite side of the composition – and Peter is looking right back at him, closing the composition in a loop of meaningful looks.
The Denial of Saint Peter (1615–16; detail), Jusepe de Ribera. Photo: © Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Barberini/Corsini, Ministero della Cultura
Aside from the intuitive, forceful placement of the individuals, the detail of the rendering is exquisite. You can see every wrinkle on the faces of the older soldier and Saint Peter, every fold and sub-fold in the servant girl’s clothes. In person, the painting is especially impressive: you can even make out the numbers on the dice. Step back a little and the figures themselves, painted to be almost life-size, seem monumental.
Ribera evolved rapidly as an artist. The Denial of Saint Peter is noticeably more accomplished than other ambitious works he had made not long before. Take Christ among the Doctors (1613), currently held by the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Langres. It’s a huge canvas, with monumental figures, theatrical gestures and abstract drapery featuring prominently in the mise en scène – all Ribera trademarks. The composition doesn’t quite work: the figures in the foreground are huge, while those in the background seem oddly small. He’s not in full command of the scene. In The Denial of Saint Peter, it works out perfectly, with all the figures adroitly scaled and the story clear for all to see, despite the much more restricted space and all the characters occupying almost a single plane in the foreground.
In Naples, Ribera would change his technique again, using more impasto and brighter colours, opening up his dark backgrounds into beautiful skies and brighter palettes, incorporating influences from Titian and Veronese as well as Caravaggio. But in Rome, and in The Denial of Saint Peter, what he does with a restricted palette – brown, black, red and grey, with the occasional bit of white – is remarkable. Typical of Ribera’s technique are the bold white brushstrokes on the armour of the soldier in the foreground, giving the impression of reflected light. Further little white strokes just under the soldier’s arm hint at something metallic emerging from the darkness: a sword, perhaps? Or maybe he is attempting to cheat, gripping the table with his other arm to block his competitor’s view.
The Denial of Saint Peter (1615–16; detail), Jusepe de Ribera. Photo: © Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Barberini/Corsini, Ministero della Cultura
Ribera wanted to tell the story of Peter’s denial of Christ in a contemporary way, but the game of dice is not entirely incongruous: it could be an allusion to the soldiers who allegedly gambled for the garments of Christ beneath his cross by casting lots. Soldiers playing dice in taverns featured not only in many contemporary paintings but also in literature and theatre: there was the well-known trope of the bravo, a kind of soldier living a dissolute lifestyle. Today, bravi are perhaps best known for their menacing role in Alessandro Manzoni’s novel The Betrothed (1827), set in 17th-century Lombardy, but when Ribera was active in Rome there would have been no shortage of soldiers in the city, waiting to see action and whiling away time in taverns.
There are a couple of characters we haven’t yet mentioned. One is the melancholy soldier sitting at the table, his eyes either closed in contemplation or totally fixed on the game – either way, his expression is beautifully rendered. The other is a bald, possibly slightly disfigured man in an ill-fitting beret, looming over proceedings, denouncing Saint Peter from the back of the canvas. His presence is another mark of Caravaggio’s influence: he is almost certainly based on a life model, said to be a stevedore who worked along the Tiber. We know that Caravaggisti used life models – there is testimony from an old man who complained about having to pose at length for Orazio Gentileschi. The bald model for the character in The Denial of Saint Peter appears in no fewer than six of Ribera’s paintings – practically an authorial signature.
The Denial of Saint Peter (1615–16; detail), Jusepe de Ribera. Photo: © Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Barberini/Corsini, Ministero della Cultura
In fact, The Denial of Saint Peter has so many Ribera hallmarks that it’s difficult to believe that it was attributed to him only recently. In 2002, the art historian Gianni Papi asserted that one of the most mysterious and radical Caravaggists, previously known as the Master of the Judgment of Solomon, was in fact the young Ribera. Following this discovery, some 60 paintings attributed to this anonymous master by the art historian Roberto Longhi were reattributed to Ribera. (This was ironic: Longhi, who died in 1970, detested Ribera’s known work and was sure that the anonymous artist was French.)
The painting is extraordinary on its own terms: its longstanding lack of attribution does not seem to have exercised its owners. Sometime between 1723 and 1730, it entered the collection of Lorenzo Corsini, the future Pope Clement XII, before going to his nephew, the cardinal Neri Maria Corsini. It ended up in his palace in Rome, Palazzo Corsini, officially entering the Galleria Corsini collection in 1883, where it remains today – a dramatic reminder that saints and sinners are never too far apart.
As told to Arjun Sajip.
Annick Lemoine is director and head curator of the Petit Palais and co-curator of the exhibition ‘Ribera: Shadows and Light’, at the Petit Palais, Paris, until 23 February.
From the January 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.