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 :. | Pieta | St Jerome and the Angel | L Apollo e Marsia di Jusepe de Ribera e un quadroche si trova a Napoli nel Museo di Capodimonte (inv. Q 511), nella Galleria Napoletana. Fa parte dell | The Deliverance of St.Peter | Mystische Hochzeit der Hl |
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Wiloliam Woollett
British, 1735-1785
Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo
Italian Mannerist Painter , c. 1480 - aft.1548 was an Italian High Renaissance painter. Savoldo was born in Brescia, but little is known about his early years. Some sources claim he was known as Girolamo Bresciano. By 1506 he was in Parma, and by 1508, he had joined the Florentine painter??s guild. In this period he finished the Rest at the Flight from Egypt (Augsburg), the Elijah Harassed by a Crow (National Gallery of Art, Washington), and a Deposition. In 1515 he painted the Portrait of a Clad Warrior, wrongly identified with Gaston de Foix. Also from the same period his the Temptings of St. Anthony, which appears to show the influence of the Flemish Hieronymus Bosch. The works was appreciated by the commissioners from Venice, where Savoldo relocated before 1520. On June 15, 1524 he signed a contract for an altarpiece for the church of San Domenico in Pesaro (now in the Brera, Milan). In 1527, he completed a St. Hieronymus for the Brescian family Averoldi, probably the one at National Gallery of London. From the 1530s dates a Nativity at the National Gallery in Washington DC, which seems influenced by the lambent contemporary, Correggio painting on the same topic. In 1533 Savoldo painted a Madonna with Four Saints in the church of Santa Maria in Organo, while in 1537-1538 he executed the altarpiece for the main altar of Santa Croce, Brescia.
Thomas Robertson
January 9, 1829 ?C February 3, 1871,English dramatist and actor; brother of Madge Kendal. After spending several years as an actor, he turned to playwriting, initiating the ecup and saucere school of drama, which was characterized by its realism and its contemporary, domestic setting. His first successful play, David Garrick (1864), was followed by Society (1865) and Ours (1866). With Caste (1867) he began a close association with Squire Bancroft and his wife, Marie Wilton Bancroft, the actress, and they produced several of his plays.