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 :. | Andreas, Apostel | Jacob's dream. | Der Hl. Franz von Assisi und der Engel mit der Wasserflasche | Martyrdom of St Philip | Franz von Assisi und der Engel mit der Wasserflasche |
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LIGOZZI, Jacopo
Italian painter, Florentine school (b. 1547, Verona, d. 1627, Firenze) Italian painter, draughtsman, miniaturist and printmaker. He was one of the most productive artists in 17th-century Florence, although in the context of the Florentine Baroque, with its pageantry and decorative form, Ligozzi remained as much a foreigner in terms of his precise drawing, veristic figures and expressive content, as he was by birth. He was the son of the painter Giovanni Ermanno Ligozzi ( fl 1572-88; d before 1605) and came from a Veronese family of painters and designers of armour, tapestries and embroidery on silk. Other members of the family who were painters (Fumagalli in 1986 exh. cat.) were Jacopo's brother Francesco (d before 1635), whose career seems to have been in Verona, his cousin Francesco di Mercurio, who worked for the Medici in Florence in 1590-91
Joseph-Noel Sylvestre
(1847-1926) was a French artist, notable for his studies of classic scenes from antiquity. He was born in Beziers in South-West France on 24 June 1847, training as an artist first in Toulouse under Thomas Couture, then at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Alexandre Cabanel. He was an exponent of the romantic Academic art style, also known as art pompier (fireman's art), examples of which are the Death of Seneca (1875), The Gaul Ducar decapitates the Roman general Flaminus at the Battle of Trasimene (1882), The Sack of Rome by the barbarians in 410 (1890) and François Rude working on the Arc de Triomphe (1893).
Julian Falat
(30 July 1853 in Tuligłowy near Lwew - 9 July 1929 in Bystra Śląska) was one of the most prolific Polish painters of watercolor and one of the country's foremost landscape painters as well as one of the leading Polish impressionists. Fałat first studied under Władysław Łuszczkiewicz at the Krakew School of Fine Arts, and then at the Art Academy of Munich. After several trips throughout Europe and Asia in 1885, Fałat compiled a collection of studies from his voyages which would become useful later in the development of his artwork. Themes typical of Fałat's painting are Polish landscapes, hunting scenes, portraits, and studies from his voyages. In 1886, Fałat accepted an invitation from future German Emperor Wilhelm II to serve as court painter in Berlin. Fałat died in Bystra Śląska on July 9, 1929. A museum in Poland, called Fałatewka, is devoted to him. Out of his three children, Kazimierz (Togo) (1904-1981) continued to paint in watercolour. Some works, having been looted under German occupation, very occasionally reappear in sales-rooms. Later works, produced after he settled in England, are largely in the hands of his later family.