JUSEPE DE RIBERA A ROMAN PHILOSOPHER The Optics of an Old Tatterdemalion Dandy

Jusepe de Ribera (Valencian: 1591 - 1652) was a Spanish painter and printmaker. Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and the singular Diego Velázquez, are regarded as the major artists of Spanish Baroque painting. Referring to a series of Ribera exhibitions held in the late 20th century, Philippe de Montebello wrote "If Ribera's status as the undisputed protagonist of Neapolitan painting had ever been in doubt, it was no longer. Indeed, to many it seemed that Ribera emerged from these exhibitions as not simply the greatest Neapolitan artist of his age but one of the outstanding European masters of the seventeenth century.":?vii p.? Jusepe de Ribera has also been referred to as José de Ribera, Josep de Ribera, and Lo Spagnoletto ("the Little Spaniard") by his contemporaries, early historians, and biographers.