Year 1633 (1633) Artist Jusepe de Ribera | Medium oil on canvas Created 1633 | |
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Dimensions 157 cm × 210 cm (62 in × 83 in) Location Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid Similar Jusepe de Ribera artwork, Other artwork | ||
Painting the pieta after michelangel part four
The Pietá is a painting by José de Ribera, "The Españoleto", painted, signed and dated in 1633.
Contents
Description
It is oil on canvas and its dimensions are 157 x 210 cm. It is owned by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.
Ribera painted two other known canvases of the same subject and title. One is in the San Martino Museum, and the other is in the National Gallery, London.
History
The person who commissioned the work is unknown. The canvas is signed in the lower right corner on a rock according to the usual formula he used at the time: "Jusepe de Ribera 1633 Spanish." He was one of the most prolific painters, both in the quantity of works that came out of his workshop and its quality. He painted the subject of the Pietá on numerous occasions and with many different variations throughout his life. The earliest of Ribera's extant Pietás is in the National Gallery in London, 1620. Then follow La Piedad the Thyssen Museum 1663 and finally conserved in the Charterhouse of San Martino in Naples 1637. The painting comes from the collection of the Marquis de Heredia.
Description
The work is part of a transition period in which the artist, without leaving the shadows of tenebrism, began to experiment with new coloring. The body of Christ is framed horizontally to other figures in the composition. On the right John the Apostle subject's back while lying at her feet, Mary Magdalene kisses with grief. In the center, veiled by the chiaroscuro technique it shows us a Mary with a face ravaged by pain looking to the sky while hands together in prayer. Finally, the bottom right, the face of Joseph of Arimathea is appreciated.
The spotlight of the composition focuses on the recumbent body giving an appearance of marble statue that enhances the expression of the physical pain of his wounds (especially from his side), the psychic pain expressed in his face, and the laxity of the body.