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Ribera. Darkness and light

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Ribera. Ténèbres et lumières

Paris, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, from 5 November 2024 to 23 February 2025.

This Ribera exhibition at the Petit Palais is a real event, since for the first time a retrospective devoted to this artist - the first in France, in fact - finally makes it possible to compare his early works in Rome with those from the rest of his career, which he spent entirely in Naples, where he had many emulators. In fact, it is only relatively recently - some twenty years ago - that the art historian Gianni Papi has been able to restore to him a whole section of his work, previously grouped together under the name of the Master of the Judgement of Solomon. An exhibition in Rennes (see news item of 21/4/15) and then in Strasbourg (see news item of 21/4/15) provided an opportunity to take stock of this discovery, especially as many paintings by this then anonymous master, long thought to be French, are held in collections in France.


1. Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652)
The Judgement of Solomon, c. 1609
Oil on canvas - 153 x 201 cm
Rome, Galleria Borghese
Photo: Wikimedia (public domain)
See the image in its page

The identification of one with the other is now almost unanimous, even if some believe that not all the works by the Master of the Judgement of Solomon are by the same hand. We’ll leave it to the specialists to debate this question, which we don’t think really arises. There is in fact a real coherence in the exhibition, and there is no continuity between the paintings once attributed to the Master of the Judgement of Solomon and those that have always been recognised as by Ribera.
The interview between Annick Lemoine and Gianni Papi in the catalogue will help us to understand how this identification came about, even though it may seem obvious today. Paris Musées have produced an excellent catalogue, full of essays and notes, which is what we usually expect from this type of work, with a classic layout that suits it perfectly. We can only hope that this will become the rule from now on.


2. Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652)

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