Attributed to José de Ribera

Attributed to JOSÉ DE RIBERA (Xátiva, Valencia, 1591 - Naples, 1652).
"Saint Onofre.
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Bibliography: Passion for art. Cáceres, 2012.
It presents restorations on the pictorial surface.
It has an important frame of the seventeenth century carved and gilded wood.
Measurements: 117x 92 cm; 136 x 117cm (frame).
San Onofre was immortalized by the master Ribera on several occasions, in fact the Prado Museum in Madrid, houses in its collection a copy of Ribera of a San Onofre, thus demonstrating the popularity that reached this subject at the hands of the Valencian artist. The piece reveals the technical quality of José Ribera at the service of the devotional intensity associated with the saint. In the present painting, the iconographic austerity, the effective illumination and the use of a thick impasto, which provides a tactile quality favoring the impression of monumental three-dimensionality of the protagonist, isolate the viewer from the mundane reality. It is a work that reveals the hand of a mature and experienced Ribera. One of the most popular themes of the Baroque period, exalted by one of the best painters of the time, who decided to exalt the figure of this saint not only instigated by official commissions, but by the message and the values represented by the martyr.
José de Ribera was a key painter of the Baroque, belonging to the generation of the great masters of the Golden Age, trained in Italy in a self-taught manner. His first contact with naturalism took place with his arrival in Rome in 1615, where he came into contact with the Nordic caravaggists, from whom he adopted the smooth and hurried technique, the feísmo and the rigorous drawing, characteristics that shaped his style in his Roman period. However, in 1616 he went to Naples and settled there permanently. In this city Ribera will become the head of the group of Neapolitan naturalists, and around him an important circle of painters will be created. In spite of being in Italy, Ribera will send numerous works to Spain, so that his language will be key for the formation of the baroque in our country. His work will bring the tenebrism and, later, the full baroque, long before it will arrive directly to Spain, thus influencing the new generations of painters. On the other hand, once his Roman period was over, his painting would be characterized by a very loose brushstroke, with Venetian influence, which would also mark the work of his followers. Thus, the school of Ribera developed a style of dramatic and contrasting lighting, clearly tenebrist, nuanced however by a Venetian brushstroke, impastoed and fluid. Thus, here we see an artificial and directed spotlight that penetrates the scene through the upper left corner and directly illuminates the face and torso of the philosopher, leaving the rest in semi-darkness. And we also find that totally modern brushstroke that models leaning on the light, that touch of doughy and expressive brush directly from the school of Ribera.