Marks, Inscriptions, and Distinguishing Features
Signed and dated lower left, on paper below figure’s proper left hand: Jusepe de Ribera español / F. 1637
Entry
Note
1. Charles G. Salas, “Elements of a Ribera,” Getty Research Journal 1 (2009): 19–23. In 1636, Ribera received a prestigious commission from the Neapolitan agents of Prince Karl Eusebius of Liechtenstein (1611–1684) for a series of “beggar-philosophers."2
Note
2. This modern term is commonly employed in scholarship on the artist. For relevant discussions of “beggar-philosopher” paintings by Ribera and his contemporaries, see Steven N. Orso, “On Ribera and the ‘Beggar-Philosophers,'” in Art in Spain and the Hispanic World: Essays in Honor of Jonathan Brown, ed. Sarah Schroth (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2010), 87–105; Helen Langdon, “The Representation of Philosophers in the Art of Salvator Rosa,” in Representations of Philosophers, ed. Langdon, kunsttexte.de 2 (2011): 1–17; and Helen Langdon, “Relics of the Golden Age: The Vagabond Philosopher,” in Others and Outcasts in Early Modern Europe: Picturing the Social Margins, ed. Tom Nichols (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 157–177. Although the original commission comprised 12 paintings, only six were delivered by 1637; the other six were never sent and may never have been executed.3
Note
3. Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez and Nicola Spinosa, eds., Jusepe de Ribera, 1591–1652, exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), 115. Inscriptions help to identify three of the paintings—Anaxagoras (fig. 1), Crates, and Diogenes—all of which are dated 1636 and signed with the Latin form of Ribera’s name (Josephf). The Clowes painting is one of the three remaining works, which are dated 1637 and signed with the more typical Aragonese-Valencian form of the artist’s name (Jusepe). The identification of the sitters in these three paintings is unclear. In the 1767 inventory of the Liechtenstein Collection, the six philosophers are named as Aristotle, Plato, Crates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, and Protagoras. Only Diogenes and Anaxagoras are listed in the later inventories, where the above-mentioned Aristotle is described as Archimedes and the other paintings are generically labeled “philosophers.” The series was dispersed in 1954, and two of the enigmatic “philosophers” have subsequently been identified as Plato (fig. 2) and Protagoras (fig. 3).
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Note
4. Craig Felton and William B. Jordan, eds., Jusepe de Ribera, lo Spagnoletto 1591–1652, exh. cat. (Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum, 1982), 157. However, the art historian Delphine Fitz Darby argued in favor of Aristotle on account of the skullcap and doctor’s robe, which features a torn sleeve that she believed evokes the exposed arm on ancient statues of this same philosopher.5
Note
5. Delphine Fitz Darby, “Ribera and the Wise Men,” Art Bulletin 44, no. 4 (December 1962): 299. While the evidence remains inconclusive, for Darby, the identity of Ribera’s philosophers may have been purposefully ambiguous, thereby prompting a guessing game for his erudite patrons and audiences.6
Note
6. Delphine Fitz Darby, “Ribera and the Wise Men,” Art Bulletin 44, no. 4 (December 1962): 291.
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Note
7. Anthony F. Janson and A. Ian Fraser, 100 Masterpieces of Painting: Indianapolis Museum of Art (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1980), 72–74.
Definition
Application of paint in thick, highly textured, opaque masses using a brush or palette knife. Marks from the implement of application are often evident. (Adapted from Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus Online) to the figure’s forehead. Ribera has imbued the man with such lifelike qualities that we have the sense of beholding an actual living presence. Just as the figure is absorbed in thought, so, too, the viewer is captivated by the pictorial rendering, which simultaneously betrays the materiality of the paint and the artifice of its handling.
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Definition
Actions aimed at facilitating appreciation, understanding, and use of an object when the item has lost part of its significance or function through past alteration or deterioration. Most often such actions modify the appearance of the item. Often used to refer to interventions taken to address aesthetic concerns without strict adherence to the modern ethical guidelines of conservation practice. (Adapted from ICOM-CC terminology for conservation), and date (17 photomicrographs merged). Jusepe de Ribera (Spanish, 1591–1652), A Philosopher, probably Euclid, 1637, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, The Clowes Collection, 2000.345.
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Definition
Actions aimed at facilitating appreciation, understanding, and use of an object when the item has lost part of its significance or function through past alteration or deterioration. Most often such actions modify the appearance of the item. Often used to refer to interventions taken to address aesthetic concerns without strict adherence to the modern ethical guidelines of conservation practice. (Adapted from ICOM-CC terminology for conservation), and date (17 photomicrographs merged). Jusepe de Ribera (Spanish, 1591–1652), A Philosopher, probably Euclid, 1637, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, The Clowes Collection, 2000.345.
Note
8. This idea was first proposed in 2019 by Kjell Wangensteen, whom the author gratefully acknowledges for sharing his research. Given his associations with visual and pictorial truth, this philosopher was considerably important within Ribera’s contemporary intellectual context, making him an appropriate subject for one of the paintings in a series destined for a learned patron.9
Note
9. Charles G. Salas, “Elements of a Ribera,” Getty Research Journal 1 (2009): 23.
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Note
10. See Victor I. Stoichita, Visionary Experience in the Golden Age of Spanish Art (London: Reaktion Books, 1995), 117–120. Stoichita comments on Francisco de Zurbarán’s signature in his Immaculate Conception (1661), which appears on a trompe l’oeil cartellino, suggesting it is “the artist’s way of telling us that ‘Zurbarán’ and not ‘God’ was the author of this painting.” When examining the painting of St. Jerome, it is not only the figure’s address to the spectator that so captivates our attention, but also the freely brushed surface of the canvas and the material properties of paint. While Jerome appears in the foreground, Ribera, too, is center stage. Likewise, the prominence of Ribera’s signature in the Clowes painting is further emphasized by the philosopher, who indicates the artist’s name with his left hand. There is a subtle conflation of painter and philosopher, who seems to have signed the sheet (and the painting) himself.
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Note
11. Pliny, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham (London: William Heinemann Ltd./Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), ix, book 35, 271. This concept resonated in a Spanish treatise by the artist-theoretician Vicente Carducho, Diálogos de la pintura (1633), which includes an engraved endpiece depicting a tabula rasa with a suspended paintbrush casting a shadow. The image bears the Latin inscription POTENTIA AD ACTUM TAMQUAM TABULA RASA, relating Aristotle’s philosophy of potentiality versus actuality to the artist’s encounter with a blank canvas upon which he may freely create within the limits of his imagination.12
Note
12. William B. Jordan, The Meadows Museum: A Visitor’s Guide to the Collection (Dallas: Southern Methodist University, 1974), 20. Given the location of the signature in the Clowes painting, perhaps the philosopher is a stand-in for the painter, the closed book analogous to the blank canvas, the cast shadow an allusion to the art of painting. We are meant to imagine what lies inside the book, just as we project an image onto the tabula rasa with our mind’s eye. Although the philosopher presents the viewer with a closed book, he gazes at its empty cover, absorbed in thought, thus mirroring the viewer’s action before the painted canvas, which bears the traces of the artist’s divine inspiration.
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Author
Provenance
By descent within the family of the princes of Liechtenstein, Vaduz, Liechtenstein;
G.H.A. Clowes, Indianapolis, in 1955;
The Clowes Fund, Indianapolis, from 1958–2000, and on long-term loan to the Indianapolis Museum of Art since 1971 (C10066);
Given to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, now the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, in 2000.
Exhibitions
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, 1957, Exhibition of Paintings and Graphics by Jusepe Ribera, no. 4;
John Herron Museum of Art, Indianapolis, 1959, Paintings from the Collection of George Henry Alexander Clowes: A Memorial Exhibition, no. 49, as Archimedes;
The Art Gallery, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 1962, A Lenten Exhibition, no. 42, as Archimedes;
Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, 1962, Italian and Spanish Paintings from the Clowes Collection, no. 31;
John Herron Museum of Art, Indianapolis, and Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, 1963, El Greco to Goya, no. 70, as Archimedes;
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1982, Jusepe de Ribera, lo Spagnoletto 1591–1652, no. 18, as A Philosopher (Aristotle?);
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1992, Jusepe de Ribera, 1591–1652, no. 40, as Aristotle;
Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas, 2017, Between Heaven and Hell: The Drawings of Jusepe de Ribera, as Aristotle;
Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, 2019, Life and Legacy: Portraits from the Clowes Collection, as A Philosopher, probably Euclid;
Guangdong Museum, Guangzhou, China; Hunan Museum, Changsha, China; Chengdu Museum; 2020–2021, Rembrandt to Monet: 500 Years of European Painting, as A Philosopher, probably Euclid.
References
Vincenzio Fanti, Descrizzione completa di tutto ciò che ritrovasi nella galleria di pittura e scultura di sua altezza Giuseppe Wenceslao del S. R. I. principe regnante della casa di Lichtenstein (Vienna: Stamperia aulica di Giovanni Tommaso de Trattnern, 1767), 105, no. 531;
Description des tableaux et des pieces de sculpture que renferme La Gallerie de Son Altesse François Joseph chef et Prince Regnant de la Maison de Liechtenstein (Vienna: Chez Jean Thom. nob. de Trattnern, imprimeur et libraire de la cour, 1780), 160, 169;
Louis Viardot, Les musées d’Allemagne et de Russie (Paris: Paulin, 1844), 257;
August L. Mayer, Jusepe de Ribera (Lo Spagnoletto) (Leipzig: Karl. W. Hiersemann, 1908), 188;
August L. Mayer, Jusepe de Ribera (Lo Spagnoletto) (Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann, 1923), 99–100, 201;
A. Kronfeld, Führer durch die fürstlich Liechtensteinsche Gemäldegalerie in Wien (Vienna: Kunstverlag Wolfrum, 1927 and 1931), 23, no. A57;
Bernardino de Pantorba, José de Ribera: Ensayo biográfico y crítico (Barcelona: Iberia–Joaquín Gil, 1946), 25;
Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 14, no. 2 (Winter 1957): 74;
Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño, La pintura española fuera de España (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, S.A., 1958), no. 2324;
Evan H. Turner, “Ribera’s Philosophers,” Wadsworth Atheneum Bulletin 4, no. 1 (Spring 1958): 5n5, 8, fig. 2, as Archimedes the Philosopher;
Delphine Fitz Darby, “Ribera and the Wise Men,” Art Bulletin 44, no. 4 (December 1962): 298–299 and fig. 9 as The Philosopher Aristotle;
Mark Roskill, “Clowes Collection Catalogue” (unpublished typed manuscript, IMA Clowes Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN, 1968);
Craig M. Felton, “Jusepe de Ribera, a Catalogue Raisonné,” PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1971, 420–421, no. X18, as an unaccepted attribution;
A. Ian Fraser, A Catalogue of the Clowes Collection (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1973), 60–61, as Archimedes (reproduced);
Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez and Nicola Spinosa, eds., L’opera completa del Ribera (Milan: Rizzoli Editore, 1978), 139, no. 403, as Archimedes (reproduced);
Anthony F. Janson and A. Ian Fraser, 100 Masterpieces of Painting: Indianapolis Museum of Art (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1980), 71–74, as Archimedes (reproduced);
Craig Felton and William B. Jordan, eds., Jusepe de Ribera, lo Spagnoletto 1591–1652, exh. cat. (Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum, 1982), 156–57, no. 18, as A Philosopher (Aristotle?) (reproduced);
Eduardo Nappi, “Pittori del ‘600 a Napoli: Notizie inedite dai documenti dell’Archivio storico del Banco di Napoli,” Ricerche sul ’600 napoletano 2 (Milan: L & T, 1983), 73–87;
Antonio Delfino, “Documenti inediti per alcuni pittori napoletani del ‘600 e l’inventario dei beni lasciati de Lanfranco Massa,” Ricerche sul ’600 napoletano 4 (Milan: L & T, 1985), 104;
Craig Felton, “Ribera’s ‘Philosophers’ for the Prince of Liechtenstein,” Burlington Magazine 128, no. 1004 (November 1986): 785–789, fig. 7, as Aristotle;
Oreste Ferrari, “L’iconografia dei filosofi antichi nella pittura del secolo XVII in Italia,” Storia dell’arte 57 (1986): 114, 150, fig. 30, as Aristotle;
Holliday T. Day, ed., Indianapolis Museum of Art Collections Handbook (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1988), 25, as A Philosopher (Archimedes?) (reproduced);
Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez and Nicola Spinosa, eds., Jusepe de Ribera, 1591–1652, exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), 115–119, no. 40 as Aristotle (reproduced);
Nicola Spinosa, Ribera: L’opera completa (Naples: Electa Napoli, 2003), 304, no. A176 as Aristotle (reproduced);
Ellen W. Lee, ed., Indianapolis Museum of Art Highlights of the Collection (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2005), 104, as Aristotle (reproduced);
Nicola Spinosa, Ribera: L’opera completa (Naples: Electa Napoli, 2006), 332, no. A198, as Aristotle (reproduced);
Nicola Spinosa, Ribera: La obra completa (Madrid: Fundación Arte Hispánico, 2008), 417–418, no. A218, as Aristotle (reproduced);
Zahira Véliz, Spanish Drawings in The Courtauld Gallery: Complete Catalogue (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2011), 224, fig. 145, as Aristotle;
Ximo Company and María Antonia Argelich, José de Ribera, San Jerónimo estudiando (Lleida: Centre d’Art d’Època Moderna, Universitat de Lleida, 2013), 23, fig. 24, as Aristotle;
Gabriele Finaldi, ed., Jusepe de Ribera, The Drawings: Catalogue raisonné (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado/Seville: Fundación Focus/ Dallas: Meadows Museum, SMU, 2016), 136, fig. 43.1, as Aristotle;
Kjell M. Wangensteen, et al., Rembrandt to Monet: 500 Years of European Painting (Nanjing: Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing, 2020), 118–119 (reproduced);
Kjell M. Wangensteen, et al., Floating Lights and Shadows: 500 Years of European Painting (Nanjing: Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing, 2020), 116–117 (reproduced).
Notes
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Charles G. Salas, “Elements of a Ribera,” Getty Research Journal 1 (2009): 19–23. ↩︎
-
This modern term is commonly employed in scholarship on the artist. For relevant discussions of “beggar-philosopher” paintings by Ribera and his contemporaries, see Steven N. Orso, “On Ribera and the ‘Beggar-Philosophers,'” in Art in Spain and the Hispanic World: Essays in Honor of Jonathan Brown, ed. Sarah Schroth (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2010), 87–105; Helen Langdon, “The Representation of Philosophers in the Art of Salvator Rosa,” in Representations of Philosophers, ed. Langdon, kunsttexte.de 2 (2011): 1–17; and Helen Langdon, “Relics of the Golden Age: The Vagabond Philosopher,” in Others and Outcasts in Early Modern Europe: Picturing the Social Margins, ed. Tom Nichols (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 157–177. ↩︎
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Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez and Nicola Spinosa, eds., Jusepe de Ribera, 1591–1652, exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), 115. ↩︎
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Craig Felton and William B. Jordan, eds., Jusepe de Ribera, lo Spagnoletto 1591–1652, exh. cat. (Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum, 1982), 157. ↩︎
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Delphine Fitz Darby, “Ribera and the Wise Men,” Art Bulletin 44, no. 4 (December 1962): 299. ↩︎
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Delphine Fitz Darby, “Ribera and the Wise Men,” Art Bulletin 44, no. 4 (December 1962): 291. ↩︎
-
Anthony F. Janson and A. Ian Fraser, 100 Masterpieces of Painting: Indianapolis Museum of Art (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1980), 72–74. ↩︎
-
This idea was first proposed in 2019 by Kjell Wangensteen, whom the author gratefully acknowledges for sharing his research. ↩︎
-
Charles G. Salas, “Elements of a Ribera,” Getty Research Journal 1 (2009): 23. ↩︎
-
See Victor I. Stoichita, Visionary Experience in the Golden Age of Spanish Art (London: Reaktion Books, 1995), 117–120. Stoichita comments on Francisco de Zurbarán’s signature in his Immaculate Conception (1661), which appears on a trompe l’oeil cartellino, suggesting it is “the artist’s way of telling us that ‘Zurbarán’ and not ‘God’ was the author of this painting.” ↩︎
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Pliny, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham (London: William Heinemann Ltd./Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), ix, book 35, 271. ↩︎
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William B. Jordan, The Meadows Museum: A Visitor’s Guide to the Collection (Dallas: Southern Methodist University, 1974), 20. ↩︎
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In 1983 Eduardo Nappi published information documenting Ribera’s commission which he had located in the archives of the Banco dello Spirito Santo, Naples; see Eduardo Nappi, “Pittori del ‘600 a Napoli: Notizie inedite dai documenti dell’Archivio storico del Banco di Napoli,” in Ricerche sul ‘600 napoletano: saggi vari, (Milan: Lancorelli & Tognolli, 1983), 73–87. Craig Felton subsequently transcribed the archival notation as: Banco dello Spirito Santo, giornale del 1636, matr. 270, partita di ducati 100, estinta il 7 maggio. A Lorenzo Cambi e Simone Verzone D. 100. E per lui a Gioseppe de Ribera, dite se li pagano per ordine del conte Carlo Felesbergh et esserno in conto di D. 500 per il valore di dodici quadri d’altezza e di palmi cinque e palmi quattro di larghezza in ognuno dei qualci ci ha da essere dipinto un filosofo di sua propria mano che ha pigliato a fare per servito di don Carlo Felisbergh et quelli han da consegnare a loro fra sei mesi et mancando de consignare debbia restituire tutto il denaro ad ogni loro piacere; see Craig Felton, “Ribera’s ‘Philosophers’ for the Prince of Liechtenstein,” The Burlington Magazine, 128, no. 1004 (November 1986), 785–789. The prince is identified here as “Carlo Felesbergh.” Until these discoveries, the earliest source documenting a Liechtenstein provenance for the Ribera painting (listed as Aristotle) dated to 1767; see Vincenzio Fanti, Descrizzione Completa di tutto ciò che ritrovasi nella galleria di pittura e scultura di sua altezza Giuseppe Wenceslau del S.R.I. principe regnant della casa di Lichtenstein (Vienna: Stamperia aulica di Giovanni Tommaso de Trattnern, 1767), 105, no. 531. ↩︎
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Letter from Clyde Newhouse to Clowes, 22 November 1955, File C10066, Clowes Registration Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. Paintings from the collection of the princes of Liechtenstein were dispersed in 1954, including several of Ribera’s philosophers. Other paintings from this collection went to the National Gallery in Ottawa, Canada, in the same year; see “Canada acquires paintings from one of Europe’s noted collections,” Canadian Art XI, no. 4 (summer 1954), 142–144. ↩︎