Getty Museum
A Potentate Accompanied by His Halberd Bearer
Creator
Jusepe de RiberaSpanish Artist · 1591–1652
All works by this person →The "young Spaniard working in the manner of Caravaggio" was causing the Bolognese artists concern, Lodovico Carracci wrote admiringly of Jusepe de Ribera in 1618. Ribera, second son of a Valencian shoemaker, had only been in Italy about four years and was already making a splash. After working in Rome and Parma in 1616, Ribera settled in Naples, where he spent his career. Ribera's art combined kn
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1625–1630
- Medium
- Point of the brush with vermilion ink; squared in pen and brown ink
- Culture
- Spanish
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
Jusepe de Ribera not only contrasted the sizes of the gigantic potentate and his dwarf halberd bearer but also juxtaposed their somewhat disheveled appearance with their grandiloquent poses. This caricature-like representation displays Ribera's usual strain of irony and frequent combination of figures of differing scale. The striking crimson ink underscores the outlandish qualities of Ribera's subject matter. To make the ink, the artist probably used a dye made from the cochineal insect, a relative of the mealybug. He also applied his ink somewhat unconventionally, in tremulous, undulating lines made with the point of a brush. Ribera neither inscribed nor squared the drawing himself. Sometime after his death, another craftsman probably considered transferring the design to an engraving plate.
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