Another study for Ribera's early Adoration of the Magi

In 1997, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, acquired a drawing of the Adoration of the Magi by Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) (Fig. 1). (1) Spanish by birth, Ribera spent almost the whole of his working career in Naples. His mature work both as a painter and draughtsman is clearly defined, but his activity during his earliest period in Italy, before he reached Naples, is still shrouded in mystery. He was originally from Jativa, Valencia, and received his early training from Francisco Ribalta, the most prominent Valencian artist of the day. Precisely when Ribera arrived in Italy is unknown, but he was already there in 1611, when he is recorded as being in Parma. It must have been soon afterwards that he started slowly working his way southwards, arriving in Rome in 1613 and in Naples--which turned out to be his ultimate destination--in 1616.

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The Getty drawing, which--for some--continues to be difficult to comprehend as a juvenile work by Ribera, has claims to be time artist's earliest surviving drawing, since it would have been made some years before his style as a draughtsman had matured--that is around 1620-25--well after his arrival in Naples. (2) The treatment of the subject is also unusual, with the three kings and some of the members of their retinue treated almost without differentiation, as if no hierarchy existed between them. The Getty drawing must have been made in connection with a project for a painting, presumably an altarpiece, though no such picture is known. As for the destination of this hypothetical picture (which may not in the end have been commissioned), this is sheer guesswork. What is certain, however, is that Ribera, anxious to earn his keep, would have had to paint a picture or two on some of his stopovers en route southward down the peninsular.

It is hard to pinpoint the early influences on the youthful Ribera before he gut to Rome, besides hints of his knowledge of contemporary Emilian painting. Once in Rome, it would be a different story, for the impact on him of Caravaggio and some of the latter's Roman followers must have been overwhelming. A recent attempt has been made to identify the production of the anonymous Caravaggesque painter, the so called 'Master of the Judgement of Solomon', with the young Ribera's Roman work. (3) If this identification is indeed correct (and I do not feel able to comment), these pictures would have been painted around the middle of the second decade of the century. On the other hand, for an idea of Ribera as a draughtsman, at the very moment before his critical arrival in Rome, the Getty Adoration of the Magi provides an invaluable clue.

Indeed, the only explanation for the stylistic features found in the Getty Adoration of the Magi is that it is a precocious work by the young Spaniard. During Ribera's short period in Parma, he would have become acquainted with contemporary Emilian painting, notably that of the Carracci and their more noteworthy followers, and this explains many of the influences present in the Getty drawing. Among these is the similarity in use of the medium of pen and dark brown wash to that found in drawings done in this same technique by Ludovico Carracci and, more especially, Guido Reni. As for its composition, the Getty Adoration of the Magi is unexpected, showing figures densely packed into a form somewhat resembling a truncated pyramid, though it must be remembered that the figures are conceived independently of a background, which would have helped to soften their sculptural impact. Again, the compositional structure shows knowledge of the monumental massing of figures so much favoured by the Carracci. In spite of this, the simplicity and strength of line, together with the bold application of wash, are traits that reveal Ribera's uncompromising hand, as do the poses of many of the figures, together with their uniquely menacing expressions.

In light of the importance of the Getty drawing in the understanding of Ribera's development as a draughtsman, it is interesting to happen upon a second, earlier study for the same composition of the Adoration of the Magi, this time at Christ Church, Oxford, where Byam Shaw catalogued it as 'Studio of the Carracci' (Fig. 2). (4) From many points of view, the Christ Church drawing illuminates the development of the composition. Firstly, it shows a radically different and more widely dispersed arrangement for the figures, which are now seen against a conventional, if rather summarily indicated, background, though the triangular emphasis of the design is already apparent in the positioning of the principal figures. A bearded Magus stands prominently at the centre, with his right hand raised in wonderment at seeing the newly born Infant King, and his bare head forms the apex of a triangle. The back of a second, kneeling Magus and of the seated Virgin supporting the Child form two sides of an equilateral triangle located plumb in the centre of the design. In the void between the triangle of figures, right in the middle, is what appears to be an unguent jar, which the Virgin takes with her right hand from the kneeling Magus. Joseph, who holds his staff, is sidelined, and sits in contemplation to the right, as if he had been left out of the party. Although in the Getty drawing the Virgin also takes the jar with her right hand, there she reaches up to hand it to Joseph. To perform this role, Joseph is now brought into the middle of the composition, allowing the kneeling Magus, who has just been relieved of his gift to the Infant King, to take the Child's left foot in his hand to plant a kiss upon it.

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In the Christ Church drawing, the subsidiary figures are more numerous and spread out than those in the Getty drawing. They include a burly, grimacing negroid attendant in profile, seen to the left, who removes his master's turban from his head; and, on the extreme left, a page boy to the second Magus, who this time carries his master's turban in his left hand. These and other servants merge with their lesser colleagues and other minions to make up the retinue glimpsed in the distance on the left. The Christ Church drawing also allows the setting for the Adoration of the Magi composition to be understood for the first time. A mountainous slope, falling to the right, occupies more than three-quarters of the background space, which is closed off to the right by the stable wall and a heavy, buttress-like beam supporting the roof.

The Getty and Christ Church drawings are clearly by the same hand. They share the same rough, idiosyncratic pen work. This is bulked out with clumsily applied, watery brown wash, which is contrasted with occasional highlights, indicated by pernickety touches of white. Moreover, both compositions boast the same cast of eccentrically posed, heavily built characters, with their unmistakably distorted faces and sightless eyes. Such figure types, of course, crop up later, again and again, in the artist's less worked up pen drawings.

As Ribera's creative process set out here clearly shows, the Getty drawing depends in idea on the one at Christ Church and is, indeed, a refinement of it. If therefore we are to look for Ribera's earliest surviving drawing, the one at Christ Church has a better claim to priority than that in the Getty, but probably only by a matter of a few days, or hours even.

Additionally, the Christ Church Adoration of the Magi readily shows the Ferrarese and Emilian origins of the extraordinary figure types for which Ribera had a penchant. Interestingly, the Christ Church drawing carries an old attribution to the ear]y sixteenth-century Ferrarese painter Benvenuto Tisi, il Garofalo, an idea that is far from idiotic. For not only does one find an echo of Garofalo in the figures and in the compositional treatment of the design, but also present is the influence of Ludovico Mazzolino, another Ferrarese and Garofalo's close contemporary. Besides the reminiscences of the work of the Carracci and of Guido Reni, already noted, the Oxford sheet carries at least one other Emilian strain, that of the arch-individualist Amico Aspertini, for whom Ribera must have had a fellow feeling.

It is surely of some significance that, when faced with the immense richness of Italian painting, the young Spanish painter picked up on the Emilian threads outlined here in order to define his own creative personality. So far there is not a whiff of Caravaggio, whose work he had presumably not yet experienced. When it occurred, the force of Caravaggio's impact on Ribera cannot be underestimated. Indeed, perhaps this is the explanation for the rarity of finished pen-and-wash drawings in Ribera's later oeuvre--the equivalent to those in the earlier Getty and Christ Church sheets. Once Ribera had encountered the working methods of Caravaggio and had taken them on as his own, drawing inevitably played a lesser role in his practice. Hence the scratchy, summary sketches, usually in pen and ink alone, that make up the bulk of his compositional studies from the middle of his career onwards. Ironically, in Ribera's finished red chalk studies, which in many ways are more redolent of the more fully realised studies in this same technique by Ludovico and Annibale Carracci, the Spaniard's Emilian heritage lives on more securely.

In March 2003, weeks after this article was submitted to the editor, an exceptionally fine Grotesque head by Ribera appeared on the Paris art market (Fig. 3). (5) Wrongly called 'Ecole bolonaise, 16eme siecle' (the misattribution unwittingly pointing to the origins of Ribera's graphic style), the Paris drawing brought directly to mind the physiognomies of some of the black participants in the composition of the Adoration of the Magi. These include the grimacing black page in the Christ Church drawing, who removes the turban of his master, as the latter readies himself to give his treasure to the young Christ Child, and the Magus Balthazar, who stands on the left, in profile to the right, in the Getty drawing.

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Besides these figurative analogies, there are also similarities in technique. Parallel hatching, drawn with the point of the brush, is a feature of the handling of the Grotesque head, where its energy and variety greatly enliven the modelling. The chiaroscuro effect is further enhanced by the luminosity of the untouched paper, broken up here and there by odd flecks and squiggles. A similar system of modelling is found in a number of passages in the Getty drawing, for example in the head and shoulder of the bald-headed, bearded Magus, who kneels on the steps on the right of the composition.

(1) J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, no. 97.GG.52. See N. Turner, Catalogue of the Collections: European Drawings, 4, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2001, pp. 269-71, no. 88, as 'Attributed to Jusepe de Ribera'. Although this catalogue was only published in 2001, my entry on the Ribera drawing was completed in August 1998.

(2) This point was noted by myself as well as Dr. Mark McDonald, who published the drawing ahead of volume 4 of the Getty catalogue. See M. McDonald, 'Ribera's Earliest Drawing', Master Drawings, vol. XXXVII, no. 4, 1999, pp. 368-72. In a letter to Master Drawings, vol. XXXVIII, no. 4, 2000, p. 472, David Scrase kindly clarified an iconographical point that was wrongly interpreted first in my text and then in McDonald's. Scrase pointed out that the figure who turns his back on the Virgin is not one of the Magi, but a member of their retinue. Balthazar, the black king, Scrase added, is either 'the pointing figure at the far right ... or the figure kneeling before the Christ Child'.

(3) For this hypothesis, see G. Papi, 'Jusepe de Ribera a Roma e il Maestro del Giudizio di Salomone', Paragone, vol. LIII, July 2002, pp. 21-43.

(4) Christ Church, Oxford no. 0168. See J. Byam Shaw, Drawings by Old Masters at Christ Church, Oxford, 2 vols., Oxford, 1976, vol. I, p. 251, no. 950, unillustrated.

(5) Dessins anciens et du 19ieme siecle, Christie's, Paris, 27 March 2003, lot 51: pen and brown wash, 19.6 x 25.2 cm. The attribution to Ribera is not in doubt. Similar grotesque heads wearing exotic headgear, decorated with nude acrobats, are found elsewhere in the artist's graphic oeuvre. Perhaps the closest comparison is with the Grotesque head of a man, with figures climbing on his cap in the Museum of Fine Arts, Philadelphia (A. E. Perez Sanchez and N. Spinosa (eds.), Ribera, 1591-1652, exh. cat., Museo del Prado, Madrid, June-August 1992, no. D.42). The grotesque heads must, however, date from the late 1620s of 30s, sometime after the two drawings for an Adoration of the Magi considered here.

Nicholas Turner is an independent scholar, noted above all for his expertise in the field of Italian drawings. He formerly worked ha the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum and at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

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