Ribera, Gautier, and the French Taste for Violent Painting

Abstract

Abstract Paintings by the Spanish baroque artist Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652) prompted a range of contradictory responses in the nineteenth century. Poets, travel writers, critics, and artists reacted to his work, especially his striking depictions of violent subjects, with both admiration and displeasure. In 1845, Théophile Gautier published a collection of poems, including two on Ribera in which he provocatively addresses the artist as ‘le noir Valencian’ (the black Valencian) and ‘plus dur que Jupiter’ (harsher than Jupiter). Through a comparative study of Ribera’s paintings and Gautier’s poems, this essay provides a more nuanced account of Ribera’s reception during this period. The essay argues for the significance of these poetic responses by suggesting that Gautier calls attention to the problematic relationship between art making and bodily unmaking: a tension which is central to an understanding of Ribera’s violent imagery, and to the myth making of Ribera as a ‘violent’ artist.

Keywords

• Baroque Spain
• romantic poetry
• violence
• reception
• historiography