Ribera's

Jusepe de Ribera's red chalk drawing is one of the show's more intriguing moments, showing an old man tied to a tree, reaching out an open hand while a figure crouches behind him, its back turned: an allegory or simply a collision of shorthand for other works?

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Ribera's great portrait makes a monument of this spirited child with his defiant grin and marching pose.

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Slightly less frightening, but notably powerful, is Ribera's economical visualization of the crucifixion of St. Peter c. 1628-30; a robust man struggling on an inverted cross, as it is raised, is conjured up by quick pen strokes that share the page with trial runs of the painter's monogram.

Iberian Treasures in Chalk and Ink Karen Wilkin 2010

Ribera's delicately hatched, fragmentary profile head in chalk (c. 1622), with an ear depicted twice in an effort to get it right, competes for attention with a frontal, subtly stroked "portrait" of a bat with outstretched wings (c. 1620-25); the leftover spaces flanking the bat are thriftily filled by more studies of ears — one in side view, the other dramatically foreshortened.

Iberian Treasures in Chalk and Ink Karen Wilkin 2010

He summoned before Margaret the whole array of Ribera's ghoulish dwarfs, with their cunning smile, the insane light of their eyes, and their malice: he dwelt with a horrible fascination upon their malformations, the humped backs, the club feet, the hydrocephalic heads.

The Magician 1919

The anchorites and wasted cenobites, the parchment-like St. Jeromes, these singular methods of depicting the mystical life seem Ribera's personal creation; to show the ruins of the human body, the drama of

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13: Revelation-Stock 1840-1916 1913

In fact the whole of Ribera's work must be understood as that of a man who made the pathetic the condition of art and the reason of the beautiful.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13: Revelation-Stock 1840-1916 1913

Ribera's name is synonymous with a terrifying art of wild-beast fighters and executioners.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13: Revelation-Stock 1840-1916 1913

Ribera's art seems a dangerous return to the delights of the amphitheatre.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13: Revelation-Stock 1840-1916 1913

Ribera's point of view is scarcely less powerful with much less artifice.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13: Revelation-Stock 1840-1916 1913