Attributed to Francisco Ribalta (Solsona, Lérida, 1565-Valencia, 1628) - San Dimas

Attributed to Francisco Ribalta (Solsona, Lérida, 1565-Valencia, 1628) - San Dimas
Oil on canvas measures: 100 x 90 cm, measures with frame: 120 x 100 cm (Solsona, Lérida, 1565-Valencia, 1628). A painter of Lleida origin, he began his training in El Escorial in view of Spanish and Italian works and artists who worked there, capturing the most significant developments in his art. He thus developed an eclectic style that would come to combine the rhetoric of Cincinato, the daring foreshortening of Tibaldi or the gravity of Bartolomé Carducho, with the drama of Navarrete and the chiaroscuro plays of light of the best Cambiaso, aspects that emerge undisguisedly in his production. He first practiced his profession in Madrid, between 1585 and 1598, where he painted religious works and portraits, and where he married and had two daughters and then a son, Juan, in 1597, who over the years would become a notable painter. In 1599 he moved to Valencia, surely encouraged by the artistic demands of the patriarch archbishop Juan de Ribera. He remained in Valencia for the rest of his life, carrying out intense work and giving his style an increasingly personal air that in his maturity reached the highest levels of quality in the direction of naturalism. Provenance: important private Valencian collection.