Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and the singular Diego Velázquez, are regarded as the major artists of Spanish Baroque painting.

Ribera created history paintings, including traditional Biblical subjects and episodes from Greek mythology, but he is perhaps best known for his numerous views of martyrdom, which at times are brutal scenes depicting bound saints and satyrs as they are flayed or crucified in agony.

Ribera moved to Naples in late 1616, under Spanish rule at that time, and in November married Caterina Azzolino, the daughter of Sicilian painter Giovanni Bernardino Azzolini.

[1][2][3] His Italian biographers have many tales to tell of Ribera's stormy, picaresque career, and picture "Lo Spagnoletto's" life as an endless series of professional intrigues and rivalries, attempted poisonings due to gelosia di mestiere, conspiracies and brawls, triumphs and adversities, dramatic love affairs.

De Dominici's biography has been called "barefaced lies" by one modern historian,[9] and "a caricature" by another, although the latter noted a critical examination of it can still provide some insights.

[2] Records show Ribera was in Parma, Italy in June 1611, where he received payment for a painting of Saint Martin Sharing His Cloak with a Beggar, for the Church of San Prospero.

Ludovico Carracci wrote in 1618, that Ribera was under the protection of the ducal family (House of Farnese) while in Parma which aroused some resentment from local artist.

Parish registries (Status animarum) verify he observed Easter in 1615 and 1616 and was living in a house on the Via Margutta, then known as the foreigners quarter, with others including his brothers Jerónimo, and Juan who is also known to have been a painter.

[8]: 13 p.  At that time Rome was the most important center of painting, "the fountainhead of the Baroque",[12] where artist from throughout Europe gravitated, including painters such as Gerrit van Honthorst from the Netherlands, Simon Vouet from France, Adam Elsheimer from Germany, and many others, all exploring various aspects of chiaroscuro and tenebrism in the wake of Caravaggio.

[13] The last records of the artist in Rome are a payment of promised alms to the Accademia de San Luca in May 1616,[8]: 13 p.  and a bank transaction in July 1616.

According to Mancini, Ribera began working for daily wages in other artists workshops and in time developed a strong reputation and was making great profits.

He was able to quickly attract the attention of the Viceroy, Pedro Téllez-Girón, 3rd Duke of Osuna, another recent arrival, who gave him a number of major commissions, which showed the influence of Guido Reni.

[1] He has been characterized as selfishly protecting his prosperity, and is reputed to have been chief of the so-called Cabal of Naples, his abettors being a Greek painter, Belisario Corenzio and the Neapolitan Giambattista Caracciolo.

It is said this group aimed to monopolize Neapolitan art commissions, using intrigue, sabotage of work in progress, and even personal threats of violence to frighten away outside competitors such as Annibale Carracci, the Cavalier d'Arpino, Guido Reni, and Domenichino.

He was followed by Giuseppe Marullo and influenced the painters Agostino Beltrano, Paolo Domenico Finoglio, Giovanni Ricca, and Pietro Novelli.

executed in 1639, were identified in the collection of the Palacio de Monterrey, Salamanca, that surviving examples of his pure landscape paintings were known modern scholars.

Contemporary historians have remarked on the originality of Ribera’s approach to the subject and noted a contrast with Roman landscape painting of the period, exemplified in the work of Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain.

The only equestrian portrait painted by Ribera, depicting Philip IV's son and viceroy of Naples John Joseph of Austria, is exhibited in the Royal Collections Gallery.

[19] His mythologic subjects are often as violent as his martyrdoms, the most famous being his renditions of Apollo and Marsyas, now in Brussels and Naples, and his Tityos, now in the Museo del Prado.

Alongside eleven drawings, the Prado owns fifty-six paintings and another six attributed to Ribera such as Jacob’s Dream (1639), The Martyrdom of Saint Philip (1639; often described as Saint Bartholomew due to overlapping iconography[23]) or Saint Jerome Writing (1644), credited to him by Gianni Papi, a Caravaggio expert; the Louvre contain four of his paintings and seven drawings; the National Gallery, London owns three;[24] and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando owns an ensemble of five paintings including The Assumption of Mary Magdalene from El Escorial, and an early Ecce Homo or The head of St John the Baptist.

[19] Ribera's work remained in fashion after his death, largely through the adoption of his hyper-naturalistic depictions of violence in the paintings of pupils like Luca Giordano.

[25] The gradual rehabilitation of his international reputation was aided by exhibitions in Princeton in 1973, of his prints and drawings, and of works in all media in London at the Royal Academy in 1982 and in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992.