RICARDUS
32
RICCARDI
of violence exhaust Ribera's art. They are supple-
nu'iited by sweet ideas, and in his work horrible pictures
alternate with tender ones. There is a type of young
woman or rather young girl, still almost a child, of
deUcate beauty with candid oval features and rather
thin arms, with streaming hair and an air of ignorance,
a t\-pe of parado.vical grace, which is found in his
"Rapture of St. Miigdalen" (Madrid, Academy of
S. Fernando), or the "St. Agnes" of the Dresden
Museum. This virginal figure is truly the "eternal
feminine" of a countrj' which more than any other
dreamed of love and sought to deify its object,
summarizing in it the most irreconcilable desires and
virtues. No painter has endowed the subject of the
Immaculate Conception with such grandeur as Ribera
in his picture for the Ursuhnes of Salamanca (1636).
Even a certain familiar turn of imagination, a certain
intimate and domestic piety, a sweetness, an amicable
and popular cordiality which would seem unknown
to this savage spirit were not foreign to him. In
more than one instance he reminds us of Murillo.
He painted .several "Holy Families", "Housekeeping
in the Carpenter Shop" (Gallery of the Duke of
Norfolk). All that is inspired by tender reverie
about cradles and chaste alcoves, all the distracting
dehghts in which modern rehgion rejoices and which
sometimes result in affectation, are found in more
than germ in the art of this painter, who is regarded
by many as cruel and uniformly inhuman. Thus
throughout his work scenes of carnage are succeeded
bj- scenes of love, atrocious visions by visions of
beaut}'. They complete each other or rather the
impression they convey is heightened by contrast.
And under both forms the artist incessantly sought
one object, namely to obtain the maximum of emo-
tion; his art expresses the most intense nervous
life.
This is the genius of antithesis. It forms the very basis of Ribera's art, the condition of his ideas, and even dictates the customar>' processes of his chiaro- scuro. For Ribera's chiaroscuro, scarcely less per- sonal than that of Rembrandt, is, no less than the latter's, inseparable from a certain manner of feeling. Less supple than the latter, less enveloping, less penetrating, less permeable by the fight, twihght, and penumbra, it proceeds more roughly by clearer oppositions and sharp intersections of light and dark- ness. Contrary to Rembrandt, Ribera does not de- compose or discolour, his palette does not dissolve under the influence of shadows, and nothing is so peculiar to him as certain superexcited notes of furious red. Nevertheless, compared to Caravaggio, hi.4 chiaroscuro is much more than a mere means of relief. The canvas assumes a vulcanized, car- bonized appearance. Large wan shapes stand out from the a.sphalt of the background, and the shadows about them deepen and accumulate a kind of obscure tragic capacity. There Ls always the same twofold rhythm, the same pathetic formula of a dramatized universf* regarded fis a duel between sorrow and joy, day and night. This striking formula, infinitely less subtile than that of Rembrandt, nevertheless had an immense success. For all the schools of the south Caravaggio's chiaroscuro perfected by Ilibera had the force of law, such as it is found throughout the Near politan Kchfxjl, in Htanzioni, Salvator Rosa, Luca (iiordano. In rriod(;m times Honnat and Ribot painted as though they knew no master but Ribera.
R<«t came to tliis violr-nt nature Upwards tin; end of his life; from thr- idea of contrast he rf)S(' U) that of harmony. His last works, the "Club Foot" and the "Adoration of the Shepherds" (IG.'jO), both in the I>juvre, are painted in a silvery t<^jne which seems to forcwha/iow the light of \'claHquez. His hand had not lost its vigour, its care for truth; he always dis- played the same implacable and, as it were, in- flexible realism. The objects of still life in the
"Adoration of the Shepherds" have not been equalled
by any specialist, but these works are marked by a
new serenit}'. This impassioned genius leaves us
under a tran(}uil impression; we catch a ray — or
should it rather be called a reflection? — of the Ol3Tn-
pian genius of the author of "The Maids of Honour".
Ribera was long the only Spanish painter who en-
joyed a European fame; this he owed to the fact
that he had lived at Naples and has often been classed
with the European school. Because of this he is
now denied the glory which was formerly his. He is
regarded more or less as a deserter, at any rate as
the least national of Spanish painters. But in the
seventeenth century Naples was still Spanish, and
by living there a man did not cease to be a Spanish
subject. By removing the centre of the school to
Naples, Ribera did Spain a great service. Spanish
art, hitherto little known, almost lost at Valencia and
Seville, thanks to Ribera was put into wider circula-
tion. Through the authority of a master recognized
even at Rome the school felt emboldened and en-
couraged. It is true that his art, although more
Spanish than any other, is also somewhat less special-
ized; it is cosmopolitan. Like Seneca and Lucian,
who came from Cordova, and St. Augustine, who
came from Carthage, Ribera has expressed in a uni-
versal language the ideal of the country where life
has most savour.
DoMiNici, Vite de' pittori . . . napoletani (Naples, 1742- 1743; 2nd ed., Naples, 1844); P,\lomino, £< Museo Pictdrico, I (Madrid, 1715); II (Madrid, 1724); Noticias, Elogios y Vidas de los Pintores, at the end of vol. II, separate edition (London, 1742), in (IJerman (Dresden, 1781); Bermudez, Diccionario historlco de los mdx ilustres profesores de las betlas artes en Espafla (Madrid, 1800); Stirling, Anyials of the artists of Spain (Lon- don, 1848); ViARDOT, Notices sur les principnux peintres de V Espagne (P&ris.lSSQ); Bla^c, Ecole Espagnole (1869); Meyer, Ribera (Strasburg, 1908); Lafond, Ribera el Zurbaran (Paris, 1910).
LOTJIS GiLLET.
Ricardus Anglicus, Archdeacon of Bologna, was an English priest who was rector of the law school at the University of Bologna in 1226, and who, by new methods of explaining legal proceedings, became recognized as the pioneer of scientific judicial pro- cedure in the twelfth century. His long-lost work "Ordo Judiciarius" was discovered in MS. by Wunderlich in Douai and published by Witt in 1851. A more correct MS. was subsequently discovered at Brussels by Sir Travcrs Twiss, who, on evidence which seems insufficient, followed Panciroli in iden- tifying him with the celebrated Bishop Richard Poor (died 1237). Probably he graduated in Paris, as a Papal Bull of 1218 refers to "Ricardus Anglicus doctor Parisiensis", but there is no evidence to con- nect him with Oxford. He also wrote glosses on the papal decretals, and distinctions on the Decree of Oratian. He mu.st be distinguished from his con- temporary, Ricardus Anglicanus, a physician.
Rashdall, Mediwval Utwersities, II, 750 (London, 1895); Twi89, Law Magazine and Review, May, 1894; Sarti and Fattorini, De claris Arcbigymnasii Bononiensis Professoribus; Blakiston in Diet. Nat. Biog., a. v. Poor, Richard.
Edwin Burton.
Riccardi, Nicholas, theologian, writer and preach- er; b. at Genoa, 1585; d. at Rome, 30 May, 1639. Physically he was unprepossessing, even slightly de- formed. His physical deficiencies, however, were abundantly compensated for by mentality of the highest order. His natural taste for study was en- couraged by his parents who sent him to Spain to pursue his studies in the Pirician Academy. While a student at this institution he cntcnMl the Dominican order and was invested with its habit in the Convent of St. Paul, where he studied philosophy and theology. So brilliant was his record that after completing his studies he was made a professor of Thomistic theology at Pincia. While discharging his academic duties, he acquired a reputation as a preacher second only to
