The Youth of Genius

The recent exhibition on Ribera’s roman period, when he had still not turned 25, has allowed experts to reflect on that time period in which masters begin to form. It is not easy, as has been seen in meetings, to agree on dates, formation, style, even on the authority of some of works. But from this decision ideas and propositions have developed which announce future findings. This happened with the Master of the Good Samaritan, baptized with this name by Papi in the previous number by ARS, and to which the Italian researcher attributed the postulate of the Academy of San Fernando, which we reproduce along these lines, and is not Italian like we said at the foot of the photograph, but Dutch like Papi pointed in his text. This author, still anonymous yet close to Ribera, was the center some of the debates that took place. He was not the first. The first two decades of the 17th century in Rome were extraordinary like the quality of the painters that congregated there from all over Europe. There are still things to be ‘discovered’.

If I refer to those years of the ‘Españoleto’, it is also because we refer back to Goya in this number; to a new juvenile painting of the Aragon master, painted also before he reached the court. A still quite confusing period due to attributions that result more than debatable. The consensus that this composition has awakened may help experts situate, around other established paintings, some works just as indebted of the resources of the Aula Dei. If we speak of youth and genius I cannot forget the article by Michael Scott about Alexander the Great: fascinating, like everything this professor from the University of Cambridge writes. The same youth and genius that Antonio Lopez performs at his 75 years of age. In the arts, illusion and genius are what count.