The sense of taste

The Sense of Taste at the Wadsworth Atheneum, painted around 1613, belongs to Ribera's early Five Senses series, one of the first significant achievements of his career. These allegorical genre paintings established his reputation as a painter of powerful naturalistic character studies, depicting each sense through a figure engaged in the relevant activity — a man eating for taste, another listening for hearing, and so on. The series demonstrated his ability to elevate the humble genre scene into a vehicle for profound observation of human physical experience. Ribera's technique combined meticulous drawing from life with bold Caravaggesque chiaroscuro, applied in oil on canvas using impastoed highlights over transparent warm-toned grounds, and these early works show him already deploying his mature technique with considerable authority.

The eating figure provides a naturalistic embodiment of the sense, rendered with bold chiaroscuro and direct observation. The early Caravaggesque style establishes Ribera's lifelong commitment to unvarnished naturalism.