Two Tramps

Jusepe de Ribera was the great Spanish-Neapolitan Baroque master, and his Two Tramps, dated here to 1727, raises an attribution question: Ribera died in 1652. The work is likely a later copy, a work by a follower in the Riberesque tradition, or a misattribution. Ribera's genre subjects — beggars, philosophers, humble working people depicted with an unflinching realism inherited from Caravaggio — were among the most copied and imitated works in European painting, and his style was perpetuated by numerous followers in Naples, Spain, and beyond throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Riberesque treatment of humble figures emphasizes worn, weathered faces, rough-textured clothing, and the strong chiaroscuro contrast of dark backgrounds against illuminated flesh. The tramps' physiognomies would be rendered with the penetrating realism Ribera brought to all his figure subjects regardless of social class.