This catalogue is a companion to the exhibition of more than thirty works at the Museo del Prado in 2011, which examined the Spanish painter’s activity during his stay in Rome and the years after he established himself in Naples in 1616–a period about which very little was known until only recently. El joven Ribera allows readers to compare the most important paintings that are now related to that period and gain in-depth knowledge of their chronological succession and the important role they played in the development of Roman Caravaggism in the second and third decades of the seventeenth century.

The catalogue features four essays written by renowned specialists in this field–Gianni Papi, Nicola Spinosa, Gabriele Finaldi and Javier Portús, co-curator of the exhibition–and reproduces all the catalogued works with their entries and various illustrations that accompany the essays, the select bibliography, the index of names and a genealogy of the Ribera and Azzolino families by Gabriele Finaldi, deputy director of Conservation at the Museo del Prado.

José Milicua (1921–2013) was a member of the Royal Board of Trustees of the Museo del Prado. A professor of Art History, he earned his degree and doctorate from the University of Barcelona. His main field of research was Spanish and Italian painting of the 1600s, on which he published studies in scientific journals and exhibition catalogues. Some of them are collected in Ojo crítico y memoria visual. Escritos de arte (2016).

Javier Portús, who holds a doctorate in Art History, is head of the Department of Spanish Painting (up to 1700) at the Museo del Prado. Among other studies, he is the author of Pintura y pensamiento en la España de Lope de Vega (1999) and has curated many exhibitions, such as The Spanish Portrait. From El Greco to Picasso (2004), Velázquez’s Fables. Mythology and Sacred History in the Golden Age (2008), Velázquez and the Family of Philip IV (2013–14) or  Meta-painting. A Journey to the Idea of Art (2016), all at the Museo del Prado.

“Un hito científico y estético en la historia de José de Ribera, del naturalismo español y, por supuesto, de la personalidad del arte moderno de Europa occidental”, Francisco Calvo Serraller, El País

“Apasionante labor de investigación, llevada a cabo por los grandes especialistas en el pintor”, Natividad Pulido, ABC

“Hay algo de revelación en esta puesta en valor del primer José de Ribera, cuando su tenebrismo era aún un ensayo”, Antonio Lucas, El Mundo