Ribera and the Blind Men

Abstract

THE BLIND SCULPTOR AT the time when Jusepe Ribera rose to preëminence among the painters of Naples, a young sculptor with an attractive personality and a singularly gallant spirit achieved a much publicized success in Rome. That the two artists became acquainted with each other is not proved 5 but there were certainly occasions on which they may have met, for their respective employers were of the same sort, men of wealth, rank, and erudition. Their patrons had in common the intellectuals' interest in all abnormal phenomena—breaches of the laws of probability, manifestations of genius, marvels, even freaks. To them the blind sculptor Gonnelli was surely a prodigy; but for us the appraisal of his natural endowment is impossible since he wrought only in perishable materials and no authentic work survives. Actually his renown was the result of a series of accidents, the latest of which was the attachment of his name, as a title, to a signed painting by Ribera.