Check out Professor Todd Olson’s newest publication, Ribera’s Repetitions: Paper and Canvas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Naples
“Todd Olson carefully considers the diverse contexts for Ribera’s artistic practice, such as empire-building, materiality, and myth, and thus assesses the complexity of Ribera’s creativity through the lenses of repetition, rotation, and experimentation. This novel, interdisciplinary study reexamines the originality of Ribera’s praxis as engaged in a visual culture shaped by science, history, and belief in early modern Naples.”
“Much more than a mere study on Jusepe de Ribera, Olson’s book is an essay on materiality, technique, and their meanings; on imperial circulation and its discontents; and on knowledge, memory, and loss. This piece of cultural history, never losing touch with the artworks and their visual particularities, is beautifully written and at times moving, reminding us of the potentialities of art history as a literary and philosophical genre.”
-From Penn State University Press