FELIPE DE RIBAS (Córdoba, 1609 – Sevilla, 164... Lot n° 26

Felipe de Ribas was a sculptor and altarpiece maker from Cordoba. He began his training together with his father, the painter Andrés Fernández, who in 1621 sent him to Seville to the workshop of the sculptor Juan de Mesa (Córdoba, 1583 - Sevilla, 1627) in order for him to acquire the appropriate training for his trade. After his father's death he returned to his hometown and later returned to Seville. In this second stage he had contact with his contemporaries Juan Martínez Montañés (Alcalá la Real, 1568 - 1649) and Alonso Cano (Granada, 1601 - 1667) from whom he inherited important commissions as well as being influenced by his skill. He died prematurely in 1648. The work that occupies this cataloguing is a sculpture of round bulge in carved and polychromed wood of Santa Barbara. The one depicted appears with her characteristic attributes on her hands: a large tower in her left hand in which her father enclosed her to prevent her from becoming a Christian and, on the right, a large palm as a symbol of her martyrdom. The carving shows the breakage of three fingers of his right hand. Her clothes are rich in polychrome: she wears a wide skirt with floral decoration on a golden background, a black bodice with stewed decoration of large acanthus leaves and an ample red mantle with gold decorations that envelops her arms. On her chestnut hair, combed with a central stripe, she wears a crown with a veil that falls down her back, alluding to her noble origin. His face of fine features directs his lost look towards the ground. The martyr wears golden shoes and rests on a red prismatic pedestal with gold moulded edges and leaf-shaped central decoration. There are a series of guidelines established by Alonso Cano from Granada that our author follows faithfully although he introduces an interesting dynamism as it happens with this image. That is to say, Felipe de Ribas reinterprets the contained canesque forms offering compositions of a more pron