06 Works, Today, May 10th is Saint Thais’ day, With Footnotes – #131

José de Ribera (January 12, 1591 — September 2, 1652) was a Spanish Tenebrist painter and printmaker, better known as Jusepe de Ribera. He also was called Lo Spagnoletto (“the Little Spaniard”) by his contemporaries and early writers. Ribera was a leading painter of the Spanish school, although his mature work was all done in Italy.

Longing to study art in Italy, he made his way to Rome via Parma. According to one source, a cardinal noticed him drawing from the frescoes on a Roman palace facade, and housed him. Roman artists gave him the nickname “Lo Spagnoletto”…

St. Thaïs reportedly lived during the fourth century in Roman Egypt. Her story is included in hagiographic literature on the lives of the saints in the Greek church. Two such biographical sketches exist. The first, in Greek, perhaps originated during the fifth century The other sketch comes to us in medieval Latin from Marbod of Rennes (d. 1123). Thaïs also appears in Greek martyrologies by Maurolychus and Greven, however, not in Latin martyrologies. The lives of the desert saints and hermits of Egypt, including St. Thaïs, were collected in the Vitae Patrum (Lives of the Desert Fathers)…

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