FRANCISCO RIBALTA (Solsona, Lérida, 1565-Valencia, 1628)

The Education of the Virgin . Oil on canvas. Size: 141 x 117 cm Attached is a study by Mr. José Gómez Frechina, specialist in Valencian painting, author of numerous writings and former curator of painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Valencia. This study states that this interesting canvas by Ribalta with St. Joachim, St. Anne and the Child Virgin -an iconographic rarity of immaculist symbolism apparently created by the painter himself- belonged to the old Coma Cros collection in Barcelona, according to a photograph in the Mas Archive. As Frechina points out, in the church of San Juan del Hospital in Valencia there was a canvas with this same composition and in the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia there are two copies from the 17th century (inv.3417 and 4083). As a curious fact is that Ribalta's original idea of capturing the Lauretan symbols on the apron of the Virgin was also taken up later by the painter Jerónimo Jacinto de Espinosa (Cocentaina, 1600-Valencia, 1667).