For more information on José de Ribera, visit Britannica.com.

Castilian architect. He worked mostly in Madrid (where he was employed by the municipality from 1719). His late-Baroque designs included much Churrigueresque decoration. Typical of his style was the elaborate main portal of the San Fernando Hospital, Madrid (from 1722), in which festoons, estípites, flamelike forms, urns, and other motifs tumble over each other in abundance. It was said by Neo-Classicists that he ‘filled Madrid with a number of designs that have become the opprobrium of Europe’, and his buildings were catalogued as a dire warning to students of architecture: as a result, we know quite a lot about his output, which was remarkably old-fashioned for its date. Among his works may be cited the Church of the Virgen del Puerto (1718—with octagonal interior and camarín), the Church of Montserrat (1732–40), and the Palacio de Miraflores (c.1725), all in Madrid, and the massive bridge at Toledo (1718–35).

Bibliography

• Kubler & Soria (1959)
• W.Papworth (1887)
• Jane Turner (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)