Which Spanish Baroque painter was nicknamed 'El Españoleto'?

Which Spanish Baroque painter was nicknamed “El Españoleto”? Jusepe de Ribera was known by that nickname.

Ribera was born in Játiva, Spain, in 1591 but built most of his career in Italy, especially Naples. His nickname, derived from the Italian Lo Spagnoletto, means “the Little Spaniard.” It referred to his Spanish origin and became closely associated with his identity among contemporaries and later historians.

Ribera became a major painter of the Spanish Baroque and of seventeenth-century Neapolitan art. His early works often use stark tenebrism—powerful light against deep shadow—in the tradition associated with Caravaggio. He painted biblical histories, mythological scenes, saints, philosophers, beggars, and intensely realistic martyrdoms.

The nickname is sometimes written as El Españoleto in Spanish or Lo Spagnoletto in Italian. Ribera is also called José de Ribera in Spanish and Josep de Ribera in Catalan. Velázquez, Murillo, and Zurbarán were important Spanish Baroque painters, but they were not the artist identified by this epithet.