Salvator Rosa

Salvator Rosa (1615–1673) is best known today as an Italian

Rosa has been described as "unorthodox and extravagant", a "perpetual rebel",[5] "The Anti-Claude",^{[4]: 6 p.} and a proto-Romantic. He had a great influence on Romanticism, becoming a cult-like figure in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and myths and legends grew around his life, to the point that his real life was scarcely distinguished from the bandits and outsiders that roamed the wild and thundery landscapes he painted. By the mid 19th century however, with the rise of realism and Impressionism, his work fell from favor and received very little attention. A renewed interest in his paintings emerged in the late 20th century, and although he is not ranked among the very greatest of the Baroque painters by art historians today, he is considered an innovative and significant landscape painter and a progenitor of the romantic movement.^[1][3][4][6]

Biography

Early life

Rosa was born in Arenella, at that time in the outskirts of Naples, on either June 20 or July 21, 1615. His mother was Giulia Greca Rosa, a member of one of the Greek families of Sicily.^{[citation needed]} His father, Vito Antonio de Rosa, a land surveyor, urged his son to become a lawyer or a priest, and entered him into the convent of the Somaschi Fathers. Yet Salvator showed a preference for the arts and secretly worked with his maternal uncle Paolo Greco to learn about painting. He soon transferred himself to the tutelage of his brother-in-law Francesco Fracanzano, a pupil of Ribera, and afterward to either Aniello Falcone,^[5] a contemporary of Domenico Gargiulo,^[7] or to Ribera. Some sources claim he spent time living with roving bandits.^[8] At the age of seventeen, his father died; his mother was destitute with at least five children and Salvator found himself without financial support and the head of a household looking to him for support.

He continued apprenticeship with Falcone, helping him complete his battlepiece canvases. In that studio, it is said that Giovanni Lanfranco took notice of his work, and advised him to relocate to Rome,^[9] where he stayed from 1634 until 1636.

Returning to Naples, he began painting haunting landscapes, overgrown with vegetation, or jagged beaches, mountains, and caves. Rosa was among the first to paint "romantic" landscapes, with a special turn for scenes of picturesque, often turbulent and rugged scenes peopled with shepherds, brigands, seamen, soldiers. These early landscapes were sold cheaply through private dealers.

He returned to Rome in 1638–39, where he was housed by Cardinal

Wife and family

In 1640, Rosa met Lucrezia Paolini (c. 1620–1696) in Florence. Lucrezia was a married woman, whose husband had left the city and abandoned her soon after their marriage, never to return. She served as a model for Rosa on occasion, and was likely the model for the allegory of Music (c. 1641). Rosa and Lucrezia soon became dedicated and lifelong companions. Their first son Rosalvo was born in August 1641, probably in Volterra, and another son, Augusto, was born in 1657. Records show at least four more children were born and placed with foundling hospitals between 1641 and 1657, giving some indication of their poor financial condition in those years. The custom of unmarried couples living together was not uncommon in the early years of the 17th century, but as the decades passed the church grew less and less tolerant of the practice. At times Rosa's prominent reputation and relationships to powerful patrons helped to shield him from the Inquisition. At other times, the situation left him vulnerable to the many rivals and enemies he made through his satires and ostentatious character. In 1656, feeling pressure in Rome from the poet Agostino Favoriti and his close ally Fabio Chigi, recently elected Pope Alexander VII, Rosa sent Lucrezia and their son Rosalvo to stay in Naples with his family. Soon after she arrived, a severe outbreak of the plague hit Naples, and Rosalvo, Salvator's brother, sister, brother-in-law and their children all died in the epidemic. Lucrezia survived however and returned to Rome alone. The following year their son Augusto was born. Near the end of his life, declining in health and anticipating death, Rosa married Lucrezia on March 4, 1673. On March 17 he died. An inventory of Rosa's house taken in 1673 shortly after his death, indicated the Portrait of Lucrezia Paolini was hanging in a prominent location in the home, and one of the few paintings in his possession when he died.^{[4]: 23, 34, 44, 106, 120–121 p.}

Career

While Rosa had a facile genius at painting, he pursued a wide variety of arts: music, poetry, writing,

While his plays were successful, this activity also gained him powerful enemies among patrons and artists, including Bernini himself, in Rome. Around 1640, he accepted an invitation from

He returned to stay in Rome in 1649. Here he increasingly focused on large-scale paintings, tackling themes and stories unusual for seventeenth-century painters. These included Democritus amid the Tombs, The Death of Socrates, The Death of Regulus (these two are now in England), Justice Quitting the Earth and the Allegory of Fortune. This last work raised a storm of controversy among religious and civil authorities who perceived in it a satire directed at them. Rosa, endeavouring at conciliation, published a text in which he provided anodyne explanations for the painting's imagery; nonetheless he was nearly arrested.[12] It was about this time that Rosa wrote his satire named Babylon.

His criticisms of Roman art culture won him several enemies. An allegation arose that his published satires were not his own, but Rosa vehemently denied the charges. It may be possible that literary friends in Florence and Volterra coached him about the topic of his satires, while the compositions of which remained nonetheless his own. To confute his detractors he wrote the last of the series, entitled Envy.

Among the pictures of his last years were the Saul and the Witch of Endor and Battlepiece now in the

Among his pupils were Evangelista Martinotti of Monferrato and his brother Francesco. Another pupil was Ascanio della Penna of Perugia.^[13]

Legacy

During Rosa's lifetime his work inspired followers such as Giovanni Ghisolfi, but his most lasting influence was on the later development of romantic and sublime landscape traditions within painting.^[11] Eighteenth-century artists influenced by Rosa include Alessandro Magnasco, Andrea Locatelli, Giovanni Paolo Panini and Marco Ricci.^[11] As Wittkower states, it is in his landscapes, not his grand historical or religious dramas, that Rosa truly expresses his innovative abilities most graphically. Rosa himself dismissed his early landscapes as frivolous capricci in comparison to his history paintings and later work, but the academically conventional history canvases often restrained his rebellious streak. He generally avoided the idyllic and pastoral calm country-sides of Claude Lorrain and Paul Bril in his landscapes, and created brooding, melancholic fantasies, awash in ruins and brigands. By the eighteenth century, the contrasts between Rosa and the "sublime" landscape, and artists such as Claude and the "picturesque" landscape, were much remarked upon. A 1748 poem by James Thompson, "The Castle of Indolence", illustrated this: "Whate'er Lorraine light touched with softening hue/ Or savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew".^[14]

In a time when artists were often highly constrained by patrons, Rosa had a plucky streak of independence, which celebrated the special role of the artist. "Our wealth must consist in things of the spirit, and in contenting ourselves with sipping, while others gorge themselves in prosperity". He refused to paint on commission or to agree on a price beforehand, and he chose his own subjects. In his own words, he painted "...purely for my own satisfaction. I need to be transported by enthusiasm and I can only employ my brushes when I am in ecstasy."^[15]

Salvator Rosa and romanticism

Rosa's influence on romanticism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was profound. Art historians have described him as a "cult figure",^[4]: dj. who "inaugurated the romantic landscape", an initiator of the "cult" of the sublime landscape.^{[3]: 67 p.} One of the earliest manifestations of the romantic movement to emerge in the early 18th century was the English landscape garden, and the paintings of Rosa, as well as Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin were key inspirations and models.^[16] William Kent, who originated the naturalized garden was known to be a great admirer of Rosa and went so far as to plant dead trees in his gardens to achieve Salvator Rosa effects.^{[17]: 17 &19 p.}

One historian noted "An extraordinary amount of Rosa's fame and influence in England seems to have rested on verbal and literary transmission, and had an impact that extended far beyond the borderline of purely pictorial concerns."

Rosa and his tempestuous spirit became the darling of British Romantics such as Henry Fuseli, John Hamilton Mortimer, and Alexander Runciman.^[11] His influence can be seen in the work of artist such as John Martin, who studied Rosa's work in his formative years,^[22] A recent exhibit of William Turner's work, at the Prado museum in Madrid, notes the influence Rosa had on Turner's landscapes. Rosa's influence can also be seen in American art of the period. Thomas Cole counted Rosa among his heroes,^[23] and his impact has been identified in the work of artist such as Washington Allston, George Caleb Bingham, Thomas Moran, William Sidney Mount, John Trumbull, Benjamin West and other American artist.^{[18]: 6 p.}

Rosa's reputation and influence waned in the nineteenth century; when his Monks Fishing was displayed in Dulwich in 1843 it was criticized by

Satires

This Section is written like a encyclopedic style . (January 2019)

Cesareo (1892) and Cartelli (1899) wrote books taking account of Rosa's satires. The satires, though considerably spread abroad during his lifetime, were not published until 1719. They are all in terza rima, written without much literary correctness, but spirited. Rosa here appears as a very severe castigator of all ranks and conditions of men, not sparing the highest, and as a champion of the poor and down-trodden, and of moral virtue and Catholic faith.

The satire on Music exposes the insolence and profligacy of musicians, and the shame of courts and churches in encouraging them. Poetry dwells on the pedantry, imitativeness, adulation, affectation and indecency of poets—also their poverty, and the neglect with which they were treated; and there is a very vigorous sortie against oppressive governors and aristocrats. Tasso's glory is upheld; Dante is spoken of as obsolete, and Ariosto as corrupting.

Painting inveighs against the pictorial treatment of squalid subjects, such as beggars, against the ignorance and lewdness of painters, and their tricks of trade, and the gross indecorum of painting sprawling half-naked saints of both sexes. War (which contains a eulogy of Masaniello) derides the folly of mercenary soldiers, who fight and perish while kings stay at home; the vile morals of kings and lords, their heresy and unbelief.

In Babylon ofrece, Rosa represents himself as a fisherman, Tirreno, constantly unlucky in his net-hauls on the Euphrates; he converses with a native of the country, Ergasto. Babylon (Rome) is very severely treated, and Naples much the same.

Envy (the last of the satires, and generally accounted the best) represents Rosa dreaming that, as he is about to inscribe in all modesty his name upon the threshold of the temple of glory, the goddess or fiend of Envy obstructs him, and a long interchange of reciprocal objurgations ensues. Here occurs the highly charged portrait of the chief Roman detractor of Salvator (we are not aware that he has ever been identified by name); and the painter protests that he would never condescend to do any of the lascivious work in painting so shamefully in vogue.

Galleries

Paintings

• 
  Portrait of a Man (1640s), oil on canvas, 78 x 65 cm., Hermitage Museum)
• 
  Witches' Sabbath (c. 1655), oil on canvas, 87 x 73 cm., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• 
  Heroic Battle (c. 1652–1664), oil on canvas, 214 x 351 cm. Louvre
• 
  Human Fragility (c. 1656), oil on canvas, 199 x 134 cm., Fitzwilliam Museum
• 
  Allegory of Fortune (1658), oil on canvas, 198 x 133 cm., J. Paul Getty Museum
• 
  Diogenes Casting Away his Cup (1650s), oil on canvas, 219 x 148 cm., private collection
• 
  Crucifixion of

  National Museum, Warsaw
• 
  Democritus in Meditation (1650–51), oil on canvas, 344 x 214 cm., National Gallery of Denmark
• 
  The Death of Regulus (c. 1650–1652), oil on canvas, 152.4 × 219.71 cm., Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
• 
  The Baptism of the Eunuch (c. 1660), oil on canvas, 200 x 122 cm., Chrysler Museum of Art
• 
  Pythagoras Emerging from the Underworld (1662), oil on canvas, 131 x 189 cm., Kimbell Art Museum
• 
  Saul and the Witch of Endor (1668), oil on canvas, 275 x 191 cm., Louvre

Landscapes

• 
  Landscape with a Bridge (1645–49), oil on canvas, 106 x 127 cm.,

  Galleria Palatina
• 
  Harbour Scene (undated), oil on canvas, 72 x 94 cm., Nationalmuseum
• 
  Saint John the Baptist Baptizing Christ in the Jordan (c. 1655) oil on canvas, 173 x 258.7 cm., Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
• 
  Saint John the Baptist Revealing Christ to the Disciples (c. 1655) oil on canvas, 173.4 x 260.7 cm., Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
• 
  Bandits on a Rocky Coast (c. 1655), oil on canvas, 74.9 x 100 cm., Metropolitan Museum of Art
• 
  Apollo and the Cumean Sibyl (1657–58), oil on canvas, 173.7 x 259.5 cm., Wallace Collection
• 
  Mercury and the Dishonest Woodsman (ca. 1663), oil on canvas, 125.7 x 202.1 cm., National Gallery
• 
  Jacob's Dream (c. 1665), oil on canvas, 137 x 200 cm., Derbyshire, Chatsworth, Devonshire collection
• 
  The Finding of Moses (1660–65), oil on canvas, 123.2 × 202.6 cm., Detroit Institute of Arts
• 
  St. Anthony Abbot and

  National Gallery of Scotland
• 
  The Death of Empedocles (c. 1665–70), oil on canvas, 135 x 99 cm., private collection
• 
  Tobias and the Angel (c. 1670), oil on canvas, 121 x 195 cm., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg
• 
  Rocky Landscape with a Huntsman and Warriors (c. 1670), oil on canvas, 142 x 192 cm., Louvre

Drawings

All drawings are undated: pen, ink, and wash; or pen, ink, wash, and chalk on paper

• 
  Turbaned Warrior Holding a Mace (13.2 x 8.2 cm.), Metropolitan Museum of Art
• 
  Martyrdom of St. Andrew (19.8 x 13.7 cm.), Metropolitan Museum of Art
• 
  Woman standing draped (25.4 x 14.7 cm.), Louvre
• 
  Oedipus Abandoned (65 x 45 cm.), Nationalmuseum
• 
  Witches' Sabbath (21.8 x 31.7 cm.), Metropolitan Museum of Art
• 
  Forest Scene, Honolulu Museum of Art

Prints

All prints are etchings, or etchings with drypoint

• 
  Battling Tritons (1660–61), 11.11 x 16.51 cm.
• 
  Glaucus and Scylla (1661), 35.24 x 23.5 cm.
• 
  Three Human Skulls (1662), 14.2 × 9.2 cm.
• 
  The Crucifixion of Polycrates the Tyrant after his Capture by the Persians (1662), 47.3 x 72.2 cm.
• 
  Rescue of the Infant Oedipus (1663), 72.4 x 47.2 cm.
• 
  Jason and the Dragon (1663–64), 33.6 x 21.5 cm.

Works about Rosa

A number of biographies and fictionalizations of the life of Rosa exist:

• Domenico Passeri speaks of him in Vite de Pittori
• Salvini, Satire e Vita di Salvator Rosa
• Bernardo de' Dominici, Vita di Rosa (1742, Naples)
• In England,
  Lady Morgan in The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa
  , and Albert Cotton in A Company of Death romanticized his life.
• Rosa is the fictional hero of the novella Signor Formica, 1819, also known simply as Salvator Rosa, by E. T. A. Hoffmann.
• Salvator Rosa is a 19th-century Italian opera by Antônio Carlos Gomes, with libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, after the novel Masaniello by Eugène de Mirecourt.
• The 1846 ballet
  Abruzzi.^[32]
• One of the pieces included in the piano collection Années de pèlerinage by Franz Liszt is entitled "Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa". That song (Vado ben spesso cangiando loco) was, however, composed by Giovanni Bononcini.^[33]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Jaffé, Hans L. C., editor. 1967. 20,000 Years of World Painting. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. New York. 418 pp. [page 228]
2. ^ "Salvator Rosa | Italian painter". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved October 28, 2020.
3. ^ ^{a b c} Venturi, Lionello and Rosabianca Skira-Venturi. 1952. Italian Painting: From Caracaggio to Modigliani. Editions D'Art Albert Skira, Geneva, Switzerland. 174 pp. [pages 67 & 85 ]
4. ^
   ISBN 978-1-907372-01-8
5. ^ ^{a b} Wittkower, p. 325
6. ^
   ISBN 0-9615-615-0-5
7. ^ Hobbes J.R. p. 241
8. ^  Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Salvatore Rosa". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
9. ^ "Salvator Rosa (Italian, 1615 - 1673) (Getty Museum)". The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles. Retrieved October 28, 2020.
10. ^ "Salvator Rosa". FAMSF Search the Collections. December 2, 2019. Retrieved October 28, 2020.
11. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Langdon, Helen (2003). Rosa, Salvator. Grove Art Online.
12. OCLC 982205644
    .
13. ^ Storia della pittura in Perugia e delle arti by Angelo Lupattelli (1895), page 70.
14. ^ Lines from "The Indolent Castle", James Thompson, 1748 quoted by Helen Langdon in Burlington Magazine 115(84):p. 779 (1973)
15. ^ Johnson, Paul. Art: A New History, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003, p. 339.
16. ISBN 3-8290-1575-5
17. ISBN 0-8478-0371-6
18. ^ ^{a b c d} Wallace, Richard. 1979. Salvator Rosa in America. The Wellesley College Museum. Wellesley, Massachusetts. 124 pp. Library of Congress Catalogue Number 79-84183
19. ^ Bernardo de' Dominici. 1742. Vita di Rosa. Naples.
20. ^ E. T. A. Hoffmann. 1821. Signor Formica (aka Salvator Rosa), in vol. 4 of Die Serapionsbrüder.
21. ^ Morgan, Lady Sydney. 1824. The Life And Times of Salvator Rosa. Henry Colburn. London.
22. ISBN 978-1-904794-99-8
23. ISBN 0-8109-3158-3
24. ^ John Ruskin, Modern Painters Vol 1, part II, Chap 3, Also Modern Painters, edited and abridged by David Barry, Andrew Deutsch Ltd 1987, page 100.
25. ^ Kitson, Michael, Helen Langdon, Richard Wallace, John Sunderland. 1973. Salvator Rosa: Hayward Gallery. London Arts Council. London. 88 pp. ISBN 0728700026
26. ^ Salerno, Luigi.1975. L'opera completa di Salvator Rosa (Classici dell'arte series). Rizzoli Editore. Milano. 108 pp.
27. ISBN 0824027078
28. ISBN 1905375883
29. ISBN 0300064160
30. ISBN 979-8669812980
31. ISBN 1912554046
32. S2CID 191390259
    .
33. ^ "Naxos Direct - Buy Performing Arts Media Online - Free US Delivery". naxosdirect.com. Archived from the original on September 28, 2013.

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rossetti, William Michael (1911). "Rosa, Salvator". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). pp. 720–722.
• Wittkower, Rudolf (1980). Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600–1750. Pelican History of Art (Penguin Books Ltd). pp. 325–7.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Salvator Rosa.

• 105 artworks by or after Salvator Rosa at the Art UK site
• Notes on etchings titled The genius of Salvator Rosa.
• Artcyclopedia entry on Salvator Rosa online.
• Exhibition 2011, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
• Free scores by Salvator Rosa at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Jusepe de Ribera, 1591-1652, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which includes material on Salvator Rosa (see index)