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| Self portrait |
“Painter, Poet, Musician, Philosopher, and Patriot, he combined in his fine organisation the supreme elements of high art, with the noblest instincts of intellectual humanity. He worked through his great vocation with a spirit of independence that never quailed, and with unflinching resistance to the persecutions of despotism and the intrigues of professional rivalry. His moral dignity refused to pander to the licentious tastes of the profligate times in which he flourished, and, in this respect superior to many of his great predecessors, he left not one picture that,
‘_dying, he might blush to own,’ while he exhibited in his great historical compositions, "The Death of Regulus" and "The Conspiracy of Catiline," a graphic eloquence which Herodotus and Gibbon have scarcely surpassed.
The above paragraph, from the Life and Times of Salvator Rosa by Lady Sydney Morgan, published in 1824, is only one of many lofty and effusive tributes paid to Salvator Rosa during the late 18th and early 19th Centuries by the artists, intellectuals and literati of the time. Who was Salvator Rosa and what did he do to inspire such admiration more than 150 years after his death?
Early Life and Artistic Training
The Meridionale has produced more than its fair share of highly individual and idiosyncratic geniuses, and Salvator Rosa was certainly one of these. Rosa was apparently what we today would refer to as a gifted child. He exhibited many of the traits and characteristic of such a child, better known to specialist educators of today than they may have been to his parents and other adults who seem to have been exasperated by the talented and willful child. Known primarily as a painter and printmaker of the Baroque era, anyone who reads an account of the life of Salvator Rosa will come away impressed by the range of his talents and abilities, which included gifts as a poet, a writer of satirical works, an actor and public speaker, and as a composer of music. He was also stubborn, self-willed and impatient with many people.
Salvator Rosa was born in Arenella in the outskirts of Naples in 1615. His birthday is variously given as June 20th or the 21st of July. His grandfather Salvator da Rosa was an artisan builder who worked in the area of residential development (where there was always steady work in this era of ever-expanding population in Naples), and who built the house in Arenella where his son Vito Antonio de Rosa lived. Vito Antonio was also a master builder a land surveyor by profession. Salvator Rosa’s parents wanted him to enter the priesthood or legal profession, and entered him into a school run by the Somaschi fathers.
However he did not stay with the Somaschi for long. The boy had felt a desire to become an artist from an early age, and had family relations who were professional artists. It is said that he received early training in secret from his uncle Paolo Greco. Following this he studied with his brother-in-law Francesco Francanzano, a pupil of Jusepe Ribera. It is believed that Rosa himself may have studied with Ribera and then with Aniello Falcone. It is recorded by early biographers that his brother-in-law Francesco provided him with art materials and would give him “assignments” to paint. Rosa would spend the day painting landscapes, seascapes and street scenes in Naples, and his brother-in-law would critique these in the evenings. Francanzano’s praise of Salvator’s work grew as each painting surpassed the previous one, and the boy soon progressed to painting on increasingly larger canvases.
Rome, Naples and Rome again
Rosa continued to work in the studio of Falcone and assist on commissions there, primarily battle pieces. He continued to paint landscapes and seascapes, and genre scenes of workers and the poor. It is related that he came to the attention of Giovanni Lanfranco soon after the artist’s arrival in Naples in 1634. Lanfranco was said to have been riding through Naples when a picture by Rosa caught his eye. He stopped to purchase it, and continued to purchase any of Rosa’s subsequent works that he came across. This caused Rosa’s art dealers to raise the price on Rosa’s work, and he accordingly began to ask for a higher price for himself.
On the advice of Lanfranco, Rosa decided to venture to Rome in late 1634 or 1635. He stayed in Rome this first time until 1636, in the household of Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancaccio, a fellow Neapolitan. While in Rome, Salvator met and befriended members of the Bamboccianti school of painters. The genre scenes he painted there were sold through Roman dealers. Rosa fell ill in 1636 and decided to return home to Naples to fully recover.
After returning to Naples in 1636, Rosa continued to paint landscapes and genre scenes although at a higher level of skill. These continued to be sold through private dealers and provided a source of income. Salvator Rosa decided to return to Rome in 1638.
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| Bandits on a Rocky Coast |
There are a number of speculations as to why he left Naples and returned to Rome. The most straightforward seems to be that he felt an inclination toward landscapes and the prevailing taste in Naples was for large-scale religious works, especially scenes from the lives of the Christian martyrs.
Rosa stayed in Rome until 1639. Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancaccio of Naples had been made bishop of the diocese of Viterbo, about 50 miles outside of Rome, and Salvator at first went there to live again as part of his household. Then, deciding that he wanted independence and fame, Salvator moved into a house in the artist’s quarter of Rome. Here he attempted to advertise his works by hanging several landscapes and a genre scene outside of his house. In addition to painting, during this time Rosa’s natural gifts for satire began to find an outlet in writing verse and theatrical satires. His theatrical works seem to have gotten their start because Rosa was initially interested in street performances during the carnevale season as a kind of public relations stunt to help sell paintings. These activities developed and soon he was writing works that he had performed in public. These works often ridiculed well-known figures of the time in Rome, including powerful artists and patrons of the arts. Among these were the spectacularly talented and highly influential sculptor Bernini. Bernini had directed a number of farcical comedies in the Trastevere and these were inveighed against by Rosa. Eventually Rosa’s satires created a great deal of resentment against him, and Bernini along with others began to use their influential contacts to make life in Rome difficult for Rosa.
This ultimately led to Rosa’s decision to leave the city in 1639.
Florence, Naples and Return to Rome
In late 1639, Rosa went to Florence. He was to remain there for eight years. He arrived there under the patronage of Cardinal Giancarlo de Medici.
Florence no longer held the preeminent position in the plastic arts that it had during the 1500s, having been eclipsed by Rome, although many great works of art were still to be seen in the city. Rosa had been invited to the city by the cardinal, and was given a monthly allowance and lodgings, in return for which he was expected to produce paintings for the cardinal’s picture gallery. Characteristically, Rosa settled for less than the prevailing monthly rate for artists in order to retain greater independence. While in Florence, Rosa formed a society of painters and authors known as the Accademia dei Percossi, or the "Academy of the Stricken."
There was no other landscape artist of note in Florence at the time and Rosa continued to develop his style of atmospheric and, for the time, highly idiosyncratic landscapes. These works were apparently not widely appreciated in the Florentine environment, although his financial situation was initially better in Florence than it had been in Rome. He received some commissions there and painted a number of seascape and port scenes. He also began to compose paintings with Classical or other learned themes, such as his Diogenes and Alexander. He received advice on themes and on the iconographic aspects of these works from his friend Ricciardi, who was to remain his friend until the end of his life.
While in Florence Rosa met Lucrezia, the woman whom he eventually married and who bore him several children.
Florence was a provincial capital at the time, however, and the commissions, fame and fortune that Rosa desired would not be forthcoming there.
Naples, the Return to Rome and Rosa’s Final Years
In late 1646 or 1647 Rosa returned to Naples. He was reputed to have taken part in the Masaniello uprising of 1647. Some dispute this, although Rosa painted a portrait of Masaniello and may have been acquainted with him. He remained in contact with his early mentor, Aniello Falcone.
Finally, Rosa returned to Rome to stay in 1649. Despite the rather widespread enmity against him that still existed there he persisted in the Roman environment and began to achieve success. His etchings gained a wide and appreciative audience over time. He began to receive commissions for large paintings from important patrons, including a series of battle paintings.
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| The Dream of Aeneas |
Rosa painted over 60 of these large-scale histories, which were said by him to have been hard work. The landscapes came much easier to him.
Salvator also wrote four more satires during this last Roman period. Not all of his satires were intended to ridicule people out of a sense of malice, however. Rosa had a sense of social justice, and in one satire he points out that the Bamboccianti, whom he had been associated with in his early years, were merely fulfilling a sentimental need on the part of the wealthy collectors who bought their works:
And so the living beggars, bare and piched,
Cannot extract a penny from those
Who spend their cash on pictures of the poor…
For what they shun in life they love in art.
Finally, in 1669, he achieved his dream of winning a large-scale public commission, for a painting of the Martyrdom of St. Cosmas and St. Damian, intended as an altarpiece for the church of San Giovanni de’Fiorentini. The painting remains in the church to this day.
Salvator Rosa completed one more major painting in May 1670. In 1672, Rosa fell ill with a fever. He had long suffered from various health complaints and had perhaps been weakened by these and by the strain of overwork. Following his recovery from the fever he developed a stomach complaint that was diagnosed as dropsy. After several treatments failed to produce results the attending physician pronounced the case incurable, and Rosa was advised to put his affairs in order. After two days of silent contemplation of his state, Rosa seemed to accept it and prepared for the end.
Rosa died in Rome on March 15th, 1673. He was buried in the Chiesa degli Angeli, where a portrait of him exists. By the time of his death Salvator Rosa had reputedly earned a tidy sum of money, in contrast to the struggle and poverty of his youth.
Legacy
As noted in the opening of this article, Rosa’s influence continued long after his death, and in fact increased during the late 1700s and well into the 1800s.This influence has been attributed in part to stories about Rosa that were embroidered upon by tour guides of the Grand Tour of the late 1700s, in order to titillate their clients. These stories consisted of Rosa’s having supposedly spent time with bandits in the hills of the Abruzzo, experiences which were believed to have led him to create his numerous landscape paintings that were in fact set in wild mountainous landscapes peopled by bandits.
While there may be some truth to this, inasmuch as people in general will tend to feed on sensationalism, a stronger reason for the fascination he held for artists, writers and composers of the Romantic Era was his personality, especially the artistic persona he created. The 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica described this aspect of Rosa in these words:
“In a time when artists where 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. He painted in order to be carried away by the transports of enthusiasm and use my brushes only when I feel myself rapt. This tempestuous spirit became the darling of British Romantics.”
While it is a fact that there are more works by Salvator Rosa in the United Kingdom than in Italy or any other country, the influence of his life and work was extraordinarily widespread and was felt by artists and intellectuals from all over Europe and America in the 18th and 19th Century Romantic movement. A (very) partial list of those who were influenced by him includes the painters Henry Fuseli and William Turner, Thomas Cole (along with most of the other painters identified with the American Hudson River school of painting, who gave the works of Rosa an important place in their artistic pilgrimages to Rome), Gaspar Dughet, and Claude-Joseph Vernet and Horace Vernet, among many others. We find him continuing as an inspiration for painters well into the Victorian Era with the apocryphal biographical scene of Rosa painted by the then-popular but now largely forgotten painter Thomas Jones Barker.
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| Landscape with Mercury and Argus |
The authors Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Theophile Gautier, Stendhal, E.T.A. Hoffman, Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe were all directly influenced by Rosa’s life and his works of art, as were the composers Cesare Pugni, Antonio Carlos Gomes, and Franz Liszt. Some of these writers and composers created biographical if somewhat fictionalized works on the life of Salvator Rosa.
One of the most interesting tributes to Salvator Rosa was made by the explorer Meriwether Lewis in his diaries of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Frustrated by his inability to describe in words what he was seeing, Lewis wrote:
“I wished for the pencil of Salvator Rosa …that I might be enabled to give to the enlightened world some just idea of this truly magnificent and sublimely grand object, which has from the commencement of time been concealed from the view of civilized man.”
Historical side-note
Clark’s last few words are somewhat misleading because we know that the De Soto expedition of 1539-1542 preceded the Lewis and Clark enterprise by over 250 years, and not only covered much of the same ground but is estimated by some historians to have covered four times the territory. Interestingly, this earlier expedition may well have included some of Salvator Rosa’s fellow Napoletani. It would have been typical of military expeditions of this time under the Spanish Hapsburgs to have included at least some, if not quite a few, soldiers and sailors from Naples.
We do know that the chronicler of the expedition, Oviedo (Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes), who had served under King Fadrique of the Royal House of Naples before the Kingdom of Naples was annexed by the Hapsburgs, retained a love of the city and region. He dedicated his first book to King Fadrique who was then in exile, and his chronicle of the De Soto expedition is studded with admiring references to Italian military science, poetry, and art.
The sights experienced by these truly first Europeans in this part of the New World must have been awe-inspiring, and it is fascinating to speculate what comparisons the learned Southern Italophile Oviedo would have made if he had lived to see the works of Salvator Rosa.
Further Reading:
1) Salvator Rosa: His Life and Times, Jonathan Scott, 1996 Yale University Press
2) The Art of Salvator Rosa, Helen Langdon, Xavier F. Salomon and Caterina Volpi, 2010 Paul Holberton Publishing (forthcoming: September 2010)
Photos by New York Scugnizzo
