Naples 1615 - 1673 Rome
Baroque
Italy: Naples
250,000 – 3,000,000 USD
Salvator Rosa was one of the boldest and most powerfully imaginative Italian artists of the seventeenth century.
Known as ‘savage Rosa’, he was a precursor of Romanticism and a painter of wild landscapes, where bandits and hermits lurk among shattered trees and rocks. He also painted dramatic self-portraits, bizarre scenes of witchcraft, philosophers and lyrical female allegories.
Rosa was born near Naples where he embarked upon a career as a painter under the tutelage of the Riberesque artist Francesco Francanzano (1612–56). He then worked with Aniello Falcone (1600–65), a specialist in battle-scenes, a genre in which Rosa would also excel. His biographer records that Rosa would go out into the country with Falcone and sketch scenes from nature in oils on paper, making him one of the earliest exponents of the plein-air sketch.
In the 1630s, Rosa spent time in Rome, where he established a name for himself, however in 1640 he accepted the invitation of Giovanni Carlo de’ Medici to move to Florence. It was probably while in Florence that Rosa painted an extraordinary series of paintings devoted to witchcraft and Satanism. Here he remained for the next decade before returning to Rome, where he remained for the rest of his life. His works from the 1650s were initially landscapes in the heroic vein of Domenichino and Poussin but became increasingly wild and preoccupied with the “horrid beauty” of nature. In Rome, Rosa quarreled with the establishment and in particular the sculptor Bernini (1598–1680). An etcher, poet and playwright as well as a painter Salvator Rosa cultivated the image of an intemperate, difficult artist. He had no followers, though his works were replicated and such was his success that he had, by his death, amassed a considerable fortune.
Selected artworks
Top 3 auction prices
2003
1992
2010
Details
Notable exhibitions
Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Novel and the Bizarre: Salvator Rosa’s Scenes of Witchcraft, 15 February – 14 June 2015. Curated by Hannah Segrave.
London, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Salvator Rosa: Bandits, Wilderness and Magic, 15 September – 28 November 2010; travelled to Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, 12 December 2010 – 27 March 2011. Curated by Helen Langdon, Xavier F. Salomon and Caterina Volpi.
Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, Salvator Rosa: Tra Mito e Magia, 19 April – 29 June 2008. Curated by Nicola Spinosa, Marco Chiarini, Brigitte Daprà, Helen Langdon, Wolfgang Prohaska, Aurora Spinosa and Caterina Volpi.
Warwick, Compton Verney, Salvator Rosa: Wild Landscapes, 25 March – 5 June 2005; travelled to London, Wallace Collection, 23 June – 18 September 2005. Curated by Susan Jenkins.
London, Hayward Gallery, Salvator Rosa, 17 October – 23 December 1973. Curated by Michael Kitson, Helen Langdon, Michael Mahoney and Richard Wallace.
Books on Salvator Rosa
Hannah Segrave, ‘Defining the Rosian Witch: Envy, Witchcraft, and Artistic Competition’, in Conjuring Genius: Salvator Rosa and the Dark Arts of Witchcraft, Newark, 2022, PhD diss.
Salvator Rosa, The Letters of Salvator Rosa: an Italian Transcription, English Translation and Critical Edition, edited by Alexandra Hoare, London, 2018.
Caterina Volpi, Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) ‘Pittore Famoso’, Rome, 2014.
Helen Langdon, Xavier F. Salomon and Caterina Volpi, Salvator Rosa (1615–1673): Bandits, Wilderness and Magic, exh. cat. London, 2010.
Jonathan Scott, Salvator Rosa, His Life and Times, New Haven, 1995.
Lady Morgan, The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa, 1824.
Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, per le quali si dimostra come, e per chi le bell’ arti di pittura, scultura, e architettura, lasciata la rozzezza delle maniere greca e gottica, si siano in questi secoli ridotte all’antica loro perfezione, 1681, reprint Milan, 1808-12.