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Biography of Salvator RosaName: Salvator RosaBirth Date: 15, 1615 Death Date: March 15, 1673 Place of Birth: Naples, Italy Nationality: Italian Gender: Male Occupations: painter, poet Salvator Rosa The Italian painter and poet Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) was one of the innovators of romanticism. His best-known paintings represent scenes of wild, untrammeled nature, populated with small genre figures.Salvator Rosa was born in Naples on July 21, 1615. He first studied painting with his uncle, Domenico Greco, then with Jusepe de Ribera, and finally with Aniello Falcone. In 1640, after spending some time in Rome, Rosa moved to Florence, where he worked as a painter for the Medici court. In Florence he met Lucrezia, who became his mistress, and the poet Giovan Battista Ricciardi, who became his lifelong friend. Finding himself ill-adapted to court circles, in 1650 Rosa returned to Rome, this time permanently. There, on March 4, 1673, he married Lucrezia, with whom he had lived most of his adult life. Eleven days later he was dead.Rosa emerges as a strangely touching figure, proud, melancholic, and fiercely independent. Alone among the major painters in …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…roses (which are fragile and impermanent). On her lap sits an infant who, guided by a winged skeleton, writes the words, "conceived in sin, born to pain, a life of labor, and inevitable death." Other symbols of impermanence are infants blowing soap bubbles and burning tufts of flax. In sharp contrast to his wild, untamed landscapes, the mood of these late works is one of quietude and resignation in the face of destiny; they reflect the then current revival of the philosophy of stoicism. Further Reading Selections in English from Rosa's correspondence and poetry are in Robert Enggass and Jonathan Brown, Sources and Documents in the History of Art: Italy and Spain, 1600-1750 (1970). The standard work on Rosa, by Luigi Salerno (1963), is in Italian. Ellis K. Waterhouse, Italian Baroque Painting (1962; 2d ed. 1969), contains a good essay on Rosa.Scott, Jonathan, Salvator Rosa: his life and times, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. |