ROSA, SALVATORE. - I. ART. - Painter and engraver, b. at Arenella near Naples on June 21, 1615 and d. in Rome on March 15, 1675.
He devoted himself to painting very early, first under the guidance of his uncle Antonio Domenico Greco and then of his brother-in-law Francesco Fracanzano; he later underwent various influences, especially those of the Venetians and the Flemish. He stayed in Rome for the first time from 1635 to 1639: from this period date, besides some landscapes and bambocciate (a genre he later repudiated), the Incredulity of St. Thomas painted for Card. Brancacci, now in the Museo civico of Viterbo.
Summoned in 1640 to Florence by the Medici, he won there great success both as a painter and as a poet; he nevertheless wished to return to Rome (1649), where he settled definitively. During this second Roman period he sought to establish himself in another genre of painting: the great monumental and historical compositions that provoked the harshest and not entirely unjustified criticism of his contemporaries. His sensibility and his exquisite feeling for nature, which from his youth had driven him to take his easel outdoors, accompanied by a lively temperament, had led him to transfigure with romantic fantasy landscapes and seascapes portrayed from life, or crowded battles. This was his natural field of action, in which he succeeded in establishing himself with authentic masterpieces.
Among his numerous works, those in the Florentine collections should be remembered (notable is the Boschetto dei filosofi); the Corsini Battle in the Louvre; and the works in Naples. Paintings on sacred subjects are scarce: besides the picture in Viterbo, there is in Rome, in S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Martyrdom of Sts. Cosmas and Damian; in the Pinacoteca of Naples, Jesus among the Doctors, and the Virgin of Succor in the Pinacoteca of Brera in Milan.
Bibliography2 works
Maria Donati
II. LITERATURE
To better point out the versatility of his genius, R., besides some poetry, canzonette and "cantate" for musical works, left six satires in terza rima, against the vices, deviations, and iniquities of his times, mercilessly branding the vicious and pleasure-seeking brood of singers and musicians (Music), the utterly vain rabble of poetasters (Poetry), the hack painters (Painting), a society vicious and warmongering out of greed for power and riches (War), his personal enemies in Rome (Envy), the pomp and ignorance of the nobility of Naples and of the Roman Curia (Babylon). If the style is brilliant and lively and the lashes sharp and cutting, the author, however, does not show himself to be free of the defects that to others he improved; moreover, the prolixity, the too frequent digressions, the excessively accumulated erudition, deprive the satires of a great part of their effectiveness.
Bibliography2 works
Celestino Testore