Salvator Rosa

Salvator Rosa (Arenella, near Naples, 1615 - Rome, 1673) was an Italian Baroque painter who also worked as a printmaker, poet, musician and actor. Active mainly in Naples, Rome and Florence, he matters because his wild, turbulent landscapes anticipated the sensibility of Romanticism, and he is now regarded as a forerunner of that movement.

He was born into a modest family. His father, a land surveyor, wanted him to become a lawyer or a priest, but the young Salvator preferred painting and trained in secret with his maternal uncle, then with his brother-in-law, a pupil of Ribera, and with Aniello Falcone, who taught him battle and landscape scenes. His father died when he was seventeen, leaving him and his mother without financial support. A brief stay in Rome between 1634 and 1636 ended with an illness, and he went back to Naples, where he began painting dense woodland, rugged beaches, mountains and caves peopled with shepherds, bandits and soldiers. These pictures were sold cheaply through dealers, and Rosa later came to disown much of this early output.

He returned to Rome in 1638-39, moved in circles of poets, printmakers and artists, and became famous as an actor and writer of farces and carnival spectacles. His satire earned him powerful enemies, Bernini among them, and he was forced to settle in Florence, where he spent much of the 1640s refining his fantastic landscapes and scenes of witchcraft and banditry. Around 1646 he returned to Naples, where he is said to have sympathised with Masaniello's revolt, though whether he took part is uncertain. He is also credited with a portrait of the rebel leader, probably painted from memory.

Back in Rome from 1649, he turned to history painting on unusual subjects for his contemporaries, such as classical antiquity, philosophy and myth, treated in a solemn tone. His satirical allegory of Fortune stirred controversy, as it was read as a critique of religious and civic authorities, and he came close to arrest. His last years brought biblical, historical and allegorical works alongside satirical portraits. He died in Rome in 1673, shortly after marrying Lucrezia Paolini, his companion for life.

His legacy is twofold. As a landscape painter he was highly prized in England and France through the 18th and 19th centuries, and his vision of sublime, untamed nature shaped Romanticism. By the mid-19th century, however, his reputation had faded, and it was only revived in the late 20th century, when historians recognised him as an innovator, though not among the greatest Baroque painters.