Salvator Rosa, Etcher
Salvator Rosa (Aranella [Naples], 1615 – Rome, 1673) was a leading figure of the Italian Baroque. His early reputation and much of his historical fortune depend upon landscape paintings that were inspired by the rational and beautiful style of Claude Lorrain, but more restless in setting and darker in mood. These landscapes had tremendous influence upon the development of the genre in the eighteenth century. Rosa’s personal eccentricity and fertile imagination are conspicuous in his many scenes of witchcraft and magic. (These scenes are the focus of an exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, through 27 March.) Returning from Naples to Rome in 1649, Rosa devoted himself to subjects from mythology and ancient history. These subjects, along with significant efforts as a satirist, poet, and letter writer, brought Rosa equal repute as an intellectual. Fiercely independent, aggressively self-styled, Rosa attained heroic status within the Romantic movement. He remains one of the quintessentially modern personalities of earlier European art.
Rosa’s etchings are an important expression of both his ambition as a figurative artist and his philosophical concerns. He created more than one hundred works, and all except a few experimental plates were made during his later period in Rome. The series of "Figurine" offers remarkably sustained and subtle variations upon the established theme of the isolated figure in fanciful costume. The large plates made during Rosa’s last decade translated the ideas of his moralizing paintings into print and brought him greater income. At the same time, the "The Genius of Rosa" and "The Fall of the Giants" essayed concepts and involved preparation as elaborate as those of his paintings. All of Rosa’s mature etchings are rendered with a meticulousness and printed with a consistency rare in Italian etchings of the period. No less than his landscapes, Rosa’s prints were greatly admired in the eighteenth century, and they helped inspire the revival of pure etching in the nineteenth.
The Blanton’s holdings of Rosa’s etchings are considerable in number and exceptional in quality. This exhibition is the first time they have been presented together.
