Salvator Rosa
Roman (born in Naples), 1615–1673
St. John the Baptist Baptizing Christ in the Jordan, 1656–57
Oil on canvas
68 7/16 x 102 1/4"
Glasgow Museums, Gifted to Glasgow Museums by Mrs. Alice Thom, 1953
2987
COMMENTS
Although his early training was in Naples, Salvator Rosa lived in Rome for the majority of his tumultuous career. He was a painter of various genres including battle scenes, history paintings, and portraits, but his fame rested on his landscape paintings. Rosa was, in many ways, the ideal counterpoint to his famous contemporary Claude Lorrain (1604–1682), a French landscape painter who spent most of his career working in Italy. Where Claude’s landscapes are serene and pastoral, Rosa’s are dramatic, wild, and storm-tossed.
Rosa’s relationships with his patrons were equally stormy, as his famously hot temper frequently got him into trouble. Once, in writing to Antonio Ruffo, a prominent patron and collector, he stated, “I do not paint to enrich myself but purely for my own satisfaction.” His independence of spirit was also reflected in his work as a leading satirical poet, in which he often wrote bitingly of the very individuals who were his primary patrons and the corrupt society that supported their wealth.
- Of Heaven and Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums, Milwaukee Art Museum
http://mam.org/of-heaven-and-earth/biographies.php
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
As Christ is being baptized by St. John, others wait to be baptized or bear witness to the event. This event is described in all four gospels. St. John the Baptist was the patron saint of Florence. This painting and the adjacent St. John the Baptist Revealing Christ to the Disciples were commissioned as a pair by a Florentine noblewoman, the Marchesa Maria Acciauoli Guadagni.
Both paintings are spectacular examples of Rosa’s theatricality and originality. He was a playwright, poet and actor as well as a painter. His rebellious personality and the wild, tempestuous landscapes for which he became famous, made him an inspiring figure to the artists of the Romantic period in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
- Botticelli, Titian, and Beyond, 2015