Salvator Rosa
Roman (born Naples), 1615–1673
Hagar and Ishmael Visited by an Angel in the Wilderness, 1639-40 ca.
oil on canvas
59 x 80 ½ in.
SBMA, Museum Purchase
1969.8
Salvator Rosa, “Self-Portrait” (also called “Philosophy”), c. 1645, National Gallery of Art, London. The Latin inscription translates “Be quiet, unless your speech is better than silence.”
“I do not paint to enrich myself but purely for my own satisfaction. I must allow myself to be carried away by the transports of enthusiasm and use my brushes only when I feel myself rapt.” - Salvator Rosa, in a 1666 letter to Antonio Ruffo, a patron
RESEARCH PAPER
Rosa may have wanted his patron to believe that he was true only to his own artistic instincts, but the fact that the landscapes were both his most popular works and they constituted nearly one half of his oeuvre indicate that he was both extremely “rapt” by landscapes and concerned about his audience’s satisfaction. Indeed, Rosa’s landscapes are his most highly regarded paintings and contributed significantly to his lasting influence on artists of subsequent centuries. In particular the landscapes of the 1650s and 1660s are his “most original contributions to 17th-century painting” (Langdon, 152). The qualities of his work were those embraced by the Romantics of the later period—“savage sublimity, terror, grandeur, astonishment, and pleasing horror”. (Wallace, 6) These qualities, combined with his flamboyant character, contribute to his reputation as the prototype of the Romantic artist.
“Hagar and Ishmael Visited by an Angel in the Wilderness” is a relatively early landscape and certainly not as polished as Rosa’s works of the 1650s and 1660s, exemplified by the two large paintings in Glasgow Museums’ collection. It does, however, demonstrate the characteristics which made his landscapes so popular and influential—foreground figures, ominous rocks and cliffs, a threatening sky, and ragged and splintered trees. He eschewed the classical landscape of balance and calm as found in the work of his contemporaries Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) for a mysterious and frequently threatening depiction of nature.
In his landscapes Rosa often included sinister foreground figures such as witches and bandits, but in this painting he shows a scene from the Old Testament (Genesis 21). Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid of Abraham's barren wife, Sarah, bore him an illegitimate son named Ishmael. When Sarah finally conceived, Abraham banished Hagar and Ishmael to the wilderness with only bread and water to sustain them. When the water was gone, Hagar placed Ishmael on the ground and went off so she would not see her son die. An angel of God heard the child's cries and led Hagar to a well of water. Ishmael became the founder of the Ishmaelites, a 12-tribe nomadic nation inhabiting the desert area of what is now Saudi Arabia. Ishmael appears in the literature of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, where he is seen as the ancestor of the Prophet Mohammad.
In the painting we see the angel floating on a cloud in the center of the canvas, arm outstretched to direct our eye to Hagar, who in turn is gesturing toward the infant Ishmael sheltered by fallen trees and strewn rocks. The figures and their gestures form a compositional triangle, enhanced by the color in their robes. The figures are the principal interest in this canvas but are larger and more awkwardly drawn than in the two later paintings from the Glasgow Museums in which the landscape sets the mood and dominates the small foreground figures. The angel’s arm and Hagar’s head stand out before a setting sun below an ominous, leaden sky. On either side are trees framing the scene with fallen trunks or broken, jagged limbs. Looming over the landscape is a rugged rock formation which parallels the right angle of the compositional triangle. The background lacks depth and appears almost as a theatrical backdrop before which the players enact the scene.
Salvator Rosa was a poet, satirist, actor, musician, etcher, as well as a painter. He was born in Naples and at the age of 15 began studying art with his brother-in-law, Francesco Fracanzano, and possibly with Jusepe de Ribera, the Spanish painter who had settled in Naples. He worked in the studio of Aniello Falcone and was influenced by his paintings of battle scenes.
Moving to Rome in 1635, Rosa continued painting battle scenes, landscapes, and genre scenes. He was familiar with the bandits (“banditti”) who roamed the countryside and began including them in some of his landscapes. He associated with a group of poets and writers and founded a company of actors. During a performance one of the actors, perhaps Rosa, insulted Gianlorenzo Bernini, the esteemed sculptor and one of the most popular figures in Rome, who was in the audience. The disapproval of the community undoubtedly contributed to Rosa leaving for Florence in 1640 where he was invited to join the artistic circle of Giovanni Carlo de’ Medici.
In Florence he was a member of the “Accademia dei Percossi” (Academy of the Afflicted), a group of artists, musicians, and writers who gathered for intellectual discussions. He began a passionate life-long affair with Lucrezia Paolina, whose husband had abandoned her and who became Rosa’s muse and sometime model. (Hall, Guardian) Rosa became an outspoken social critic and wrote several satires, especially of the court which failed to recognize the talented or the poor. His paintings of witchcraft, magic, and vanitas done at this time reflect his disappointment with society and his sympathy for the oppressed. Despite a conviction of his own genius, Rosa’s concern for the poor and disadvantaged may have had its germ in the perceived injustices his family received under the oppressive Spanish rule in Naples during his childhood. (Hall, Guardian)
Rosa returned to Rome in 1649, having achieved significant success for both his artistic talents and his self-promoting skills. However, he wanted to be known as a history painter, believing that landscapes were recreational painting and not “high art”. (Getty) Thus, he turned to more philosophical, historical, and religious paintings while at the same time continuing to create landscapes in response to popular taste. In the last decade of his life he returned to his interest in the macabre and produced several dramatic canvases filled with mystery and energy. He sketched throughout his life and in his later years took up printmaking, leaving over 800 drawings and 100 etchings. Having achieved fame in his lifetime for both his artistic achievements as well as his flamboyant personality, Rosa died in Rome in 1673, having married Lucrezia eleven days before his death. (Zafran, 72)
Rosa’s art continued to be influential long after his death, especially in England during the later 18th and early 19th centuries. He was a favorite landscapist of J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851), the great English Romanticist landscape painter. (Shanes, 19) American artists did not escape Rosa’s influence. Paintings by or attributed to Rosa were shown more often than any other artist in 19th-century exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the New York Academy of Fine arts, and the Boston Atheneum.
Thomas Cole (1801-1848) certainly had seen Rosa’s paintings, having studied at the Pennsylvania Academy, and the oil sketch “Salvator Rosa Sketching Banditti” (c. 1832-40, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) was almost assuredly assigned the title by Cole himself. In many of his paintings Cole evinces motifs so characteristic of Rosa’s work—the threatening sky, overhanging cliffs, ominous caves, and broken, weather-lashed trees. Rosa’s influence extended to American literature; James Fenimore Cooper in “The Deerslayer” (1841) wrote of a group of Indians huddled in the forest as “a picture Salvator Rosa would have delighted to draw.” (Wallace, 6, 118)
Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Ralph Wilson, 2015.
Bibliography
Fiero, Gloria K. “The Humanist Tradition.” Third edition. Volume 4: “Faith, Reason, and Power in the Early Modern World.” New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998.
Harris, Ann Sutherland, with contributions by Marcel Roethlisberger and Kahren Hellerstedt. “Landscape Painting in Rome, 1597 – 1675.” New York: Richard L. Feigen & Co., 1985.
Hayward Gallery. “Salvator Rosa.” Introduction by Michael Kitson. London: Arts Council, 1973.
Humfrey, Peter. “Of Heaven and Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums.” Glasgow, Scotland: Glasgow Museums, 2013.
Langdon, Helen. “Rosa, Salvador.” The Dictionary of Art, in thirty-four volumes (Grove Dictionary of Art). Jane Turner, ed. New York: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 1996.
Toman, Rolf, ed. “Baroque: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting.” Cologne, Germany: Könnemann Verlagsgellschaft mbH, 1998.
Shanes, Eric. “The Life and Masterworks of J. M. W. Turner.” New York: Parkstone Press International, 2012.
Wallace, Richard W. “Salvator Rosa in America.” Wellesley, Massachusetts: The Wellesley College Museum, 1979.
Zafran, Eric, ed. “Renaissance to Rococo: Masterpieces from the Wadsworth Atheneum of Art. Hartford, Connecticut: Wadsworth Antheneum of Art, 2004. Published by Yale University Press, New Haven and London.
E-sources
Chilvers, Ian, ed. “Rosa, Salvator.” The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference Online, Oxford University Press.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/salvator-rosa
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California. “Salvator Rosa” http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=470
Hall, James. “Salvador Rosa at Dulwich Picture Gallery.” The Guardian, September 10, 2010. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/sep/11/salvator-rosa-paintings-james-hall
Kimball Art Gallery, Fort Worth. “Salvator Rosa: Bandits, Wilderness, and Magic.” https://www.kimbellart.org/exhibition/salvator-rosa-bandits-wilderness-and-magic
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Salvator Rosa, “Bandits on a Rocky Coast”
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/437506
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
According to the Book of Genesis (21:9-21), Hagar and the illegitimate son she bore to Abraham were cast out from the house of Abraham and left to wander aimlessly in the desert. When their water was entirely consumed, Hagar abandoned her child because she could not bear to watch him die. Hearing the child’s cries, God sent an angel to inform Hagar that He would protect them, and that her son would be the founder of a new nation.
In Islamic tradition, Ishmael is regarded as the patriarch of several Arab tribes and the forefather of the prophet Mohammed.
Rosa was a playwright as well as an artist. By setting the story in a forest rather than the desert he ratchets up the drama – contrasting the dark, foreboding forest with the heavenly light that spotlights the main figures and signifies God’s presence.
- Botticelli, Titian and Beyond, 2015 & Ludington Court Reopening, 2021