Salvator Rosa (1615 – 1673) Bandits, Wilderness and Magic
15 September - 28 November, 2010
Dulwich Picture Gallery - Admission Charge
Salvator Rosa was born in Naples, in 1615. From the beginning, his painting was distinct from his contemporaries, that is, he veered from the religious and mythical subjects of his day towards allegorical paintings of lone figures, scenes of horror and metaphorical landscapes. The Salvator Rosa (1615 – 1673) Bandits, Wilderness and Magic exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery includes his Self Portrait (1645, National Gallery). In it we see Rosa clutching a tablet inscribed in Latin that reads in English: Keep silent unless your speech be better than silence.
This and the dark cloak he is wearing my refer to the ‘brown mantle’ of Silence in a poem by Ludovico Ariosto, the Italian poet. Rosa clutches the tablet so that his four fingers point directly to the inscription, and our eye travels from it to the stern brooding of his face, furiously knitted brow and a gaze that transfixes ours. His lone figure is dark and unyielding against the grey and cloudy sky. This is pointer to the character of Rosa and to all of his artistic leanings; poet, actor, musician, satirist and writer of letters.
In Archytas we see the Greek philosopher holding aloft a dove, its wings outstretched and poised for flight. Archytas is standing alone against the sky and to his left is a classical column, solid and sturdy as another presence. On looking at this painting I can imagine that Rosa saw Archytas, who experimented throughout his life with birds, flying machines and theorized on the nature of space, as a kindred spirit.
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| Salvator Rosa
Allegory Of Fortune, c 1658 - 1659 Oil on canvas Unframed, 198.1 x 133 cm |
Allegory of Fortune (c 1658 – 1659) portrays Fortune as a lady descending from the skies, delivering a cornucopia to earth. The contents are spilling onto a group of waiting animals, not noble creatures or mythical beasts, but those that seem to embody the ‘lower’ instincts of man; cattle, a donkey, pig, sheep and a goat. However, from the depths of the painting, a wise owl peeps out upon items falling from the cornucopia; a sceptre, crown, gold coins and jewellery. The owl looks with disdain upon these and other items lying at the feet of the animals; books, an artist’s palette and brushes, and pearls. This disdain of worldly goods and accomplishments puts the painting firmly into that seventeenth-century tradition; the vanitas.
Witches at their Incantations(National Gallery) is an unsettling rendering of a witches’ Sabbath, painted by Rosa between 1640 and 1649 when he lived in Florence. The image is all at once rich and bleak; rich in imaginative detail and bleak in its portrayal of human nature – because these are humans engaging in dark and horrible deeds, not magicians. This painting also points the way to a new kind of artist. Hearken back to Self Portrait, showing Rosa as a solitary, brooding figure. Less than a century after his death, Romanticism in art emerged. Romantic artists and their art were posited as revolutionary, challenging the norms of the day rather than being comfortably woven into the societal fabric. With his lone stance and dark imaginings, Rosa was seized upon as a precursor to Romanticism. His fantasy landscapes came to define a certain type of painting, summed up by Horace Walpole by the phrase “precipices, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings – Salvator Rosa” in 1739. In short, Rosa became a significant Romantic figure, long after he died, actually in 1673. The exhibition runs until November 28.
Mary Phelan © Artyfacts 2010