.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
A prolific and versatile painter, etcher and draughtsman, as well as a poet, Salvator Rosa arguably distinguished himself most in his landscapes. Avoiding the Arcadian mood of the work of his most successful contemporaries in the genre, in the first place Claude Lorrain, Rosa created a vision of nature, in part inspired by the rocky coast of his native Napels, that is wild, dark, and at times threatening, and in which mountains and large trees take on an expressive role usually more played by figures.
To this proto-Romantic iconography of his landscapes in oil or ink, this drawing adds the technical peculiarity of being executed with pen on a thin panel. Several other drawings on the same support exist, many also focusing on a single, dramatically shaped tree, several in the collection of the Uffizi (M. Mahoney, The Drawings of Salvator Rosa, New York, 1977, nos. 3.12-3.14, 68.4, 68.5, 68.7, 80.13-80.16). Inscriptions on some of the panels point to the wood being part of cases in Rosa’s studio (ibid., I, p. 683). The signature on the present example makes clear they were intended as independent works, of which the rough appearance and interference of the grain of the wood with the drawn image were fully intended by the artist.
To this proto-Romantic iconography of his landscapes in oil or ink, this drawing adds the technical peculiarity of being executed with pen on a thin panel. Several other drawings on the same support exist, many also focusing on a single, dramatically shaped tree, several in the collection of the Uffizi (M. Mahoney, The Drawings of Salvator Rosa, New York, 1977, nos. 3.12-3.14, 68.4, 68.5, 68.7, 80.13-80.16). Inscriptions on some of the panels point to the wood being part of cases in Rosa’s studio (ibid., I, p. 683). The signature on the present example makes clear they were intended as independent works, of which the rough appearance and interference of the grain of the wood with the drawn image were fully intended by the artist.