Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

The Museum of Capodimonte opens from 18^th April to 29^th June 2008 with an interesting exposition dedicated to Salvator Rosa, one of the greatest leaders of seventeenth century Neapolitan painting. It intends to offer a monographic exhibit that deepens the versatility and the particularity of an artist that moved towards achieving personal and original goals in various fields. “Poet and painter, a literary man and a soldier, a man of theatre and a practitioner of alchemy – says the Neapolitan superintendent Spinosa – he condenses all the most diverse and contrasting aspects of a Neapolitan, who even being restricted to work elsewhere, in Rome or Florence in particular, has preserved within him the soul of a man born and bred in the shadows of Vesuvius”.

Painter, musician, actor and literary man, Salvator Rosa has fascinated generations of romanticists with his life and works, but his own temperament and his artistic personality have something unshakeably romantic. He is an artist with a lively personality who was an apprentice of Ribera. In Rome during a sojourn of two days he was under the influence of the “Bamboccianti” genre of painting. He lived in Florence from 1640 to 1649 following the classical movement raised in opposition to that of Bernini’s naturalism. He worked under the protection of Mattia de’ Medici orienting himself towards landscapes that he progressively elaborated in a pre-romantic keys, by considering the mood and pictorial aspects.

Rosa’s style always tended to encompass the picturesque aspect of the natural landscape, acquiring in those years a formal equilibrium and a classical clarity even if his portraits and figures still showed signs of Ribera’s crude naturalism and the dramatic chiaroscuro (penumbra) of Caravaggio. Successively, his Satire theorises an inspirited painting of stoic philosophical topics and characters. And his pictorial works, now even more influenced by Jacques Callot and Filippo Napoletano, show the natural, bare, wild landscapes full of mystery as they become scenes for the idealistic representation of episodes from the lives of great philosophers and important historical leaders of the past. At the same time, he painted grand battle scenes which earned him the title of “Salvator of the Battles” by some and which in their monumental nature would also resolve it in ideal representations of epics. Following this, his artistic interests extended to esoteric topics of magic and witchcraft, while his paintings became even darker in its chromatic values in relation with his maturing pessimism. He concentrated on the allegorical representation of moral and philosophical ideas outside of every pictorial environment.

Salvator Rosa undoubtedly managed to give voice through various artistic forms to that dissent which distinguishes a whole generation of painters and writers, that he put forward in a strongly critical manner in the face of political and religious powers. With this exposition, entitled “Salvator Rosa, between myth and magic”, it is meant to illustrate a particular aspect of the prolific pictorial production of the Neapolitan artist or rather that of his figurative compositions including witchcraft, philosophical allegories, scared and mythological stories and portraiture.

Around 60 paintings will be exhibited belonging to Italian, European and American museums, like the Gallery of Antique Art in Rome, the Pitti Gallery in Florence and the National Gallery in London, the Louvre in Paris, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Metropolitan Museum of New York and so many others, comprising important private collections that are hard for the wider public to access. The exposition will be even more enrichened and complete with a selection of designs and incisions present in the collection belonging to the special superintendent for the Polo Museum in Naples.

From 18^th April to 29^th May 2008

SALVATOR ROSA, BETWEEN MYTH AND MAGIC

Museo Capodimonte

via di Miano 2 (80131) Napoli

Tel. 08117499111

Internet: www.museo-capodimonte.it Email: artina@arti.beniculturali.it

Times: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday from 10.00 to 18.00;

Friday and Saturday from 10.00 to 19.30;

Closed on Wednesdays.

Tickets: Full price: 7.50 euros; Reduced: 3.75 euros.