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Salvator Rosa's Democritus and L'Umana Fragilità Author(s): Richard W. Wallace Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Mar., 1968), pp. 21-32 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3048508 . Accessed: 25/03/2011 08:17 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=caa. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Art Bulletin. http://www.jstor.org Salvator Rosa's Democritusand L'UmanaFragilifia* 21 RICHARD W. WALLACE Salvator Rosa never put into practicehis frequently expressed portraits are more complex and have the erudite embellish- and precociouslyromantic yearnings for a life of solitude and ments favored by Rosa, who liked to think of himself chiefly hermit simplicity, but these feelings did affect his choice of as a painterof learnedand philosophicallyprofound subjects." subject matter considerably,so that he was perhaps most fa- The Self-Portraithas the skull, books, pen, and paper so often mous in later periods for his landscapeswith "savage banditti" seen in paintings of St. Jerome as a solitary, scholarly peni- and "solitaryhermits."' There are many examples of his work tent, and the inscriptionon the piece of paper declares that it in this vein; among the most interesting are his St. Paul the was painted "nell'Eremo,"in the retreat or hermitage, for Hermit, a painting now in the Brera,Milan, in which the saint Rosa's friend Giovanni Battista Ricciardi.7The way in which is depictedas a shaggy, white-beardedcave dwellerin a gloomy the skull is held and contemplatedis also reminiscentof Do- forest, and the two large etchings of the hermit St. William menico Fetti's painting and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's and his companion Albert, who are shown bound to trees in etching of Melancholy,the latter of which was known to Rosa uncomfortablypenitent positions in the midst of a wilderness.2 at the time the Self-Portraitwas executed, and it is especially For Rosa, a painter of Neapolitan origin who had studied in relevant to this discussion that both of these artists made their the Ribera circle, the hermit saint tradition was an especially figures look like penitent Magdalenes (Figs. 4, 5).8 In addition, vivid one, and the Riberesque motive of the isolated figure it seems likely that Rosa was here influenced by the well-es- with a skull often appearsin his art, as seen in a drawing now tablished tradition of the portrait with a skull. Although ex- in the British Museum (Fig. 1),3 in his Self-Portrait with a amples of this portrait type are found in Italian Renaissance Skull in the MetropolitanMuseum of Art (Fig. 2),' and in the and Baroqueart, they tend to be ratherrare comparedto their Portrait of Mr. Altham as a Hermit in the Bankes Collection great popularity in Northern sixteenth and seventeenth cen- at Kingston Lacy (Fig. 3).5 tury art, and it therefore seems quite possible that Northern The drawing is a traditional handling of the hermit saint models may have helped to shape Rosa's concetto.9 theme, closely dependent on Riberesque prototypes, but the If the inscription he writes on the skull, ivn n7r 7ro---"Be- NB A bibliography of frequently cited sources, given short titles in the Artistes italiens contemporains de Poussin, XXIII* Exposition du footnotes, will be found at the end of this article. Cabinet des Dessins, Mus4e du Louvre, Paris, 1959, 37, No. 63) and * I am very grateful to Profs. Erwin Panofsky and John R. Martin of another in the Teyler Museum, Haarlem, E 31, show a youthful stand- Princeton University and to Mr. Anthony Oldcorn of Wellesley Col- ing figure contemplating a skull. The National Gallery of South lege for their advice and help in the preparation of this study. Africa, Cape Town, has a similar drawing of a man seated with a 1 A characteristic expression of these sentiments is found in a letter skull in his lap (W. Vitzthum, in Master Drawings, 1, No. 4, 1963, 59, from Rosa to his friend Giovanni Battista Ricciardi dated December, fig. 1). A drawing in the Uffizi, Florence, 12093F, is closest to the 1671: ". .. ma per dirvela, cosi nauseato d'ogn'altra cosa, che piil painting and shows a youth standing in front of a tomb and writing d'una volta sono stato tentato di ficcarmi in una Certosa, per non on a skull. Except for the Haarlem drawing, the figures all wear uscir mai pid d'una di quelle celle. O Dio, e quanto son divenuto crowns of cypress. For a discussion of the skull as a symbol of death impaziente e stufo di veder pii' imagine humana!" (De Rinaldis, Let- and its association with hermit saints, especially St. Jerome, see Jan- tere inedite, 237, No. 198). See also R. W. Wallace, "Salvator Rosa's son, "Putto," 423-32. Justice Appearing to the Peasants," JWarb, 30, 1967, 431-34. 8 Fetti's Melancholy exists in a number of versions, two of which are 2 Salerno, Rosa, 126, No. 52; Bartsch 1, Salerno, Rosa, 149, illustrated generally accepted as autograph; one in the Louvre, Paris, the other in A. Pettorelli, Salvator Rosa, pittore, incisore, musicista, poeta, (Fig. 4) in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, No. 671. The print, Turin, 1924, pl. 47; and Bartsch 2, Salerno, Rosa, 138, No. 99, respec- Bartsch 26, is not dated, but A. Blunt, The Drawings of G. B. Casti- tively. See also M. Mahoney, "Salvator Rosa's Saint Humphrey," The glione and Stefano della Bella, in the Collection of Her Majesty the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Bulletin, 53, No. 3, 1964, 55-67. Queen at Windsor Castle, London, 1954, 12, gives 1648 as the most 3 CrackerodeFr. 2-175; 18.5 x 12cm. likely date on stylistic grounds. As will be discussed below, Rosa 4 Accession No. 21.105; 39" x 31.5." Salerno, Rosa, 123, No. 40, who used this etching as a model for his Democritus, which is earlier in gives it a probable date of 1659. See also Oertel, "Vergiinglichkeit," date than the Self-Portrait with a Skull. 108f. 9 A. Pigler, Barockthemen, Budapest-Berlin, 1956, II, 577-80. Oertel, 5 2.35 x 1.63m; traditionally dated 1665. Salerno, Rosa, 123, No. 38; and "Verglinglichkeit,"108, also sees a connection to Northern portraits Italian Art and Britain, 20f., No. 15. I am very grateful to Mr. H. J. R. of this type. The closest parallel to Rosa's picture I have found is a Bankes for permission to publish this picture. drawing by Hendrick Goltzius in the Pierpont Morgan Library, Inv. 6 See Wallace, "Genius," 471-80, esp. 473f.; Mahoney, "Rosa's Saint In, 145, in which a youth, shown bust length, holds a skull with a Humphrey,"55f. tulip against it much as Rosa's figure holds the pen to the skull; 7 There are also a number of Rosa drawings that are much like the E. K. J. Reznicek, Die Zeichnungen von Hendrick Goltzius, Utrecht, Self-Portrait with a Skull. Two in the Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, 1961, I, 389f., No. 332, II, pl. 443. Inv. No. 9730r and v (see J. Bean, Dessins romains du XVII"sidcle, 22 TheArt Bulletin hold, Whither, When"--has the ambiguity usually associated rier's seventeenth century publicationof engravings after fa- withsuch declarations, the mementomori significance of the mous antique statues, One HundredRoman Statues Spared by skull itself is perfectlyclear,'0 and is reinforcedby the crown the Envious Tooth of Time (Fig. 6)."1 There is no particular of funerarycypress that garlandshis head."It wouldalso reason, therefore,to identify the Belvederetorso specificallyas seemthat Rosa originally intended to referto his own Stoi- a symbol of strength, although the basic vanitas implication cism, showinghimself contemplatingthe death'shead with of this interpretationis clearly the point of the relief as Rosa Stoic calm and resignation,since the book upon which the uses it. skullrests has "Seneca"written on its spine,the lettersnow The hermit saint traditionwas also of generalimportance to onlyfaintly visible.12 one of Rosa's largest and most ambitious pictures, the De- Rosa'sMr. Althamas a Hermit(Fig. 3), a familyportrait mocritusin Meditationnow in the Statens Museum for Kunst, in theBankes Collection, is a similarand even more ambitious Copenhagen (Fig. 7).17 In addition, it can be shown that the attemptat moralizingportraiture. Mr. Altham,a visitor to Democritus is specificallydependent on a pictorial and icon- Italyin thelater seventeenth century and possibly a studentof ographic tradition that received its decisive formation with Rosa's,1'is shownstanding in darkand gloomy solitude garbed Albrecht Diirer's Melencolia 1.18 Diirer's subtle and complex in a hermit'srough gray robe.