Francesco ROSA by Michele Nicolaci - Biographical Dictionary of Italians - Volume 88 (2017)

He was born in Rome on 25 November 1638, son of Giovanni and Giovanna Romani (Pascoli, 1736-1740, 1981, p.335).

The main biographical information is obtained from the anonymous Life of Francesco Rosa, added to the lives of the painters, sculptors and living architects of Lyon Pascoli (Battisti, 1951, pp. 41 s., Pascoli, 1736-1740, 1981), source that has allowed to clarify deﬁnitively the misunderstandings related to the biography and the artistic production of Rosa due to its overlap with the homonymous Genoese painter (Genoa, 1635-40 circa - Venice, 1710) and with the Neapolitan Pacecco de Rosa (Naples, 1607- 1656).

From the Pascolian life we learn how the young Francis "until the age of twelve", when he was an orphan of both parents, attended the Roman College, where he met Pier Filippo Bernini, son of the famous artist (p.35, Pruner, 2015) -2016, p.27). After a ﬁrst training with the not otherwise known "Placido Palermitano", Rosa entered the workshop of Giovanni Angelo Canini, through which he developed his interest in classicist painting and approached the engraving techniques (Pascoli, 1736-1740, 1981, p 355, for the limited corpus of Rosian engravings: Bellini, 1987). In these same years there was the attendance of Elder Nicolas Poussin (Pascoli, 1736-1740, 1981, p.336), from whom he learned to compose scenes of historical-literary subjects.

Rosa's public debut in Rome took place between 1660 and 1663 in the church of S. Rocco a Ripetta (chapel of S. Antonio: Glory of the saint in the dome, Virtue in the pediments and Scenes from the life of the saint in the lunettes; ) and in the chapel of S. Apollonia in S. Agostino (allegories of Virginity and Martyrdom ). If in the frescoes the stylistic reference is still the luminous painting of Giovanni Lanfranco, in the paintings there are already some typical elements of the painter, such as the uniform brunette palette and languid features, with simpliﬁed features.

"At the age of twenty-ﬁve" the painter married Ortensia Succi, daughter of his nurse, renouncing to take "a niece of Poussin" ( ibid. ), Perhaps to be identiﬁed in Barbara Carabiti, daughter of his sister-in- law (Bigucci, 2014, page 618).

In the mid-sixties of the seventeenth century the career of Rosa experienced a signiﬁcant turn thanks to the support of powerful patrons gravitating around the circuit of Fabio Chigi and Cristina of Sweden, as the cardinals Luigi Alessandro Omodei and Camillo Massimo. The ﬁrst involved the artist in the new decoration of the rooms of the Casa S. Carlo and of the church of Ss. Ambrogio and Carlo al Corso, where Rosa executed three altarpieces: the Apparition of the Virgin with the Child to s. Enrico (covered by the sermon of St. Barnabas by Pier Francesco Mola), the Miracle of s. Filippo Neri, taken from the canvas of a similar subject by Guido Reni, and the Apparition of s. Blessed to s. Enrico, obtained at the death of Maestro Canini (1666).

The latter is to be counted among the most convincing proofs of the artist, in consideration of the balanced and monumental composition, inspired by Ananias who heals s. Paolo di Pietro from Cortona in S. Maria della Concezione, to which is added the convincing piece of landscape, fruit of the contact with Gaspard Dughet in the poussinian entourage.

Around 1669 Rosa exhibited in S. Giovanni Decollato a painting depicting the landing of Agrippina in Brindisi with the ashes of Germanicus taken from the Annals of Tacitus, recently identified in the deposits of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (Prohaska - Albl, 2011-2012, pp. 255-258, another version of lower quality is published by Dobos, 2003, pp. 285 s.). The success of the work - exchanged at the time for an original by Poussin - is confirmed by its reproduction in print by Cesare Fantetti in 1673 and by the request of Cardinal Massimo to Rosa of a drawing, to be identified with a sheet recently passed on the market (Prohaska - Albl, 2011-2012, p.257). The canvas with Venus, in all likelihood, also included the canvas with Venus, offering weapons to Enea in a private collection (Dobos, 2003, p.289).

To the same group of works of scholarly theme and of antiquing taste is reported the lost Alboin requires Rosamunda to drink from the paternal skull ( before 1670) painted for Sigismondo Chigi (Pascoli, 1736-1740, 1981, p.335), probable precedent for the assignment to Rosa of the frontispiece of L ' Adalinda by Pietro Simone Agostini (1673), a musical fable staged in the family palazzo all'Ariccia (Petrucci, 1999, pp. 180 s.).

The public success in the early seventies of the seventeenth century is conﬁrmed by the artist's entry in 1673 in the Academy of S. Luca (A. Pinna, in Pascoli, 1736-1740, 1981, p.336) and, the following year, in the Congregation of St. Joseph of Terrasanta, presented by Ludovico Gimignani (Tiberia, 2005, pp. 94, 355).

For the Chapel of the Virtuosi at the Pink Pantheon he painted in oil on canvas the Moses (Pascoli, 1736-1740, 1981, p.335), next in the conception to those isolated ﬁgures of saints, hermits and philosophers that would have characterized the production of paintings by room of his last years.

In these years there were also important disappointments for the artist: in 1673 he had to abandon the works for the fresco decoration of the dome of S. Maria in Montesanto for a quarrel with the architect Carlo Rainaldi (page 357); moreover, none of the six paintings painted for the church of Ss. Vincenzo and Anastasio remains in situ today (Guerrieri Borsoi, 2012, pp. 402 s.), and only recently have he been referred to two works depicting the Annunciation and the Dream of s. Giuseppe (formerly Christie's, London, 2012), hypothesizing a source from the church near the Trevi Fountain (Petrucci, in cds).

The most important public commission of Rosa was the great altarpiece with the Miracle of Our Lady of Monserrato for the high altar of the Spanish church of S. Maria in Monserrato (1674-75).

Transferred in the nineteenth century along with some of the furnishings in the church of the Holy Trinity of Genzano (Id., 1999), the work presents an iconography with a dense political and allegorical meaning (Redin Michaus, 2001; Canalda i Llobet, 2015). The sketch also includes the sketch - or perhaps a memory (Ravenna Art Museum, Bigucci, 2014) - and a commemorative print by Charles de la Haye, which contains a long dedication to Cardinal Luis de Portocarrero, ambassador of Spain to Rome since 1678. For the cardinal Rosa executed a "quantity of large paintings representing the funtions he did in Rome in his embarking so in presenting himself to the Pope, like other things expressed", today dispersed (Pascoli, 1736-1740, 1981, pp. 357 s.), To be placed by 1679, year of the Cardinal's return to Spain.

La Vita pascoliana also cites a series of views of Rome performed for Portocarrero, entrusted by Rosa to the best specialists of the genre and within which he would have executed the "ﬁgurines". The enormous gains deriving from the brief but intense attendance of the Spanish cardinal, estimated at ﬁve thousand scudi, were for the most part spent by the painter "in the bassetta game" (page 359).

A non-marginal figure in Rosa's promotion in the seventies and eighties was later "the Imbasciatore of Portugal" (page 358), recently identified in Luís de Sousa, archbishop of Braga (and not in the French cardinal César d'Estrées). pontifical capital as early as 1676, in whose inventory (1697) there are seven paintings explicitly assigned to the Roman painter (Pruner, 2015-2016, pp. 93 s.). The Death of s was also of great commitment. Francesco Saverio painted for Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna between 1675 and 1680 and today in the basilica of S. Barnaba in Marino (Waterhouse, 1976, pp. 111 s.).

Alongside the direct commissions and the church works Rosa has dedicated in recent years especially to room paintings to be allocated to the market, to try to repay the huge debts due to gambling, which led him to serve a sentence of twenty months in prison in 1685-86 (Pascoli, 1736-1740, 1981, page 359, Bigucci, 2014, page 619). From this point of view the singular approach to the stylistic ways and typical subjects of Salvator Rosa could be explained, whose works were certainly much in demand on the market after death (1673), and that Francesco seems to have imitated in a series of paintings such as Belisario of Pamphilj collection of 1681, not coincidentally mistaken for an original of the Neapolitan Rose (Montalto Tentori, 1954). Precisely the painting in Galleria Doria Pamphilj today represented the fundamental reference point for the restitution to Francesco Rosa of a group of works of analogous subject and composition, often assigned to Salvatore, such as the Bartimeo (or Belisario ) of the Bob Jones Museum of Greenville (South Carolina) or the Diogenes throws the private collection bowl ( ibid., Petrucci, cds).

Among the rare public commissions of recent years is documented a lost St. Magdalene penitent for the church of S. Francesco in Siena, painted for Cavalier Dionisio Marescotti and mentioned by local guides alongside other works from Rome (Pecci, 1784, p 136). To be placed in the eighties of the century is also the self- portrait preserved in the Ufﬁzi, which is associated with the only other portrait so far known, that of daughter Marta, today at the Academy of St. Luca (Petrucci, cds; portraits on ovate copper »in S. Maria del Popolo, see Pascoli, 1736-1740, 1981, page 360).

There are many lost public works cited in the sources (pp. 355-378, Titi, 1674-1763, 1987, ad indicem ), as well as easel paintings, mostly scholarly subjects or ﬁgures of saints, mentioned in documents or inventories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Omodei, Colonna, Carpegna, Barberini, Naro, de Sousa, see now Pruner, 2015-2016).

Rosa died in Rome on November 26, 1687, at the age of forty-nine, following a "malignant fever" (Pascoli, 1736-1740, 1981, p.382), a Mass in his honor was recited at the Congregation of Virtuosi al Pantheon : Noack, 1934).

His wife Ortensia and his three children survived, Marta, Sigismondo and Fabio. There are very few works by Sigismondo (MC Cola, Ruspoli in Vignanello, Passeri, Cerruti, Rosa, Nicolosi and others at the service of Prince Francesco Maria in the Collegiate Church, in Art Bulletin, 6th, XCIII (2008), pp. 154 s.), while Fabio, a computist of the Apostolic Palace, a friend of artists and collectors, is known to donate part of his rich collection of paintings to the Accademia di S. Luca (see Bigucci, 2014, pp. 620-623).

Sources and Bibl.: F. Titi, Study of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in the Churches of Rome... (1674-1763), edited by B. Contardi - S. Romano, Florence 1987, ad indicem ; L. Pascoli, Vite de 'painters, sculptors and architects living: from the manuscripts 1383 and 1743 of the Biblioteca Comunale "Augusta" of Perugia (1736-1740), Treviso 1981, pp. 355-378 (comment by A. Pinna); GA Pecci, Ristretto of the most notable things of the city of Siena for the use of foreigners, Siena 1784, p. 136. F. Noack, R., F., in Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, XXVIII, Leipzig 1934, p. 598; E. Battisti, Some unpublished "Lives" by L. Pascoli, in Commentari, IV (1953), pp. 41 s.; L. Montalto Tentori, The Blind Belisario of the ancient Pamphilj gallery, in Review of the National Institute of Archeology and History of Art, ns, III (1954), pp. 228-241; E. Waterhouse, Roman Baroque Painting. A list of the principal painters and their works in Rome with an introductory essay, Oxford 1976, pp. 111 s.; P. Bellini, FR, in The Illustrated Bartsch, XLVII, New York 1987, pp. 133-137; F. Petrucci, Contributi su FR (1638-1687) "Roman" painter, in Storia dell'Arte, 1999, n. 96, pp. 176-186; G. Redín Michaus, El cuadro of the mayor of Santa Maria del Monserrat in Rome de FR, in Boletin of the Museum and Instituto Camón Aznar, 2001, n. 84, pp. 155-159; Z. Dobos, A lost painting found by FR Romano, in Acta historiae artium, 2003, n. 44, pp. 285-290; V. Tiberia, The Company of Saint Joseph of Terrasanta from Gregory XV to Innocent XII, Galatina 2005, pp. 94, 355; F. Petrucci, Salvator Rosa for Chigi's house and new contributions on FR, in Salvator Rosa and his time. 1615-1673. Proceedings of the international study conference... 2009, edited by S. Ebert-Schifferer - H. Langdon - C. Volpi, Rome 2010, pp. 383-396; W. Prohaska - S. Albl, Gian Domenico Cerrini and FR: Zwei unbekannte römische Historien in the Gemäldegalerie des Kunsthistorischen Museums, in the Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien, XIII-XIV (2011-2012), pp. 248-259; MB Warriors Borsoi, The pictorial decoration of the church of the SS. Vincenzo and Anastasio between late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, in Annals of the Pontiﬁcal Insigne Academy of Fine Arts and Letters of Virtuosi al Pantheon, XII (2012), pp. 402-404; M. Bigucci, The sketch of FR for the high altar of Santa Maria di Monserrato in Rome, in Relations between Rome and Madrid in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: art diplomacy and politics, edited by A. Anselmi, Rome 2014, pp. 606-636; S. Canalda i Llobet, The iconography of the Holy Image in Santa Maria in Monserrato in Rome. An encounter between the Catalan and Castilian identity between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in Identity and representation. The national churches in Rome, 1450-1650, edited by A. Koller - S. Kubersky-Piredda, Rome 2015, pp. 65-92; C. Pruner, FR (1638-1687). Towards a catalog raisonné, degree thesis, Sapienza University of Rome, academic year 2015-16; F. Petrucci, FR aspirating clone of Salvator Rosa. Two blades found and some news, in The culture of the arts, edited by P. di Loreto, cds .

Translated from: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/francesco-rosa_(Dizionario-Biograﬁco)