Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/lifetimesofsalva00morg_0 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SALVATOR ROSA. BY LADY MORGAN, AUTHOR OP “O’DONNEL,” “ FLORENCE MACARTHY,” “BOOK OF THE BOUDOIR,” “BOOK WITHOUT A NAME,” “FRANCE IN 1818 — 1830,” “ITALY,” ETC. ETC. One whom no servile hope of gain, or frosty apprehension of danger, ean make a parasite either to time, place, or opinion . — Ben Jonson. Famoso pittore delle cose morali . — II Duca di Salviati. iieto ®httton. LONDON : DAVID BRYCE, 48, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1855. ND (oX3 R7 tiNel LONDON : PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER, ANGEL COURT, SKINNER STREET. TUF F pv-! ,^~r— v r *' '^r* T IRRARV PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. It is the desire of the Publisher of this new edition of my Works, that I should prefix a few introductory lines to the first volume of the Series, “ The Life and Times of Salvator Bosa.” But the great Artist will speak best for himself to the present generation, as he has done to so many others in the course of those two centuries of his triumphs which have swept on to “ The years beyond the flood.” Painter, Poet, Musician, Philosopher, and Patriot, he com- bined in his fine organisation the supreme elements of high art, with the noblest instincts of intellectual humanity. He worked through his great vocation with a spirit of in- dependence that never quailed, and with unflinching resist- ance to the persecutions of despotism and the intrigues of professional rivalry. His moral dignity refused to pan- der to the licentious tastes of the profligate times in which he flourished, and, in this respect superior to many of his great predecessors, he left not one picture that, “ — dying, be might blush to own,” while he exhibited in his great historical compositions, “ The Death of Begulus” and “The Conspiracy of Cati- line,” a graphic eloquence which Herodotus and Gibbon have scarcely surpassed. The story of Modern Italy writhing under foreign rule, he depicted in those groups of outlawed gentlemen and an IV PEEEACE TO THE HEW EDITIOH. outraged people, wlio, being denied all law, lived lawlessly, and, driven into crime by necessity, peopled the savage scenery of tbe Abrnzzi, or sought refuge in the caves of Calabria, where Salvator found and painted them, as the moral results of political misrule. But these fuori citti, these condottieri of romantic history, whose graceful forms and noble bearing bespoke their high caste, natural and social, were capable of chivalrous deeds and generous sympa- thies, — unlike those banded serfs of modern warfare, of low instinct and Tartar aspect, who, with “ the sword in their hands, and the cross in their hearts,” strike down their foe to murder him at leisure, as palpitating life moves one muscle more to impede the plunder of some bosom gem, the gift of love or maternal affection. As the poet of liberty, Salvator takes his place among the high priests of her altars in Italy — Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Pilacajia. He rendered even philosophy familiar to the eye, when, by the double despotism of Church and State, its truths were prohibited from meeting the understand- ing ; and while Gralileo was condemned to death for proving that the earth moved, Salvator, unsuspected and unpunished, painted, in allegories of artistic excellence, theories at least as dangerous. Did Salvator live now, one might fancy him joining the ranks of the gallant defenders of national independence and civilisation ; standing but, like one of his own bold figures, upon the heights of Balaklava, pencil in hand and revolver in belt, realising for the homage of posterity the grand battle raging below, till, borne away by his kindling sympathies, he flings down his pencil, and, plunging into the melee, meets a glorious death or shares a not less glorious triumph. With respect to the Authorship of the “ Life of Salvator Bosa,” it was written con amove in the prime of the Author’s life, and of her enthusiasm for Italy. PEEEACE TO THE HEW EDITION. V Of the principle whicb. animates it, time lias not “ bated one jot,” nor quenched one sympathy. The style in which it was written may now, perhaps, be deemed rococo , by the censors of the modern free-and-easy school, who write that those who run may read. Such as it is, it was the style with which the Author won her spurs, under the command of Field Marshal “ O’Donnel” and other heroes, native and foreign, who “championed” to their utmost the sublime cause of right and their country’s independence. If, however, with the conceit of other veterans, she now “ Shoulders her crutch and shows how fields were won,” she pleads that she served, though only as a subaltern, in times of the greatest literary enterprise and mental com- petitorship that British genius ever produced since the Augustan ages of Elizabeth and Anne ! SYDNEY MOEGrAN. London, William Street, Albert Gate, 10th Jan., 1855. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. Should it be deemed worthy of inquiry, why I selected the life of Salvator Rosa as a subject of biographical memoir, in preference to that of any other illustrious painter of the Italian Schools, I answer, that I was influenced in my pre- ference more by the peculiar character of the man, than the extraordinary merits of the artist. For, admiring the works of the great Neapolitan master, with an enthusiasm un- known, perhaps, to the sobriety of professed virtu, I esti- mated still more highly the qualities of the Italian patriot, who, stepping boldly in advance of a degraded age, stood in the foreground of his times, like one of his own spirited and graceful figures, when all around him was timid mannerism and grovelling subserviency ! Struck, as I had always been, with the philosophical tone and poetical conception of Salvator’s greater pictures, even to the feeling a degree of personal interest in favour of their creator, I took the opportunity of my residence in Italy to make some verbal inquiries as to the private cha- racter and story of a man, whose powerful intellect and deep feeling, no less than his wild and gloomy imagination, came forth even in his most petulant sketches and careless designs. From tradition, little is to be obtained in a land where it is equally perilous to indulge in the memory of the past, or the hope of the future : but it was also evident, that over the name of Salvator Rosa there hung some spell, dark as one of his own incantations. For though in answer to my applications on this subject I was, in one or two instances, referred for information to the Parnasso Italiano, in none Vlll PEEEACE TO THE EIEST EDITION. was I directed to those contemporary sources from whence the most impartial accounts were to be derived. The Par- nasso Italiano is one of the few modern works in Italy sanctioned by the constituted authorities, and published, as its licence asserts, “ with the full approbation of the Grand Inquisitor of the Holy Office.” In its consecrated pages I found Salvator Hosa described as being “ of low birth and indigent circumstances — of a subtle organisation and an unregulated mind; — one whose life had been disorderly, and whose associates had been chosen among musicians and buffoons.” This discrepancy between the man and his works, though authenticated by the seal of the “ Holy Office,” awakened suspicions, which led to further inquiry and deeper research. It was then I discovered, that the sublime painter of the Saul and the Job was in fact precisely the reverse, in life and character, of all that he had been represented by the hired literary agents of those bad insti- tutions, which he had so boldly and so ably attacked both by his pencil and his pen; for he was not “ subtile,” but uncompromising; not “unregulated,” but concentrated; not “one living with buffoons,” but with sages. It was equally evident, that the cause which covered the memory of one of the greatest painters and most philosophical poets of Italy with obloquy, was not the vice of the man, but the moral independence and political principle of the patriot ! I found Salvator Hosa standing in the gap of time between Michael Angelo the patriot artist, and Filicaja the poet of Liberty. The inheritor of much of the genius and all the good old Italian spirit of the first, he was also the precursor of the political free breathings of the last, — compared to whom he appears, like his own Desert-prophet in the Co- lonna palace, lonely indeed and wild, but not uninspired. As I found, so have I represented him ; and if (led by a natural sympathy to make common cause with all who suffer by misrepresentation) I have been the first (my only merit) to light a taper at the long-neglected shrine, and to raise the veil of calumny from the splendid image of slandered genius, I trust it is still reserved for some com- patriot hand to restore the memory of Salvator Hosa to all its “original brightness,” as when the muse of the Arno was exclusively occupied in singing his praises. Many minute details and interesting facts of this extraordinary PKEEACE TO THE EIEST EDITION. IX man may yet doubtless be obtained by a native of Italy, which it was difficult or impossible for a foreigner, and one writing at so remote a distance, to procure. The verbal information which I have extorted, has been in truth but scanty. Of the number of distinguished friends I had made and left in that country (the lustre of whose blue skies has not yet faded from my imagination), few now reside there, and fewer still are in a situation to give me any assistance. Many have been condemned to death ! the greatest number have saved life by perilous evasion and indigent exile ; and some, at the moment I write, uncer- tain of their fate, are wearing out their prime of existence in solitary confinement, cut off from all human intercourse, save what they hold (if that may be called human) with their gaolers and inquisitors. From the general intimidation which prevails throughout Italy, little was to be hoped from the contributions of mere acquaintances. The proscription of my work on that country by the King of Sardinia, the Emperor of Austria, and the Pope, rendered it dangerous even to receive my letters or to answer them.* An English lady of high rank and unbounded influence in Home, who, in any other cause but in that of two such notorious Carbonari, must have been eminently successful, exerted herself to the utmost for me and my Salvator ; all, however, that her inexhaus- tible kindness (for such it has been) could effect, was to procure me a catalogue of Salvator’s pictures now remain- ing in Home, and in this catalogue the “Prometheus” (one of the most celebrated) was omitted. By far the greater number of Salvator’s works are in Great Britain ; and from many of their possessors and other lovers of the arts, I have received information wherever I have applied for it. I beg more particularly to offer my acknowledg- ments to the Earl of Darnley, Earl Grosvenor, Earl Cow- per, Earl of Miltown, the Honourable William Ponsonby, Bichard Power, Esq., General Cockburn, Weld Hart- strong, Esq., — Heley, Esq., her Grace the Duchess of * The Count Gonfaloniere and Sylvio Pellico, the most illustrious victims of Austrian tyranny, were at this epoch in carcere duro in the dungeons of Spilsburgh, from whence, after twenty years’ confinement, they were released under a total depression of intellect. I X PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. Devonshire, the Marchioness Dowager of Lansdowne, and to the Baron Denon. I now dismiss my first attempt at biographical writing with more of hope than apprehension ; and commit it to the indulgence of that public, which is the sole umpire for whose suffrage an author should be solicitous, as it is the only tribunal from whose decision there is no appeal. Sydney Morgan. Kildare-street, Dublin, October 1st, 1823. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Influential causes of the progress and perfection of the Art of Painting during the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries — Importance of the early Masters of the Italian School — National Virtu — Influence of the Reforma- tion on the Art and its Pi'ofessors — Decline of the Art — The Ritrattisti and Limners of the Seventeenth Century — Pa- tronage of the Stuarts and the Bourbons, and its effects — The State of the Art at the close of the Seventeenth Century — The two last great Italian Masters, Carlo Maratti and Salvator Rosa Page 1 CHAPTER II. Political and Social State of Italy, and more particularly of Na- ples, in the Seventeenth Century — The family of Rosa — Birth of Salvator — He receives the diminutive appellation of Salva- toriello — Parental speculations — Salvator’s domestic education — Peculiarity of temperament, and early indications of genius — Flagellation in the Monastery of the Certosa — Departure for the Collegio della Congregazione Somasca — Rapid progress in the Humanities. The School of Philosophy then in vogue in the Italian Universities, neglected by Salvator — He acquires skill upon several musical instruments — Returns to the village of Renella .......... 8 CHAPTER III. Salvator studies Music scientifically — State of Music at that period in Italy — Flourishes in Naples — Salvator’s Lyrics — Judgment of a foreign Critic — Specimen of his amatory poetry — Marriage of his eldest sister with Francesco Francanzani the painter — Salvator commences painting in the work-room of Francanzani — Giro of the Italian painters — Salvator leaves Naples, and strikes out a new course of study for himself — His wanderings in Apulia, Calabria, and the Abruzzi — Cha- racter of these regions, and of their inhabitants — Description of the Banditti of the Abruzzi in the Seventeenth Century — Their power and influence — Salvator becomes associated with Xll CONTENTS. one of their bands — The influence of this event on his genius and works — Salvator returns to Naples — The misery and indi- gence of his family — Efforts to succour them unavailing — Death of his Father — He works at the lowest prices for the Riven- ditori of Naples — State of the Neapolitan School at that epoch — A School of mannerists — Caravaggio, his singular character and story — His influence on the Neapolitan School — His disci- ples Giuseppe Ribera (lo Spagnuoletto) and his associates Corenzio and Caracciolo — School of Spagnuoletto, a ferocious faction — Its persecution of the great Roman masters, particu- larly Guido and Domenicliino, when invited by the Cavalieri Deputati to paint the Duomo — Arrival of the celebrated Lan- franco in Naples — He unites all suffrages — His letter — His admiration of the picture of Hagar in the Desert , by Salvator, which he purchases — Introduction of Salvator to Ancillo Fal- cone — Studies in his School— Unable to procure work — His sufferings and despondency .... Page 29 CHAPTER IV. 1634— 1635. Departure of Salvator for Rome — Milton’s arrival there about the same period — Social and political state of Rome favourable to the Arts — Virtu and patronage of the Barberini family — Urban VIII. — Lorenzo Bernini, architect of the Vatican — His cha- racter and influence — Position of the surviving pupils of the School of the Caracci on the arrival of Salvator in Rome — The Ultramontane School — Its vogue and peculiar charac- teristics — Anecdotes of its leading members — Opposition be- tween the Flemish and Italian Schools — Salvator stands aloof from both — His solitary wanderings in the Campagna — Works for a miserable remuneration for the Rivenditori of the Piazza Navona — His obscurity and poverty described in a Cantata composed by himself — Infected by the Malaria, obliged to return to Naples for the recovery of his health . . 69 CHAPTER V. 1635— 1639. Arrival of Salvator in Naples — State in which he finds his family — Resumes his profession, and is opposed by the Neapolitan School — Fails in procuring work — Reduced to despair — Is relieved by the friendship of Girolamo Mercuri, Maestro di Casa to Car- dinal Brancaccia — By his invitation, Salvator revisits Rome — Is sheltered in the palace of the Cardinal Brancaccia — Pursues his art under discouraging circumstances — Neglects entering into any of the reigning Schools — Studies in the Sistine CONTENTS. Xlll Chapel — Impediments to liis success, both natural and na- tional — Journey of the Cardinal Brancaccia to Viterbo — Rosa taken in his train — Paints the Loggia of the Epis- copal Palace — Receives an order from the Cardinal to exe- cute an altar-piece for the Chiesa della Morte — Subject of the picture — Becomes acquainted with the poet Antonio Abbati — Salvator disgusted with his position in the Cardinal’s family — Returns to Naples — Well received by Ancillo Falcone — Paints his celebrated picture of “ The Prometheus ” — Account of that picture — It is received into the annual exhibition at the Pan- theon, held on the festival of San Giovanni Decollato — Its brilliant success — Salvator, at the instigation of Mercuri and Simonelli, returns to Rome — Rejected by the Academy of Saint Luke — Takes a house in the Via Babbuina — Improvement of his fortune — Opens a new path to notoriety in the Carnival of 1639 — His talents and success as an actor and improvvisatore — Becomes the fashion — Universally sought after for his social talents — Private theatricals in Rome — the old Italian Drama — Sketch of the Sette Maschere d’ Italia — The modern Drama — Theatre opened at the Vatican by Bernini — Theatre opened in the Vigna di Mignanelli by Salvator Rosa — Attacks the ab- surdities of Bernini — Vengeance taken by Ottaviano Castelli in the theatre of the Borgo Vecchio — The results — Feeling of the public, and conduct of Salvator upon this occasion Page 84 CHAPTER VI. 1639— 1647. Rosa applies himself to his profession with increasing success — Cabal raised against his historical pictures — School of landscape — When first opened in Rome — Its first masters — Claude Lor- raine and Gaspar Poussin — Their characters, genius, and man- ner — Salvator Rosa opposed to both — Becomes the favourite painter of the Roman people — His manner of living — His Lyrics — His conversazioni — Mode of recitation — His friends and associates — Their rank and talents — Musical composers — Sal- vator’s attack upon the Modern School of Music, and upon the morals of its professors — Extract from his Satire on Music — He increases the number of his enemies — His first great Battle- piece — His Sorceress for the Casa Rossi — His poem of the Incantation composed at the same time — Character of his poetic genius — His Prodigal Son, and other works— Altar- pieces for Milan — His Purgatory — His professional dignity — Refuses all dictation — Anecdote of the Roman Prince ! ■— Friendship of the Prince Don Mario Ghigi — Anecdote — Sal- vator takes up the cause of an amateur rejected by the Academy XIV CONTENTS. of St. Luke — Calumnies of kis enemies — Historical pictures — Pindar and Pan, painted for the Ghigi Palace . Page 112 CHAPTER VII. 1647—1657. Death of Pope Urban VIII. — Its influence on the Arts — Innocent X. (Pamfili) — Public works consigned to Bernini — Influence of the civil wars of France and England upon Italy — Popular discontents at Naples — Masaniello — Neapolitan Revolution — Masaniello declared Captain-General of the people — Salvator Rosa arrives in Naples — Is received into the councils of Masa- niello — Joins the standard of La Compagnia della Morte under Falcone — Treachery of the Viceroy — Interview between the Due d’ Arcos and Masaniello — The wisdom and justice of Ma- saniello — He is supposed to be poisoned by the Viceroy — Loses his reason — His assassination in the Convent del Carmine 144 CHAPTER Vm. 1647—1657. Flight of Aniello Falcone to France — Salvator Rosa escapes to Rome — State of society in that city favours his safety — His “ Babilonia ” — His two singular pictures, L’ Umana Fragility, and La Fortuna — Persecution excited against him — Threatened with the Inquisition ! — Escapes from Rome in the train of the Prince Carlo Giovanni de’ Medici — Arrives in Florence — His splendid reception by the Court and the Florentine Nobility — Engages with the Grand Duke to paint for the Palace Pitti — Entertains the Cavaliers of the Court at his own house — Changes his society — Is surrounded by the Literati of Florence — Founds an academy of his own by the name of the Percossi — P rivate Theatricals at the Casino di San Marco — Messire Agli of Bologna enters the dramatic lists with Salvator — The Simposi, or classic suppers of Salvator Rosa — His professional labours — His Battle-piece for the Grand Duke — Other his- torical pictures — His own portrait — His friendship with Lorenzo Lippi, the author of the Malmantile — Urges him to compose that poem — Assists Lippi in his pictures — His portrait by Lippi — The “beautiful Lucrezia” becomes the govern ante of Salvator Rosa — He retires with her from Florence to Volterra and to the villas of his friends, the Maffei — His manner of living during his retreat — His pictorial and poetical compositions — His de- parture with Lucrezia from Tuscany . . . .163 v CONTENTS. XV CHAPTER IX. 1652— 1G73. Departure of Rosa celebrated by the Tuscan poets — He arrives in Rome, and establishes himself on the Monte Pincio — Scenery of the Pincio at that epoch — Salvator attacked by his profes- sional rivals and political enemies — Refuses to paint for the public, and executes pictures for his own gallery — Again re- ceives orders, and executes several great works — Paints for the Constable Colonna, for the King of Denmark, and for the Venetian Ambassador — Paints his great battle-piece as a pre- sent from the Court of Rome to Louis XIV. — His generosity — Birth of his son Agosto — His splendid position in Rome — His walks on the Monte Pincio — Fresh persecutions — Attack on his historical pictures — He refuses to paint small pictures and land- scapes — Attacks on his poetical works — His unhappy state of mind — Accepts an invitation to attend the royal nuptials of Cosmo III. at Florence, for the purpose of changing the scene —Resides at the house of Paolo Minucci, and at Strozzavolpe — Refuses an invitation from the Archduke Ferdinand — Re- fuses to paint during his visit to Florence — His engravings — His Filosofo Negro — Madonna Anna Gaetano — The Portrait — Return of Salvator to Rome — He makes a journey to Loretto — His enthusiasm for romantic scenery — His return to Rome — Resumes his professional and ordinary habits . Page 200 CHAPTER X. Salvator executes three great pictures for the exhibition of San Giovanni , on his return to Rome in the year 1663 — He ex- hibits his Catiline Conspiracy in the Pantheon — Its compo- sition, and success — His depression of spirits and disgust with his art — Exhibition in the Pantheon, 1664 — His Saul and the Witch of Endor — Continued persecutions of his enemies — Obtains the distinction of painting an altar-piece at Rome, his first and last — Its subject — Anecdotes — His projects for the Porta Flaminia — Friendship of Carlo Rossi — His chapel in the Cliiesa di Santa Maria del Santo Monte — Decline of Salvator’s health and spirits — His letter to Ricciardi on the subject — Undertakes a series of caricatures at the request of his friends — Is unable to finish them — His decline — Opinion of his phy- sicians — Is given over — His singular conduct — The last day of his life — His funeral in the Chiesa di Santa Maria degli An- gioli alle Terme — His tomb and epitaph .... 224 XVI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XI. Description of Salvator’s person — His style of conversation — His vogue — His School — Bartolommeo Torrigiani — Gio. Ghe- solfi — Agosto Rosa — Pietro Montanini — Harry Cook — His Imitators — The Cavaliere Fidenza of Rome — Salvator’s do- mestic character and manner — His sons and descendants — His property at the time of his death — His merits as a Painter (opinions of the most celebrated Masters) — as an Engraver — as a Musical composer — His social talents — His erudition — His poetry — State of Italian literature in the seventeenth century — State of the Press — Marini, his followers in Italy and in England — Satirical and burlesque poets of Italy — Satires of Salvator Rosa — Their character and tendency — Cause of the diatribes of contemporary critics — Their calumnies — Reputa- tion of Salvator’s poetry in Italy in the present day Page 248 LETTERS. Letters of Salvator Rosa to Doctor Baptista Ricciardi, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Pisa, from the year 1652 to the year 1669 265 APPENDIX. Cantata — List of Pictures by Salvator Rosa . . 292 THE LIFE AND TIMES OP SALYATOR ROSA. CHAPTER I. The perfection attained in the art of painting during the middle ages, had its source in the political combinations of times when a predominant hierarchy held the ascendant, and the Church was — the State. Knowledge, which is supremacy as long only as it is a monopoly, was then the exclusive possession of the clergy ; and the intellectual disparity, which existed between the many and the few, long continued to be the instrument of delusions, of which ignorance inevitably becomes the dupe and the victim. To support the powerful system of priestly domination, which for ages governed the nations of Europe and their rulers, the efforts of human intellect and the products of human genius were discarded or brought forward, as the exigencies of successive epochs dictated. The same hierarchy which, at one period, found its account in burning the works of Cicero, and casting the statues of Praxiteles into the Tiber,* in another, restored the philosophy of Aristotle, * Under Gregory (the first pope and saint) surnamed the Great. The hatred of this pontiff against the ancient religion of Rome was so fierce, and his desire to destroy all remembrance of it so ardent, that he is accused of having reduced to ashes the Palatine Library collected by Augustus Caesar, and of having thrown the most precious works of antiquity into the Tiber. This policy, though barbarous, was expedient for the day — the sixth century. 1 2 LIFE AND TIMES and proposed the elevation of Raphael to the dignity of the cardinalate. The splendid architecture and elegant decorations of the pagan temples of Greece and Rome had been rejected by the nascent Church, as recalling, through their associations, the doctrines and practices of that brilliant religion, which it was the interest of its sterner successor to bury in oblivion. But, when the rude monstrosities pictured on the walls of the ancient ecclesiastical edifices of Lombardy, and the unavailing crusades of the Iconoclasts against the imaginative tendencies of the Italians, exhibited the innate impulse of the people towards decoration, the Church, taught by experimental demonstration the difficulty of securing faith by abstractions, or of satisfying the passions with invisible objects of adoration, wis in her service. Painting (which, in the progress of civilization, precedes music,* as being less abstracted in its principles, and more tangible in its effects) was, even as early as the thirteenth century, adopted by the Church as a means of riveting her power, by bringing over the senses to her interest. Its effects were magical : it personified the essence which thought could not reach; it depicted the mystery which reason could not explain ; it revealed the beatitudes of Hea- ven, and the punishments of Hell, in imagery which struck upon the dullest apprehensions and intimidated the hardiest conscience ; and the Madonnas of Cimahuef and the saints of Giotto J were found to he no less influential in their calling, than the councils of the assembled Church and the * The study and elaborate combinations required in the perfection of music as a science can never belong to barbarous times. The works of Memni and Martini, the portrait-painters, are still extant, while the vocal music of Petrarch's age is wholly lost. “ The expression of music,” says Dr. Burney, “ in so remote a period is so entirely lost, that, like a dead lan- guage, no one is certain how it is pronounced. Petrarch and Boccacio were both celebrated players on the lute ; but the music of much more recent times sounds monotonous and barbarous to modern ears.” T The people of Florence were so struck by the Madonna of Cimabue, that the picture was carried in procession, with sound of trumpet, to the church of Santa Maria Novella, where it may still be seen in the chapel de’ Ruccellai. The same painting gave the name of Borgo Allegro (pleasant town) to the little village in which it was painted. + Giotto, the friend and portrait-painter of Dante, was courted and employed by all the pontiffs and pious princes of his day ; particularly by ely enlisted the arts OE SALVATOR ROSA. 3 bulls of tbe Lateran. Eyes, which shed no tears over the recited sufferings of the Saviour, wept gratefully over the pictured agonies of a self-sacrificed Mediator ; and stubborn knees, unused to bend in mental devotion, dropped involun- tarily before shrines where a fair young mother and her blooming offspring, a virgin parent and an infant Grod, awakened religious adoration through human sympathies. The doctrines of a mystic creed thus enforced through palpable forms addressed to the affections, powerfully as- sisted to awaken faith through feeling ; for that which is felt, it is difficult to doubt, and that which satisfies the senses, is vainly distrusted by the understanding. The people likewise, denied the use of the Scriptures, were now taught much of what it was expedient they should know, from pictures. The art, in process of time, became an acknowledged state-engine ; and the artists, virtually, if not nominally, acting as ministers, were soon subsidised as allies.*' In Italy a public taste inevitably sprang from this politi- cal expediency ; and habits of long-practised judgment and well-exercised discrimination produced the singular pheno- menon of a nation of virtuosi. Towards the commencement of the sixteenth century the Roman and Tuscan people had become, with respect to painting, what the lowest of the Athenians had once been with respect to language ! The orators of a free government had made a nation of philo- logists ; a church despotism had created a population of dilettanti. Eor governments, in particular stages of society, make the people : in others, the people make the govern- ments. While the natives of a country, which once fought for Clement the Fifth, and King Robert of Naples. Dante’s well-known lines “ Credette Cimabue nella pittura Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido,” &c. brought him still more into fashion. In another age Giotto might have been the protector of Dante ; for the Church soon discovered that artists were less likely to paint heresy than such poets and philosophers as Dante and Petrarch to preach it. * Raphael was offered a cardinal’s hat, and Pope Giulio was the friend, and almost the slave, of Michael Angelo. Leo the Tenth courted the aid and suffrages of all the artists of his day, whom he flattered, however, more than he rewarded. In latter times painters presided in cabinets and were appointed to embassies. Rubens supported a high diplomatic character. 4 LIFE AND TIMES the mastery of the world, were occupied with an art to which all pretended, the munificent merchants of the Italian republics entered into competition with popes and princes ; and if they could not outbid such sumptuous com- petitors, they at least assisted in raising the price of the precious commodities. Thus, from the period when poetry held the ascendant in the persons of Dante and Petrarch, to the birth of philosophy in the cradle of Galileo, the rich rewards of genius flowed exclusively in one channel, and were lavished on those great painters and sculptors, whose works, while they beautified churches and embellished shrines, contributed to extend a system that rejected no ally however feeble, nor refused any support however in- congruous. The great poets of the sixteenth century were forced to woo their patrons ; the painters were to be courted, and were rarely won unsought. The immortal creators of the “ Jerusalem” and the “ Orlando” waited despondingly in the antechambers of the pitiful D’Este, while Vinci took his place in the saloons of kings, and Titian rejected the in- vitations of Emperors. # The spirit of the times directing, as it always will, the genius of individuals, tied down the most enlightened people of the world to the pursuit of an ornamental art. Under other circumstances, and in another age, Eapbael might have been no less “divine” as a poet, than as a painter ;f and Leonardo might have shone the first of experimental philosophers, as he was the most emi- nent of artists. In the progress of society new combinations effected new results. The Clements, the Giulios, the Leos,J the Leo- nardos, the Eaphaels, and the Michael Angelos, — with the glorious republics of Italy, whose free institutions had tended so powerfully to the development of genius, — all vanished from the scene ; and towards the close of the * Leonardo da Vinci was the guest of Francis the First, and died in his arms at Fontainebleau. Titian refused the special invitations of Charles the Fifth, and of Philip the Second, his son. + The little that has reached posterity of Raphael’s poetry is quite as ethereal as his heads of female saints. + There is nothing so different as the characters and policy of these stormy and warlike pontifical statesmen, and those of their successors in the seventeenth century, who reigned temporally and spiritually by what Car- dinal de Retz calls “les finoteries du Vatican.” OF SALVATOR EOS A. 5 sixteeenth century new interests and new wants arose, which occasioned new adaptations of human ingenuity. The Reformation came — the greatest event of modern times. It was the policy of the new religion to carry on her system by a stern rejection of all the meretricious means by which the old church had effected her scheme of usurpation. She wanted no pictures, and patronized no artists.* Equally bent upon supremacy as her great prede- cessor, she called in new aids to accomplish her ends ; she affected to engage reason on her side, and to found faith on proof. But more bent on her object, than considerate of her means, she discarded too little or too much ; and did not foresee that reason, usurping the territory it was called in to defend, would eventually throw light on the retained abuses, as it had upon those rejected. In discarding the arts and preserving the tithes, the reformed church at once loosened her strongest hold on the imagination, and armed the more calculating passions against her. Philosophy, meanwhile, leaving reform to its struggles, and theology to its sophisms, availed herself of the licence of the times, and of the inquiring spirit of the age. She came forth with her great experimental truths to better the condition of humanity, to lessen its inflictions, to meet its * Among the votes passed in the Parliament of 1636, were two suffi- ciently singular, exceeding even the persecution of the arts by the first Pro- testant Reformers. “ Ordered, that all such pictures there (in the royal collection) as shall have the representation of the second person of the Trinity on them, shall be forthwith burnt ; that all such pictures as have the representation of the Virgin Mary upon them, shall be forthwith burnt.” The pictures without any superstition upon them were sold for the benefit of the poor Irish 1 ! — See Journal of the House of Commons . The destruction of pictures during the first heat of the Revolution, was in some measure political as well as religious ; being a counter-blow to that taste for the Fine Arts, which Charles had endeavoured to render national, to the neglect of better things. Luther, the least rigid of all reformers, retaining some of the old tastes of the Augustan monk, struggled against a barbarous and indiscriminate attack on the arts. On the idolatrous subject of pictures he dared not interfere (though vastly fond of multiplying his own portrait and that of his “ very ugly wife ”), but he stickled hard for a little music in his church. Being himself a composer, and the best singer in the choir at Erfurt, he confessed that he “ prized music above all sciences except theology,” and even went so far as to compose his catechism in verse that he might set it to music. The famous Confession of Augsburg was actually done into a metrical ballad. Calvin, however, who had “ no music in his soul,” waged war on all the arts, and declared even playing on the organ “a foolish vanity.” (5 LIFE AND TIMES wants, and to diminish the many “ ills which flesh is heir to.” Her object was the happiness of mankind ; and her agent, knowledge. Obstructed in every step of her pro- gress, — condemned as infidel, for expounding the laws of nature, — and persecuted for truths, for which she deserved to be deified, still she advanced — slowly indeed, but firmly : moral and physical evil, error and disease, bigotry and the plague, receded before her luminous progress. Philosophers, it is true, perished in the dungeons of inquisitions, or fed the flames of an auto da fe ; but philosophy survived, and triumphed. Hot so the art, which had so long made a part and parcel of the church and state legislature of Chris- tendom. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, the great market for painting was closing, never again to be opened with equal splendour, save under the pressure of exigencies, vast, influential, and incorporated with the interests of society, as those in which the prosperity and perfection of the art had originated. The grand historical and epic masters of the splendid schools of Kome, Tuscany, and Lombardy, the schools of [Raphael, of I)a Vinci, and of the Caracci, were now replaced by the well-named “ Depen- dent!” of cardinals, by the court limners of the Bourbons, and the “ sergeant payntors” of the Stuarts, — the subser- vient decorators of the Escurial, the Tuileries, and ’White- hall, # The system of politics, which, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, drove nearly all Europe to the * See the melancholy letter of Nicholas Poussin on the subject of his degrading residence in the French Court, and his eagerness to get back to Rome and escape from the royal patronage of the Louvre. Albano, though reduced to misery in his own country, in the true spirit of the old Italian masters refused the invitation of Charles the First of England, though con- veyed in a royal autograph. Carlo Maratti rejected a similar proposal from the first great Duke of Buckingham, who had adopted his master’s passion for the arts. By the by, it is curious to observe in Yertue’s Catalogue of the pictures of Charles the First, that three-fourths were presents from his courtiers; so that his encouragement of the arts was much at the expense of parasites, or such as expected a place for a picture. The reluctance of the Italian masters to embrace the servitude of the ultra-montane courts arose from the fate of some of their special proteges. Vanderdort was in such awe of his patron, Charles the First, that he hanged himself in despair, for having mislaid a miniature by Gibson, which the King called for, and which was found after his death. The conduct of Louis the Fourteenth to the unfortunate Petitot is notorious , — See Walpole V Painters , p. 253. OF SALVATOR ROSA, 7 hazardous experiment of revolution, had its influence on the arts, and assisted with other causes to degrade its pro- fessors. It was in vain that such names as Rubens, Pous- sin, and Vandyke, illustrated and almost redeemed the list of court painters of this degraded epoch. Even the bril- liant genius of such men submitted to the influence of the times ; and an eternal series of hatchet-faced kings and flaxen-wigged queens, with all their allegorical virtues, — unreal as the monsters by which they were represented, — afford a running commentary on the dictation imposed on the art, and on the influence exercised by the presuming patronage and the overweening conceit of princely pre- tenders. Royal vanity, which, like “self-love, loves portraits,” # circumscribed those talents which should have belonged to ages and to nations, within the narrow limits of Black- friars t and the Louvre. It was in vain that state- ministers created academies, that state-mistresses awarded prizes, that orders were conferred and pensions were granted. Still, “ with all appliances and means to boot,” the genius of painting sunk beneath such distinctions. The secret and the importance of the art were lost toge- * “ L’amour propre aime les portraits.” La Bruyere . — Of this axiom, Queen Elizabeth, Charles the First, and Louis the Fourteenth, give the most striking illustrations. Queen Elizabeth made it penal to buy an ugly picture, and leze majesie for a limner not to flatter her. She is generally represented with all the attributes of royal power and sovereign beauty, while Junos, Venuses, and Minervas fly before her to hide their diminished heads where they may. Charles the First’s melancholy visage is to be seen in every collection in Europe, from the numberless portraits which filled his own gallery, the contents of which were so dispersed. He made Rem- brandt paint him as Saint George ; and Vandyke and others painted him under the form of every saint in the Calendar. Louis the Fourteenth, on the contrary, flourishes on the walls and ceilings of Versailles and of the Tuileries as Jupiter or Apollo, surrounded by his mistresses as the Graces; while the Virtues are oddly enough allegorized as monsters. Still, in all these portraits, there is much of the “human face divine;” but what will posterity say to the pictures of some of the “Singes tigres ” of reigning dynasties ? — those of Sardinia and Naples, for instance ? — or even of the portraits of the “ Hun, the Goth, and the Calmuc,” as inseparably connected as Brown, Jones, and Robinson, (the heroes of “ Reading made easy,”) and henceforward to be designated in history as the “ Three Gentlemen of Verona ? ” I Vandyke, when he arrived in England, was lodged among the King’s artists at Blackfriars, whither the King frequently came, bespeaking pictures of the Queen, his children, and his courtiers. 8 LIFE AND TIMES ther. # The fires which had warmed the soul of Michael Angelo under the dome of the Vatican, were quenched ; the zeal which led the pilgrim steps of the Caracci and their disciples t to Eome and Naples, was no more ; and, towards the end of the seventeenth century, that long list of illustrious masters, who, by their mighty genius and lofty spirits, had raised the art to its highest excellence, and given dignity to the profession, was closed for ever, and terminated in the person of one, well worthy of the splendid hut melancholy pre-eminence, — one who, distin- guished above all his predecessors as the “ Famoso pittore delle cose morali,” has still been more celebrated than known, by the name of Salvator Eosa.J CHAPTEE II. The seventeenth century, an age so big with events, so important in its influence on the rest of Europe, was to Italy an epoch of degradation and disgraceful ruin. It laid her prostrate before the House of Austria, and submitted her to the tyranny of that fatal race, whose dull but dire policy, like the juice of the herb that kills silently, § has * Portrait-painting, as a distinct branch of the art, only began with the commencement of the seventeenth century, when the name of “ ritrattisti ” was given to the Italian limners of that day. “ Till we have other pictures than portraits (says H. Walpole), and painting has ampler fields to range in than private apartments, it is in vain to expect that the arts will recover their genuine lustre.” Kneller, the last eminent name given to the arts before that barbarous interval which occurred in England between his day and that of Sir J. Reynolds, had turned the profession into a trade. Such men, where they offered one picture to fame, sacrificed twenty to lucre, and lessened their own reputation, by making it subservient to their fortunes. + Dominichino, Guido, Lanfranco, &c. &c. J The Flemish school, which succeeded to the Italian, -was comparatively but of short duration. It opened and closed within a century. From Cimabue, the founder of the Italian school, to Carlo Maratti and Salvator Rosa, tvho were esteemed the last of its masters, there is included a space of nearly five centuries. § The Indian Cuvare, or poison of Guiana. OF SALVATOR ROSA. 9 ever been to destroy by numbing ; — a race which, in tread- ing on the natural and political rights of those subjected to its leaden sway, has even retrograded civilization, by palsying intellect, and checked the progress of science, by interdicting all freedom of discussion and play of thought, to the utter- most limits of its bayonets and its tribunals and its dun- geons.* From the time of Charles the Fifth, the balance of Europe leaned towards the house of Hapsburg. Masters of Spain, of Portugal, and South America, of Bohemia, Hungary, and G-ermany, — of the whole of the North of Italy and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, — the descendants of the Em- peror and King would inevitably have subdued all Europe to their rule, and have realized the scheme of universal empire, but that their dulness perpetually marred their luck.f The division of the empire at the death of Charles the Fifth was the first blow to their supremacy. On this occasion Spain fell to the elder branch, in the person of the atrocious Philip the Second.^ The dark temperament of this proverbial tyrant, and of his immediate successors, directed their unlimited power to the utter ruin of liberty wherever it appeared ; and their enormous wealth enabled them to succeed in the attempt, wherever public men were corruptible. Spain, with all her chivalrous spirit and old Castilian pride, was crushed beneath the horrible weight of the Inquisition, which Austrian rulers had established in the heart of her ancient capital. The Low Countries, mad- dened by oppression into insurrection, had resisted in vain, and were governed by the faggot and the sword : while the beautiful kingdom of Naples, the brightest gem in the Austro-Spanish diadem, became to Spain, what Ireland * The crusade against mind was so fiercely carried on in Italy at this time, that even the Medici could not protect their friend Marchetti from the Inquisition, whose vengeance, under the Austro-Spanish influence, was roused by that writer’s translation of Lucretius, which Cosmo the Third was obliged to suppress. f “ Si tant d’etats avaient ete reunis sous un seul chef de cette maison, il est a croire que l’Europe lui aurait enfin ete asservie.” — Voltaire , Steele de Louis XIV. J “ L’Espagne, gouvern^e par la branche ainee de la maison d’Autriche, avait imprime apres la mort de Charles Quint plus de terreur que la nation Germanique. Les Rois d’Espagne etaient incomparablement plus absolus et plus riches.” — Voltaire , Slide de Louis XIV. 1—3 10 LIFE AND TIMES was to England, — a suffering, degraded, and barbarized province. Under Philip the Eourth and bis sordid and oppressive viceroys, the natural fertility and internal riches of Naples were insufficient to supply the rapine and cupidity of a government upheld by violence and conducted by fraud. Its cities were depopulated to feed the armies of its remote tyrants, and their inhabitants marched to far distant coun- tries to fight in battles wholly unconnected with the national interests. Its territory was drained of its wealth, and the industry of its people was alienated, to replenish the trea- sury of the mother-country. Still, however, tyranny could not cloud the Neapolitan sun, nor deform the fair face of nature. “ Man was the only growth that withered there and Naples, with its classical sites, was not less romantically lovely and wildly picturesque, than it now appears to the modern traveller’s gaze, when, in the midst of its moral and political degradation, it still looks like “ a part of heaven dropped on earth.” The sweeping semicircle which the most fantastic and singular city of Naples marks on the shore of its un- rivalled bay, from the Capo di Pausilippo to the Torrione del Carmine, is dominated by a lofty chain of undulating hills, which take their distinctive appellations from some local peculiarity, or classical tradition. The high and in- sulated rock of St. Elmo, which overtops the whole, is crowned by that terrible fortress to which it gives its name, — a fearful and impregnable citadel, that, since the first moment when it was raised by an Austrian conqueror,* to the present day, when it is garrisoned by a Bourbon with Austrian troops, has poured down the thunder of its artillery to support the violence, or proclaim the triumphs, * Charles the Fifth. The natives of free states who have not visited the Continent, cannot judge of the horrors of these strong holds of unlimite despotism. It is supposed that the subterranean passages of St. Elmo, 44 stained with many a midnight murder,” communicate with the Castello Nuovo in the city beneath, and that, like the terrible labyrinths of the cata- combs which open into them, their mysterious intricacies escape the research of all, save those who have a fearful interest in preserving the clue to these living tombs; where, from age to age, the bravest and the best have perished in carcere duro (as it is called in the jargon of modern Italian tribunals), better known as the terrific au secret of the French police. OF SALYATOE EOS A. 11 of foreign interference over the rights and liberties of a long-suffering and oft-resisting people. Swelling from the base of the savage St. Elmo, smile the lovely heights of San Martino, where, through chesnut woods and vineyards, gleam the golden spires of the mon- astic palace of the Monks of the Certosa.* A defile cut through the rocks of the Monte Donzelle, and shaded by the dark pines which spring from their crevices, forms an umbrageous pathway from the superb convent to the Borgo di Benella, the little capital of a neighbouring hill, which, for the peculiar beauty of its position and the views it com- mands, is still called “the pleasant village.” At night, the fires of Vesuvius almost bronze the humble edifices of Be- nella ; and the morning sun, as it rises, discovers from various points the hills of Vomiro and Pausilippo, the shores of Puzzuolo and of Bake, the islets of Nisiti, Capri, and Procida, till the view fades into the extreme verge of the horizon, where the waters of the Mediterranean seem to mingle with those clear skies, whose tint and lustre they reflect. In this true “nido paterno” of genius there dwelt, in the year 1615, an humble and industrious artist called Vito Antonio Bosa, — a name even then not unknown to the arts, though as yet more known than prosperous. Its ac- tual possessor, the worthy Messire Antonio, had up to this time struggled, with his good wife Griulia Grrecca and two daughters still in childhood, to maintain the ancient re- spectability of his family. Antonio was an architect and land-surveyor of some note, but of little gains ; and if over the old architectural portico of the Casacciaf of Benella might be read — “ Vito Antonio Rosa, Agremensore ed Arehitetto,” £ the intimation was given in vain ! Pew passed through * The pavilions of the Caliphs of Bagdad were not so deliciously placed, nor so sumptuously raised, as this retreat of the self-denying brotherhood of the Certosa. It was founded in the fourteenth century by Charles, son of Robert of Arragon, King of Naples. 1 Every Italian village has its Casaccia (literally, the great but ugly house), the dilapidated palace or villa of some former lord of the district, which in process of time falls to the lot of decayed gentility, or of struggling indigence. Nothing can be more desolate than the Casaccia. X “ Mediocre Arehitetto,” says Passeri. 12 LIEE AND TIMES the decayed Borgo of Renella, and still fewer, in times so fearful, were able to profit by the talents and profession which the inscription advertised. The family of Rosa, in- considerable as it was, partook of the pressure of the times ; and the pretty Borgo, like its adjacent scenery, (no longer the haunt of Consular voluptuaries, — neither frequented by the great nor visited by the curious,) stood lonely and beautiful, — unencumbered by those fantastic belvideras and grotesque pavilions, which in modern times rather deform than beautify a site, for which Nature has done all, and Art can do nothing. The cells of the Certosa, indeed, had their usual com- plement of lazy monks and lay brothers. The fortress of St. Elmo then, as now, manned by Austrian troops, glit- tered with foreign pikes. The cross rose on every acclivity, and the sword guarded every pass ; but the villages of Be- nella, San Martino, of the Yomiro, and of Pausilippo, were thinned of their inhabitants to recruit foreign armies ; and this earthly paradise was dreary as the desert, and silent as the tomb. The Neapolitan barons, those restless but brave feudato- ries, whose resistance to their native despots preserved something of the ancient republican spirit of their Greek predecessors, now fled from the capital. They left its beau- tiful environs to Spanish viceroys, and to their official un- derlings ; and sullenly shut themselves up in their domestic fortresses of the Abruzzi or of Calabria. “ La Civilta,” a class then including the whole of the middle and profes- sional ranks of society of Naples, was struggling for a bare existence in the towns and cities. Beggared by taxation, levied at the will of their despots, and collected with every aggravation of violence, its members lived under the perpe- tual surveillance of foreign troops and domestic sbirri , whose suspicions their brooding discontents were well cal- culated to nourish. The people — the debased, degraded people — had reached that maximum of suffering beyond which human endurance cannot go. They were famishing in the midst of plenty, and, in regions the most genial and salubrious, were dying of diseases, the fearful attendants on want. Commerce was at a stand, agriculture was neglected, and the arts, under OF SALVATOR ROSA. 13 the perpetual dictatorship of a Spanish court painter, had no favour but for the followers of Lo Spagnuoletto .* In such times of general distress and oppression, when few had the means or the spirit to build, and still fewer had lands to measure or property to transfer, it is little wonder- ful that the humble architect and land-surveyor of Penella “was steeped to the very lip in poverty,” from which nei- ther talent nor industry could relieve him. Still, however, with few wants and a penurious economy, he had contrived to struggle on with his wife and daughters, in a sort of decent insolvency, when the birth of a son, in the latter end of the year 1615, came to raise the spirits of the family, as an auspicious event. The birth of a male child, among the Neapolitans, to whom female children are always a charge , was then, as now, considered a special favour con- ferred by the tutelar saint of the family. Madonna Giulia had scarcely gotten over her ricevimento f (a ceremony in which all the Neapolitan women, not of the lowest rank, indulge,) than she began to consult with the good Messire Antonio on the destiny of their infant child. He, “ good easy man,” had but one proposition to make: it was, that his son should not be an artist, and, above all, that he should not be a painter; to which Madonna Giulia the more readily agreed, not only because she was herself, like her husband, come of a family of indigent artists, J but because, at the very moment of this parental discussion, her brother, Paolo Grecco, was nearly starving in the midst of his pots and palettes in a little workshop in the Strada Seggio del Nido. Paolo Grecco was, in truth, but “pittore assai mediocre,” as one of the family chroniclers affirms; and he was chiefly employed (when he had employment), like others in his neighbourhood of the Strada Seggio, hi painting family saints and padrona virgins, as hespoJce.§ Prom con- * Giuseppe Ribera, called Lo Spagnuoletto , was a native of Spain, but esteemed one of the greatest masters of the Neapolitan school. With respect to the arts in Naples, all influence and patronage centred in his person ; and his seguaci, or followers, became a powerful faction. *t* In Naples, the day after an accouchement, an assembly is held in the bedroom of the convalescent, to which all the gossips of the neighbourhood resort. It is called “a reception.” X “ E non ostante che ben potesse dirse che gli studii del disegno oramal se fossero fatti proprii di tutto quel parentado (perche tanto l’avo e ’1 geni- tore quanto lo zio materno, con altri suoi antenati erano stati pittori) recusava egli di applicarvi il figliuolo.” — Buldinucci. § Notizie appartenenti alia vita di Salvator Rosa. 14 LIFE AND TIMES current testimony it appears that Madonna Giulia was a devotee of the true Neapolitan cast — full of sanguine and familiar superstition. She saw the hierarchy of heaven, “not as through a smoked glass, hut face to face,” could tell the colour of the Virgin’s eyes, the number of St. Peter’s keys, and had a gossiping acquaintance with every saint in the calendar. She wore her spindle in one side of her girdle, and her crucifix in the other, and spun and prayed with equal unction and facility ; but, above all, she took no step, either with reference to this life or the next, without a special conference with her confessor and the Ma- donna. It was, perhaps, under the particular inspiration of both, that she formed the idea, with the consent of the complying Vito Antonio, of devoting their son — their only son — to the Church ; or, in the words of the family historian, “alia Lettura;” for none then approached the Muses but in the livery of religion. The Italian poets of that age were at least Abbati ; and the councils of the Della Crusca rarely admitted genius that came not duly labelled with the 'petit collet. The sacred calling of the future Peverendissimo began in the parish church of Penella, where, to secure his salvation by the shortest road to Paradise, he received at the bap- tismal font that name which was supposed to consecrate its owner to the special protection of Heaven, — the name of Sax/vatoee. “ Por never,” says an Italian divine, “has it been known that God has permitted the devil to torture in hell a man who bore this name.”'* Confirmed by the force of their own volition that their son should be a divine, and should not be a painter, the good Antonio and Giulia Posa saw visions of mitres and pontifical crowns floating round the cradle of the little Salvator, and were convinced that they had taken the best means of se- curing his present and future happiness by devoting him to the Church, — at all times the true temple of fortune in Italy, and at that particular epoch the only safe asylum for one who, by Divine indignation, was born a Neapolitan. It was thus the father of M. Angelo intended him for a woollen- weaver ; that the father of Coreggio had destined him for a wood-cutter ; that Guido was educated for a musician ; Andrea Sartore for a tailor ; Guercino for & * (i Che il Signore Iddio avesse permesso al demonio di strapazzare nell’ inferno uomo che portasse tal nome .” — 11 Padre Baldovino. OF SALVATOR ROSA. 15 stone-mason ; Claude Lorraine for a baker ; and Moliere for a marchand frippier* The course of genius, like that of “ true love, seldom does run smooth ; ” but the parental folly which stupidly interferes with nature’s vocation is no less sure to expiate its presumption by the disappointment of all its schemes. One curious fact may be added to this general observation, that persons of ge- nius are generally the offspring of ordinary parents, and the sires of ordinary children. Talent is no heir-loom ; and Nature, in selecting one of a race as the subject of high endowments, seems to sum up all her forces on a point, and then to recall her honours, as kings do theirs ; receiving back from the hands of the son the brilliant dis- tinctions which their favour had conferred on the father.f The first incident which occurred in the life of Salvator Bosa proved the vanity of all parental calculation. Scarcely had he thrown off* the bondage of the “bambino fasciato,”j; and extricated his little limbs from the swathings and bands by which, like other helpless Neapolitan children, he was occasionally hung up behind the door of the old Casaccia, while his pious mother offered her devotions at the golden shrines of the Certosa, than he became the very sprite of the Borgo Benella ; and by his vivacity and gesticulations alia sua moda Napolitana lost that holy and protecting ap- pellation, which was to be his pass to futurity, in the vul- garized diminutive of Salvatoriello. To counteract, however, a nickname of such sorry omen, Antonio and his wife applied themselves with redoubled * “ Tous ceux qui se sont fait un nom dans les beaux arts, les ont cul- tiv£s malgre leurs parens, et la nature a ete en eux plus forte que Teduca- tion.” — Voltaire. If genius, as physiologists suppose, consists in a peculiar development of organs, it may be that Nature, who never rests in her progress, having attained perfection, hurries on to an opposite extreme ; and thus, thougli both parents should possess the intellectual temperament, the child would only be the more exposed to the vice of excess. In general, however, the offspring is not a pure reflexion of its parents ; but exhibits traces of the peculiarities of remoter relations, and belongs to its race. .j: These horrible swaddling clothes are still preserved in Italy, and are so protected by Church and State, that the parish priests have been known to reprove mothers who are so jacobinical as to adopt the English manner of dressing infants. They are said to be equally indignant at the introduction of vaccination — in their eyes a blasphemy, if not absolutely sedition. 16 LIFE AKD TIMES diligence to their original scheme of education, and sought to give impressions beyond the reach of time, accident, or even nicknames, to efface. They had their son taught to read out of the legends of Santa Caterina di Sienna, made him learn his prayers in Latin, from the “ Salve” to the “Begina coelorum,” before he knew any language save his own Neapolitan patois ; and, as a penance task upon “ a truant disposition” too frequently indulged through life, they even gave him some of the two hundred and thirty questions of Albert le Grand to expound, and to keep him quiet.* But while the worthy heads of the Casa Bosa were thus taking “ the broad way and the sure” to worldly prosperity, conformably with every step of the “ social order” of their day, their luckless son was neither instructed nor amused in the progress of his orthodox education. The famous Jean Thauliere (Saint and Doctor) was not more impene- trably dull over his golden alphabet than the young Salva- toriello over the two hundred and thirty questions of Albert le Grand, to not one of which, either by any intui- tive faculty of divination, or by any process of ratiocination, could he reply. But if he learned nothing, it appears very literally to have been because the subjects presented to his observation were not in accordance with the development of his ideas, or with the sympathies of his age ; for, while unmeaning words were passing through his unretentive memory, things were impressing themselves on his ardent mind. Even in infancy, Nature — the idol of his matured worship — that Nature which he was born to illustrate in all her splendid aspects, — was speaking to his acute senses, and communicating her imagery in endless associations to * These questions, which at one time occupied society as being impor- tant to salvation, are sufficiently curious ; which the following specimens will 6how : “ Sous quelle forme l’ange lui (a Marie) apparut-il ; forme serpentine ou colombine ? “A quel age? dans quel habit? “ Est-ce avec un habit blanc et propre ? ou avec un habit noir et cras- seux ? “ Si Marie a eu une couleur et un teint qui lui convinrent ? Si sa peau a 6te noire ? Quelle a ete la couleur de ses cheveux ? Si ils ont du etre roux ou noirs ? “ Quels ont ete ses yeux ? S’ils ont ete noirs ou bruns ?” &c. — Histoire des Ordres Monastiquss. OE SALVATOR ROSA, 17 his reproductive fancy. Her great volume was spread before him at “ all times, all seasons, and their changes and while he gave up his young existence to its study and observation, the legends of saints and the history of mira- cles lay neglected. He appears to have possessed the true temperament of genius, which operated alike in infancy and in age. His fine, subtile, and nervous organization ren- dered even his childhood curious and inquiring, rapid in the perception of external objects, and prompt in reproducing them by efforts of imitation. The elements of genius were all there ; the spirit of passion was yet to give them their definite tendency. The luminous intellect of the future author of the Satires and of the Catiline conspiracy, — the quick and sensitive imagination which, shedding its rays upon the sterile science of ancient counterpoint, was des- tined to give development to the cantata, and lay the foun- dations of the rich melodies of Paesiello and of Cimarosa, was already giving out lights through the dim dawn of infancy: and if, to the dull apprehensions of the undis- cerning, they seemed “ lights which led astray,” they were not the less “lights from Heaven.”* Salvator is, in fact, described, even at this early age,f as evincing a disposition towards all the arts, “lisping in numbers,” waking the echoes of his native hills with every instrument his infant hand could procure, and producing scraps of antique architecture and of picturesque scenery upon cards and paper, which spoke, “ trumpet-tongued,” his instinctive and inevitable vocation. To Antonio, how- ever, and to Griulia this was “idless all;” and the wander- ings of the- young genius served only to give fresh activity to their efforts to impose upon him the destiny which their original plans had chalked out for him ; that he should not be a painter, and that he should be “ a sage grave man,” a pillar of the church, and the Coryphaeus of every accademia that dulness and pedantry ever presided over. The cord of paternal authority, thus drawn to its extreme * “ Aveva la natura del piccolo fanciullo gia incomminciata a scoprire i primi lampi di quell’ indole spiritosa di che aveva lo dotato con larga mano.” — Baldinucci , Vita de Salvator Rosa. ■f Pascoli says, “ that the mind of Salvator Rosa, even in childhood, was an exhaustless mine of ingenious conceptions (miniera inesausta di pelle- grini ingegni), and that he was horn no less a poet than a painter.”— “ Nuto non meno poeta che pdtore.' , ' > 18 LIFE AND TIMES tension, was naturally snapped. The truant Salvatoriello fled from the restraints of an uncongenial home, from Albert le Grand and Santa Caterina di Sienna, and took shelter among those sites and scenes whose imagery became a part of his own intellectual existence, and were received as im- pressions long before they were studied as subjects. Some- times he was discovered by the Padre Cercatore of the convent of Penella among the rocks and caverns of Baiae, the ruined temples of gods, or the haunts of Sibyls. Some- times he was found by a gossip of Madonna Giulia, in her pilgrimage to a moesta , sleeping among the wastes of the Solfatara, beneath the scorched branches of a blasted tree, his head pillowed by lava, and his dream most probably the vision of an infant poet’s slumbers. Por even then he was “ the youngest he That sat in shadow of Apollo’s tree,” seeing Nature with a poet’s eye, and sketching her beauties with a painter’s hand.* Chided as a truant, and punished as an idler, he was fre- quently shut up in the old Casaccia, and destined to expiate his faults by conning his rubric, or learning, under the guidance of his devout mother, the mystery and miracles of the rosary, as related in the legends of the “ Chiesa di San Dominico Maggiore” of Naples, where the crucifix may still he seen which addressed St. Thomas Aquinas in the well-known words, “ Bene scripsisti de me, ThomoB The resources of genius, however, are like those of the power from whence they spring, exhaustless ! Deprived of liberty, he made propitious offerings to that Nature he was forbidden to worship, within the “ darksome rounds” of his domestic prison ; and, by the simple instrumentality of some burned sticks, he covered the walls of the old house with the scenery of his favourite haunts. Vesuvius blazed over the faded frescoes of the dilapidated guarda-roba ; and the old loggia , once the temple of aristocratic recreation, when the Casaccia was the palace of some Neapolitan prince, was * Rosa drew his first inspirations from the magnificent scenery of Pausilippo and Vesuvius; Hogarth found his in a pot-house at Highgate, where a drunken quarrel and a broken nose first “ woke the god within him.” Both, however, reached the sublime in their respective vocations,— Hogarth in the grotesque, and Salvator in the majestic. OF SALVATOR ROSA. 19 converted into a panorama, representing the enchanting views it commanded of the hay with its coasts, woods, and mountains.* “Santo sacramento!” exclaimed Madonna Giulia with upraised hands and eyes, as she entered the loggia to take her “ fresca,” or evening’s draught of fresh air. “ Cosa stupenda!” re-echoed the simple signorine , his sisters, in stupid wonder at their brother’s talent and temerity ; and the luckless Salvatoriello, for the studies he pursued and the studies he neglected, was doomed to do penance by attendance on matins, mass, and vespers in the great church of the Certosa, with pious punctuality during the w r hole of the ensuing Lent. It happened that he one day brought with him by mis- take his bundle of burned sticks, instead of his mother’s brazen-clasped missal ; and in passing along the magnificent cloisters, sacred alike to religion and the arts, he applied them between the interstices of its Doric columns to the only unoccupied space on the pictured walls, which gold and ultramarine had not yet covered over. What was the subject which occupied on this occasion his rude pencil, history has not detailed, but he was bring- ing to his work all the ardour which in another age went to his “ Saul ” or “ Democritus,” when unfortunately the prior, issuing with his train from the choir, caught the hap- less painter in the very act of scrawling on those sacred walls, which it required all the influence of Spagnuoletto to get leave to ornament, — walls, whose very angles An- nibal Caracci would have been proud to fill, and for whose decoration the great Lanfranco, and greater Dominichino, were actually contending with deadly rivalry and fatal mulation. The sacrilegious temerity of the boy-artist called for in- stant and exemplary punishment. Unluckily, too, for the little offender, this happened either in Advent or Lent, the season in which the rules of the rigid Chartreux oblige the prior and procuratore to flagellate all the frati, or lay * “ AH’ disegno pero sentiva si tirato per modo cbe non era muraglia di quella casa, o di altre, ove egli avesse potato mettre la mano, che con certi piccoli carboncelli , non ricopresse, con sue invenzioni di piccole figure e paesetti, condotti pero fino a quel segno, che fare poteasi da esso, senza maestro ed in assai tenera eta.'” — Baldinucci. 20 LIFE AND TIMES brothers, of the convent.* They were, therefore, ready armed for their wonted pious discipline when the miserable Salvatoriello fell in their way. Whether he was honoured by the consecrated hand of the prior, or writhed under the scourge of the procurcitore , does not appear ; but that he was chastised with a holy severity, more than proportioned to his crime, is attested by one of the most scrupulous of his biographers, who, though he dwells lightly on the fact, as he does on others of more importance, confesses that from the monk’s flagellation, “ assai percosse ne riporto,” he “ suffered severely. ”f A punishment so disproportioned, a persecution so into- lerable, did their usual work; genius took its decided bent ; and the burned sticks of Salvatoriello sketched the future destiny of Salvator Rosa in lines never to be effaced. The complaints forwarded to the Casa Rosa from the Certosa, and the indignant but impotent rage of the impetuous boy, whose temperament was even then, what he himself after- wards so eloquently described it, “ all bile, all spirit, all fire,”J induced his parents to place him beyond the reach of farther temptation, by obtaining his admission into some of the holy congregations, or monastic seminaries, then abounding in Naples. The whole influence and interest of the Rosa family was put into requisition to effect a consum- mation so desirable ; and the exertions of the parents at last procured for the son the countenance and protection of the reverend fathers of the Collegio della Congregazione Somasca.§ When the boy Rosa was presented to the rector of the college, that reverend personage probably saw something * Voltaire alludes to this in his admirable poem, “ Sur l’Egalite des Con- ditions. “ D’un vil froc obscurement convert, Recevoir a genoux apres laude et matine De son prieur cloitre vingt coups de discipline.” This flagellation, says the French translation of the rules of the order, u se fait apres matines. Les freres de la maison basse sont fouettes par le piocureur ; ceux de la maison haute par le prieur.” + Baldinucci. J Tutto bile, tutto spirito, tutto fuoco . — Lett era ‘Ida di S. Rosa aV Sign. Dottore Giov. Ricciardi. § “ Da giovinetto il padre per via di alcuni favori il fece intrare nel collegio della congregazione Somasca,” & c . — Passe ri . OF SALYATOR ROSA. 21 in the brilliant countenance and awakened intelligence of the young candidate that predisposed him in his favour. Such was the stuff that made statesmen of ecclesiastics, and such were the pupils which the Jesuits selected from their classes to raise the influence of their order and extend its powers : and all priests are, in ambition, J esuits, what- ever title they take or sect they profess. The name of Rosa, therefore, was without hesitation entered on the list . of youthful aspirants who canvassed the protection of thoso rich, learned, and rigid disciplinarians, the Padri Somaschi of Naples.* The first migration from home is the first severe trial of human life. The Italians, who are accused of having few domestic virtues, are full of domestic affections. The home of Salvator was not the most congenial, nor the most com- fortable ; and the ill humour of parental disappointment tended to increase in the truant youth his wandering pro- pensities : still, however, his feelings were fondly and con- stantly brought back to the haunts of his infancy, as his frequent returns to N aples in after-life sufficiently prove. The College of the Congregazione Somasca occupied one of the streets of the old part of Naples. The distance from Renella was short ; yet the monastic seclusion to which he was condemned, during the blithest years of his life, ren- dered his separation from his family an exile. He measured it as young hearts are wont to do, not by space and dis- tance, but by time and privation. The adieus given and received on quitting home were attended by all those ex- pressions of regret which belong to the explosion of Neapo- litan feelings ; for in Naples none weep silently, and joy and grief are alike vehement and noisy in their exhibition. In an age and country so marked in all their forms and modes by the picturesque, this departure for the college must have been a scene to paint, rather than to describe. The mind’s eye glancing back to its graphic details, beholds the ardent boy with his singular but beautiful countenance, and light and flexile figure (both models in a maturer age), issuing forth from the old portal of the Casaccia to attend his father to Naples. He is habited in the fantastic cos- * The Padri Somaschi belong to an order which takes its name from a town of the Bergomasco, the seat of their first foundation, by “ II santo e beato Girolamo Miani .” 22 LIFE AKD TIMES tume of tlie Neapolitan youth, of that day, a doublet and hose, and short mantillo, with a little velvet cap, worn perhaps, even then, with an air gaillard, and a due attention to those black tresses so conspicuous in all his numerous portraits for their beauty and luxuriance. Yito Antonio, on the contrary, at once to show his loyalty and decayed gentility, affects the fashion of the reigning court mode. Eor then, as now, all that looked Italian was deemed sus- picious ; and the old Casaccia di cuojo of Yito, in spite of the rudeness of its material, was doubtless made “ Spanish wise” with “ Snip and nip, and cut and slish, and slash ! ” The father and son, as they brush through the vine-tendrils that festoon the portico, are followed beyond its sill by Madonna Griulia and the weeping sisters. The cornicello is bestowed to avert an evil eye ; and then another, and a last Addio , carino , is given, and the father and son descend the hill of Eenella, towards the Strada Infrascata ; — the one, with a bounding step, all emotion ; — the other, with a measured pace, all wisdom, pouring on the unattending ear of his pre-occupied companion such “ wise saws and modern instances” as might be deemed serviceable to him who for the first time leaves that u Home, -where small experience grows.” In their descent, what a scene developed itself to eyes that saw beauty in nature under all its aspects ! “ Hill and dale. Forest, and field, and flood, temples, and tow’rs,” too soon to be exchanged for the weary round of cloistered walls ! The castellated chimneys of the old Casaccia might still be seen through the dark pines. The figure of Ma- donna Griulia might still be distinguished by the snow-white head-dress, which, like the bodkins that tressed her daugh- ters’ locks, sparkled in the sunshine. As she watches the descent of her son, she offers prayers to the Yirgin that he might become, for sanctity and learning, “ 11 miracole del suo secolo ” (the wonder of his age). Another turn, and the scene shifts. The hum of Naples, the most noisy city in Europe, ascends like the murmuring of Yesuvius on the eve of an explosion. To precipitous declivities, covered OP SALVATOR ROSA. 23 with pines and chesnut woods, succeed slopes festooned with trailing vines, throwing their tendrils round every object that could catch or sustain them. Here they ob- scure, and there they reveal, the deep dark chasm, “ shagged with horrid thorn,” and riven in the rocky soil by some vol- canic convulsion ; while fanciful edifices of many terraces, fragments of antique ruins, morsels of friezes and of columns, hillocks of tufo, brown and bare, rise among hanging gardens and groves ; and chapels, belfries, shrines, and altars, gleam on every side till the noble Strada Toledo is reached, and its palaces exclude the magic scene, sup- planting it by one scarcely less picturesque. Such was the scenery of the Vomiro in the beginning of the seventeenth century : such it is now. From this mag- nificent and spacious quarter of the city of Naples, the two Itosas proceeded to the dark and gloomy part of the Citta Vecchia. The portals of the Congregazione Somasca were but too soon reached ; the bell is rung, and is answered by a lay brother ; — a parental benediction is given, as it is received, with tearful eyes, and the gates of the monastic prison are gratingly closed upon one of the freest spirits that ever submitted to the moral degradation and physical restraint inflicted, in all such seminaries, upon youth and nature. The first step of a young student’s probation in Italy was in that age, as in the present, marked by his assump- tion of the dress of the congregation into which he was received, — the monkish habit, whose lengthy folds indi- cate the effeminate feebleness and intellectual subjection to which the youthful wearer is predestined. Salvator parted with his “customary suit,” like the shepherd prince of a fairy tale, but “ for the nonce,” being resolved to resume it on the expiration of his studies ; for, from his earliest youth, his aversion to the ecclesiastical condition was fixed and immoveable, and the schemes of parental ambition were as unavailing as they were irrational and short-sighted. The great secret of genius is its power of concentration, — its faculty of bringing every energy to bear upon a chosen subject ; and the most infallible symptom of mediocrity is its tendency to fritter away resources in a variety of pursuits. The zeal which leads to martyrdom is but a type of that ardour of self-devotion which aspires to pre-eminence ; less 24 LIFE AND TIMES than that never led to immortality in any line. The courses of the Collegio Somasco, which, under the name of “ le lettere humane,” are the first in the series of instruction, seem to have occupied the whole force of Salvator’s talent and attention ; classical literature was in deep coincidence with all the instinctive tastes of his ardent temperament : his diligence was intense, and his progress rapid.* — The scenic nature which had hitherto usurped his undivided homage, was now superseded by that intellectual world which burst upon his developed faculties, creating new as- sociations, and engendering more elevated ideas than his wanderings round Pausilippo and Baise had yet awakened, f If, in his monastic durance, he sometimes sighed to visit the haunts of his childhood, it was most probably not with- out the purpose of beholding them by the light of memory and imagination, as the sites once peopled by all that warms the painter’s vision or the poet’s dream. Then it was that he knew, in the lakes of his childhood, the Avernus and the Acheron of Homer ; and saw, in the stunted underwoods which had sheltered his truant head from parental search, the groves where Virgil sent iEneas to seek his golden branch. The grotto which had many a time screened his fervid brow from the noontide ardour of a Neapolitan sun, he now might desire to behold as the vaults which had once re-echoed to the oracles of the Cumean Sibyl; and the ruins so unconsciously sketched with his burned sticks, 6i Le colonne spezzate ed i rotti marmi,” (S. Rosa.) might now promise him additional delight, as the remnants of those voluptuous villas where Lucullus held his orgies with Horace, or as the spot where Cicero, amidst Palernian vineyards, composed his academic questions. It was at this tranquil, studious, and ideal epoch of life, — when the passions are still in abeyance, wdien fancy, bright and unsullied, throws its brilliant halo on every object, and impressions of human grandeur and human virtue are received with more graciousness than accuracy, — that Sal- * “ Col progresso del tempo trascorse tutto lo studio della grammatica, si avanzo alia rhetorica, e giunse ai principj della logica ove fermossi — Salvator Rosa, pittore e poeta. f “ Studio da giovinetto 1’ umanita e la rhetorica nel Collegio Somasco,” &c. &c. — Pascoli , Vila di Salv. Rosa. OE SALVATOE EOSA. 25 vator Rosa is supposed to have laid in that vast stock of clas- sical erudition, and to have acquired that taste for the works of the ancients, which, at a remoter period, formed the in- spiration of his works as poet and as painter. It was then he committed to his capacious memory that vast store of antique lore, which diffused an elegant and classical cha- racter over his greater pictures and graver poems, and which so curiously and so strongly contrast these productions with those lighter and more fantastic productions of his pen and his pencil, which now place him at the head of the “ Ro- mantic” school of Italy, a worthy associate with Shaks- peare and with Byron.* When, however, he had reached the very acmd of his classical enthusiasm, when men and manners, and events and deeds, all belonging to the most stirring times and brilliant eras of society, were occupying his thoughts and giving an heroical elevation to his principles, the moment arrived which was to carry him from studies thus congenial and bewitching. The rigid rules of college formalities cut him short in that golden career, from which “ fate and metaphy- sical aid” were invoked to withdraw him. He was now obliged to pass, by a violent transition, from the harmonizing humanities, to a barbarous and so- phistical philosophy. Quibbles and quiddities replaced the sublimity of Homer and the wit of Horace ; Virgil retreated before J ohannes Scotus ; and Sallust and Cicero, having imprinted the graphic imagery of the “Catiline conspiracy” on a mind destined to reproduce it with new features of terror and danger, were banished to make way for the syl- logisms of Chrysostom Javello, and the eternal commenta- ries of Dominick Soto on the text of the eternal Aristotle. Barbara and Baralipton were now thundered upon ears made up to the melody of Ovid and Sannazzaro ; and the ticklish doubts of Averroes were offered to a mind whose own were already of a much more deep and perilous cha- racter. The transition from poetry to logic, from all that brightens the imagination to all that could cloud the intel- lect, was too violent to be effectual. It was throwing a cart-harness on the back of a war-horse while the trumpet sounded a charge. The ardent spirit and strong volition * The opposite extremes of his versatility will be found in his 44 Regulus,” and his 44 Banditti,” his 44 Babilonia,” and his 44 Incantation. ” 2 26 LIFE AND TIMES of the student resisted the tyranny of this absurd domina- tion over mind and talent. “ Giunse ai principj della logica ove fermossi.” “ Arrived at the first principles of logic, he stopped short” says one of his laconic biographers ; and it appears that neither punishment nor reward could induce him to encumber his memory with the futilities which then served, with other causes, to retrograde illumination and obstruct the genuine sources of useful knowledge. A more unlucky moment for an obstinate resistance to this long-venerated and long-established system could scarcely be chosen by the most daring innovator ; for it was offered at that precise time when Italy (once the cradle* of philosophy, as of all the sciences and all the arts) was the last asylum of that barbarous dialectic, which upheld and decorated all the theological and (in them in- cluded) all the political sophisms which enslaved mankind. The creeds of Aristotle and of St. Athanasius were alike * To Italy philosophy is indebted for Fra Tommaso of Naples, the Swift of his day (the thirteenth century), a high churchman in religion, but in politics a liberal; whose writings are said to have supplied questions which have filled the pages of divines even of the Reformed Church: — for Pietro Pomponazzo, the Locke of the fourteenth century, whose work on the im- mortality of the soul drew down upon the book and its author the persecution of the Church : — and for Father Anselmo, a Piedmontese of the same epoch, in whose philosophy may be found the whole system of Kant, 1 that high- priest of metaphysical subtilty, whose unintelligible language has betrayed many of his ivould-be disciples, male and female, into an affected imitation, which has covered them with a ‘‘ ridicule ineffa fable.” — See Buhl's Histoire de la Philos. Moderne. 1 u Entendez-vous quelque chose de Kant” said Napoleon one day to a Ge- nevese metaphysician. — “ Non , Sire,” was the reply. — “ J'en suis enchante ,” returned the Emperor; moi non plus.” The false refinements of this philosophy could never withstand the precision and clearness of the French language ; and it accordingly made no ground in France. The Institute, in ' speaking of the system of Kant, and of those which have sprung from it among his disciples and successors, observes, — “ Pour nous, nous ne pouvons y voir que le renversement de toutes les methodes d’une saine philosophic, et la source des plus dangereux ecarts 11s peuvent seduire, dans les uni- versites, quelques tetes ardentes et ambitieuses, entrainees par l’espoir d'ob- tenir a l’aide d’une espece de divination les lumieres qui ne peuvent etre que le fruit de l'etude, ou trop sensibles au frivole orgueil d’engendrer la sci- ence avec les seules combinaisons de leur esprit : mais les hommes sages et £claires de l’Allemagne se sont reunis pour censurer de tels egaremens et en deplorer les abus.” — Rapport de Plnstitut presente a. sa Majesle V Empereur e Roi. OE SALVATOR ROSA. 27 in exclusive possession of every orthodox mind, as they had been for many centuries ; and Christian monks, and monkish laics reared in their seminaries, were the zealous disciples of the heathen philosopher. However much par- ticular sects might differ upon their knotty futilities, they were all, Scotists and Thomists, in accordance to coerce the human understanding, to blend scholastic metaphysics with church mysteries, and to defend the unintelligible dogmas of the one by the incomprehensible quibbles of the other. It is lamentable to reflect through how many ages this venerated farrago of subtilties occupied all the powers of intellect : but Church and State stood sentinels at the out- posts of the system, to guard its sophisms and protect its absurdities : and persecution or death — the dungeon, the galley, or the pile — awaited the daring innovator who doubted a miracle by the Madonna, or denied a proposition of the Stagyrite. The Reformation, however, aimed a blow at this anti- quated tyranny, from which St. Peter and his coadjutor Aristotle never recovered. When such powerful assailants as Erasmus and Melancthon, Luther and Laurentius Valla, took the field, it was time once more to unfurl the thread- bare banners of St. Thomas, and to erect the more ancient standard of Bonaventure. In France, in Spain, and the Low Countries, the war of the dialecticians was literally a war of death; and logicians fought with other weapons than syllogisms and hypotheses, until the “holy text of pike and gun” decided controversies which could not be settled by less infallible authority. In the beginning of the seventeenth century the contest was carried on with such ferocity between the old and the new scholastics, that the slightest heresy in philosophy was a penal offence in the colleges of Italy ; yet it was at this precise period, that a youth (received, as it appears, upon the charity of the institution) neglected the study or disputed the truth of those doctrines, by which all such institutions were then striving to protract their existence, and preserve their in- fluence. Under what circumstances Salvator divorced himself from these fatiguing and disgusting studies does not ap- pear. The partiality of his biographers, or their igno- rance of this part of his life, passes lightly over the event. 28 LIFE AND TIMES Thus much is evident, that he was sent from the Collegio Somasco before his studies were completed : hut, though most probably expelled for dulness or for contumacy, all the chroniclers who have noticed this incident in the life of the painter-poet, ascribe his failure in philosophy, after his brilliant successes in the Lettere JJmane , to a new and ardent passion for a study of a very different nature ; and state that, instead of the dialectic exercises, he applied him- self to the study of music, and to play upon a variety of instruments.* The luckless boy, for he was still a boy, issued forth from his (by no means) alma mater , with a heart much lighter probably than he entered it ; and, in spite of his disgrace, with a mind stored with the treasures of antiquity. t He was returning, indeed, to an indigent home, and to encounter the peevish reproaches of parents whose views he was com- pelled to thwart, but whose name he was destined to im- mortalise. He had left, however, philosophy behind him, and had bid “along and a careless adieu” to syllogisms and their modes. His head was full of the sweet melodies of Leonardo Primavera, and the elegant madrigals of Luzzaschi. His heart was opening to feelings which, while they last, deify their possessor. The “sito incantato” of his native paradise was open once more to his wanderings, under more consecrated impressions than those with which he had hitherto visited them. He had all the temperament and all the precocity of an Italian ; and, though but sixteen, the brilliant elements of the poet, painter, and musician were vaguely and deliciously operating within him. Life was a brilliant illusion ; and even the positive ills of domestic misery could scarcely dispel the benign dream, or cloud its radiance. With such feelings and in such dispositions, the expelled student of the Padri Somaschi ascended the hill of Penella, and presented himself at the portico of the old * “ Comecche 1’ esercitazioni diallettiche non punto andavangli a genio, s’ attenne in quella vece ad imperare la musica ed il suono ce varj istromenti.” Vita, fyc. + Almost at the same time Milton, if not expelled, at least incurred rusti- cation, &c. at Cambridge, for his supposed hostility to reigning dogmas ; and his complaints while at the university, that he was weary of enduring “ the threats of a rigorous master, and something else which a temper like his could not undergo,' recall the impetuous character and temperament of Sal- vator Rosa. OF SALYATOR ROSA. 29 Casaccia, in all tlie bloom of adolescence, and probably with all the timidity of one under the ban of parental displeasure — the prodigal son of the famiglia Rosa ! CHAPTEB III. Music, the true language of passion, which speaks so power- fully, and yet so mysteriously, to senses organized for its reception, awakening our earliest and perhaps our latest sensations of pleasure, — Music at this period of Salvator’s life appears to have engrossed his undivided attention and the authorities which he afterwards produced to sanc- tion its pursuit, show with what earnestness, and upon what philosophical principles, he cultivated the science.! In the beginning of the seventeenth century, music in Italy was rapidly succeeding, in the public taste, to painting ; and (already taken into the schemes of Italian diplomacy) it was applied to the enervation and debasement of the people. Music could instil no treason, preach no heresy : * The writer of the article “ Rosa ” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in alluding to the English public having first become acquainted with Salvator Rosa’s musical talents through the researches of the late learned and excellent Dr. Burney, observes, “ From the specimens given in the History of Music of his compositions, we have no scruple of declaring that he had a truer genius for this science in point of melody, than any of his predecessors or contempo- raries.” *f* Salvator when he attacks the purposes to which music was put by the Church and by the princes of Italy, introduces authorities for his own devo- tion to the art in the example of many philosophers and sages : (C Io non biasimo gia 1’ arte del canto, Ma si bene i cantori viziosi, Ch’ hanno sporcato all’ modestia il manto. Si ben, ch’ era mestier da virtuosi La musica una volta ; e 1’ imparavano Tra gli uomini i piii grandi e i piu famosi. So che Davidde e Socrate cantavano E che l’Arcade, il Greco, e lo Spartano D’ ogni altra scienza al par, la celebravano. E Temistocle gia 1’ Eroe sovrano Fu stimato assai men d’ Epaminonda, Per non saper cantar come il Tebano.” Satire , — La Musica. 30 LIFE AND TIMES unlike poetry it could be cultivated without offence to the Inquisition. If the man “ who has no music in his soul” be a fit instrument for “ plots and stratagems,” he whose ear was peculiarly organized for the reception of sweet sounds, and who surrendered himself to a passion rendered popular alike by nature and by vogue, was already more than half- disarmed, as a stern reasoner or an inflexible patriot. It wus in Naples that the great school of ancient counterpoint, “ the sophistry of canons,” had been founded on the revival of the art ; but in the sixteenth century the pedantry of crude harmonies, the dry and geometrical modulations which were worked like a problem in the mathematics, and were gracious only to senses callous to the “ natural concord of sweet sounds,” were gradually yielding to a novel style of composition, expressively called “ La musica parlante .” Those flowing lyric melodies, which, by the name of cantata , succeeded to the intricate madrigal, were soon discovered by the sensitive Italians to be u II cantar che nel animo si sente.”* The first secular music in parts consisted of harmonies adapted to rustic and street ballads, such as were sung and played in Naples and its adjacent towns and villages ; and the “villanelle arie,” and “ canzonette alia Napolitana” were as popular at the latter end of the sixteenth century throughout the Continent, as the Venetian ballad and Pro- ven9al “vaudeville” were towards the end of the seven- teenth. All Naples — where even to this day love and melody make a part of the existence of the people) — all Naples was then resounding to guitars, lutes, and harps, accompanying voices which for ever sang the fashionable canzoni of Cambio Donato and of the Prince di Venusa.t Neither German phlegm nor Spanish gloom could subdue spirits so tuned to harmony, nor silence the passionate serenatas which floated along the shores, and reverberated among the classic grot- * That music which is felt in the very soul. + Evelyn, who visited Naples about this time, observes that “ the country- people are so jovial and so addicted to music, that the very husbandmen almost universally play on the guitar, singing and accompanying songs in praise of their sweethearts, and will commonly go to the field with their fiddle. They are merry, witty, and genial, all of which 1 attribute to their ayre.” — Mem. Vol. i. OP SALVATOR ROSA. 31 toes of Pausilippo. Vesuvius blazed, St. Elmo thundered from its heights, conspiracy brooded in the caves of Baise, and tyranny tortured its victim in the dungeons of the Gastello Nuovo ; yet still the ardent Neapolitans, amidst all the horrors of their social and political position, could snatch moments of blessed forgetfulness ; and, reckless of their country’s woes and their own degradation, could give up hours to love and music, which were already numbered in the death-warrants of their tyrants. It was at this period the policy of the Italian governments to steep the senses of the abused people in the soft oblivion of volup- tuous and debasing pleasures ; to substitute for liberty and independence, and for all the lofty aspirations of noble spirits, the seduction of sybarite indulgence; and to en- chain the energies of the citizen by habits of frivolous amusement and vicious excess. A Spanish viceroy might then in Naples (as a late monarch has elsewhere been wont to do) sign at the same moment an order for an exe- cution and for a court-ball ; and, while the patriots of the land he misruled were chained to the galleys, or died the slow death of the carcere duro, could lead a procession in honour of the Madonna, or grace a midnight masque* amidst a corrupt and a bigoted court : for the means and resources of despotism, though fearful, are few ; and the Bourbons of Prance, Spain, and Naples in recent times, have only re-acted the parts of their ferocious and supersti- tious predecessors in ruder and remoter ages. It was at this moment, when peculiar circumstances were awakening in the region of the syrens “ the hidden soul of harmony,” when the most beautiful women of the capital and the court gave a public exhibition of their talents and their charms, and glided in their feluccas on the moonlight midnight seas, with harps of gold and hands of snow,t that the contumacious student of the Badri So- * “ E cresciuti cosi sono i suoi pregi Che per le Reggie serpe, e si distende L’ arte de questi Pantomimi egregi. Alla musica in Corte ognuno attende : Do, re, mi, fa, sol , la, canta che sale. La, sol, fa, mi, re, do, canta che seende.” Satire — La Musica. I 44 Among the women were the Signorine Leonora and Caterina, who were never heard but with rapture (says Della Valle, a contemporary of 99 04 LIFE AND TIMES masclii escaped from the restraints of their cloister, and the horrid howl of their laude sjpirituali, to all the intoxication of sonnd and sight, with every sense in full accordance with the musical passion of the day. It is little wonderful if, at this epoch of his life, Salvator gave himself up unresistingly to the pursuit of a science which he cultivated with ardour, even when time had preached his tumultuous pulse to rest ; or if the floating capital of genius, which was as yet unap- propriated, was in part applied to that species of composi- tion which in the youth of man, as of nations, precedes deeper and more important studies, and for which, in either, there is hut one age. All poetry and passion, his young muse “ dallied with the innocence of love,” and inspired strains which, though the simple breathings of an ardent temperament, the exuberance of youthful excitement and an overteeming sensibility, were assigning him a place among the first Italian lyrists of his age. Little did he then dream that posterity would apply the rigid rules of criticism to the “idle visions” of his boyish fancy; or that his bars and basses would be conned and analysed by the learned umpires of future ages, — declared, “ not only admi- rable for a dilettante ,” but “in point of melody superior to that of most of the masters of his time.” # His musical productions became so popular that the “ spinners and knitters in the sun did use to chaunt them” (an image which every street in Naples during the winter season daily exhibits) ; and there Wis in some of Salvator, in speaking of the female musicians of this time), particularly the elder, who accompanied herself on the arch lute. I remember their mother in her youth, when she sailed in her felucca near the grotto of Pausilippo, with her golden harp in her hand ; but in our times these shores were inhabited by syrens, not only beautiful and tuneful, but virtuous and beneficent.” * Burney’s History of Music. — Of Salvator’s Lyrics, Passeri observes, that he had “ lasciato correre in giro, alcuni suoi scherzi per musica, di varie idee, per lo piu morale ed alcune tragiche, con un stilo facile, dolce e cor- rente, adattato alia proprieta del canto.” None of his poetry is dated; but there is internal evidence, in some of the pieces found in his music-book by Dr. Burney, of their being the effusions of a very youthful genius. Such are his Sonnet, “ Star vicino al bel idol mio,” and “ Piu che penso a tuoi,” &c. See Burney's Hist . of Music OF SALVATOR ROSA. 33 these short lyric poems, which he set to music, a softness and delicacy that rendered them even worthy to be sung “ By some fair queen in summer bower With ravishing divisions of her lute still, however, they are more curious as compared to that stern strain of sharp invective, which runs through all his maturer compositions, and to that dark, deep, and indignant feeling which pervades all his satires. In mature life he may, and doubtless did, look back with a sort of melan- choly envy upon the gracious emotions and brilliant illu- sions from which such strains arose ; and (with that min- gled sentiment of regret and contempt, which is assuredly felt by all, who, having written when young, revert in a more advanced age to their early compositions,) he may have given a sad smile to those idle dreams which time had long dissipated ; — apostrophising with Petrarch his first and fond effusions, the “ Dolci rime leggiadre Che nel primiero assalto D’ amor usai, quand’ io ebbi non altri armi.” It is pleasant, however, ere time and experience had done their work, and turned the excess of an almost mor- bid sensibility to a far different account, to pause for a moment, and to contemplate the youth of genius — the most splendid aspect of human life — in the full, but fragile en- joyment of its own brief and illusory existence. The clime, the scene, the population, and reigning manners of Naples, were but too favourable to that intoxicating state of excite- ment, which in all regions characterises the adolescence of highly organized beings ; and but too many mortal Parthe- nopes then recalled the ancient haunts of Circe and the * The following is a perfect anticipation of Metastasio, and out of the reigning mode of Concetti introduced by Marini : — “ Dolce pace del cor mio Dove sei ? che ti rubato ? Dimmi almen qual fato reo Fuor del seno discaccia? Quando usciste del mio petto Ove andaste ? Entro qual sen ? Torna a me, che alcun diletto Senza te goder non so.” 34 LIFE AND TIMES Syrens ; explaining, if they did not excuse, those aberra- tions from the strict rules of prudence, which the enemies of Salvator Rosa have magnified into systematic liber- tinism. He who has asserted that “ the arts of painting, poetry, and music, are inseparable,” because, perhaps, they were all united in his own person, had as yet only applied with dili- gence to the latter. Having acquired considerable mastery on the lute (for which, like Petrarch, he preserved a passion till the last year of his life), he soon became one of the most brilliant and successful serenaders of Haples. Many of those gay and gaillard figures* which in after-life escaped from his graphic pencil and rapid graver, with hair and feather floating in the breeze, are said to have been but copies of himself, as he stood niched under the shadow of a balcony, or reclined on the prow of a felucca, singing to his lute the charms or cruelty of some listening Irene or Clorisf of the moment. But the talents and graces which abroad may have brought captivity to so many hearts, at home produced nothing but remonstrances and grievous disappointment. To his father and mother it was despair to find all their speculations frustrated, all their anticipations blasted, and to behold those powers, which they had destined to the exclusive service of the Madonna, lavished on the mortal charms of some fair damsel whose “ Dolce sorriso Soavi parolette accorte ” + would be the only recompense of talents so profanely mis- applied: Hot only did they deem the vocation of their son a sort of heresy, but the “ cantata di camera,” the new secular music of the day, a profane sacrilege. Unaccus- tomed in their youth to go beyond a madriole , or hymn to the “ Blessed Mother,” the sin of innovation was in their eyes added to that of disobedience. Their parental ambi- tion, however, had not reached “the head and front” of disappointment, — for II Salvatoriello was not yet a Painter ! It happened at this careless, gay, but not idle period of * His figure (says Passeri) had, in all its movements, “ qualche sveltezza e leggiadria,” — something agile and elegant. f The heroines of his lyrics. J Sweet smile and gentle wily words. OF SALVATOR ROSA. 35 Salvator’s life, that an event occurred which hurried on his vocation to that art, to which his parents were so determined that he should not addict himself, but to which Nature had so powerfully directed him. His probation of adolescence was passed : his hour was come ; and he was about to ap- proach that temple, whose threshold he modestly and poeti- cally declared himself unworthy to pass, — # “ Del immortalitade al tempio augusto Dove serba. la gloria e i suoi tesori.” At one of the popular festivities annually celebrated at Naples in honour of the Madonna, the beauty of Rosa’s elder sister captivated the attention of a young painter, who, though through life unknown to “fortune,” was not even then “ unknown to fame.” The celebrated and unfor- tunate Francesco Francanzani, the innamorato of La Signo- rina Rosa, was a distinguished pupil of the Spagnuoletto school, and his picture of San Griuseppe for the Chiesa Pellegrini had already established him as , one of the first painters of his day. Francanzani, like most of the young Neapolitan painters of his time, was a turbulent and fac- tious character, vain and self-opinionated; and though there was in his works a certain grandeur of style, with great force and depth of colouring, yet the impatience of his disappointed ambition, and indignation at the neglect of his acknowledged merit, already rendered him reckless of public opinion. It was the peculiar vanity of the painters of that day to have beautiful wives. Albano had set the example ; Homi- nichino had followed it to his cost ; Rubens turned it to the account of his profession ; and Francanzani, still poor and. struggling, married the portionless daughter of the most indi- gent artist in Naples, and thought perhaps more of the model than the wife. This union, and, still more, a certain sym- pathy in talent and character between the brothers-in-law, frequently carried Salvator to the stanza or work-room of * “ To che la soglia non osai passare Con la penna e el pennello il proprio norae M’ inchinava a segnar sul liminare.” — L’Invidia. The whole of his description of the Temple of Fame, in his “ Invidia,” is full of poetical beauty; and his description of Night is so graphic, that he possibly painted before he wrote it. 36 LIFE AKD TIMES Francesco. Francesco, by some years the elder, was then deep in the faction and intrigues of the Neapolitan school ; and was endowed with that hold eloquence which, displayed upon bold occasions, is always so captivating to young auditors. It was at the foot of this kinsman’s easel, and listening to details which laid, perhaps, the foundation of that contemptuous opinion he cherished through life for schools, academies, and all incorporated pedantry and pre- tension, that Salvator occasionally amused himself in copy- ing, on any scrap of board or paper which fell in his way, whatever pleased him in Francesco’s pictures. His long- latent genius thus accidentally awakened, resembled the acqua buja , whose cold and placid surface kindles like spirits on the contact of a spark. In these first, rude, and hasty sketches, Francanzani, as Passeri informs us, saw “ molti segni d’ un indole spiritosa,” (“great signs of talent and genius”), and he frequently encouraged, and sometimes corrected the copies, which so nearly approached the origi- nals. # But Salvator, who was destined to imitate none, but to be imitated by many, soon grew impatient of repeating another’s conceptions, and of following in an art in which he already perhaps felt, with prophetic throes, that he was born to lead. His visits to the workshop of Francanzani grew less frequent ; his days were given to the scenes of his infant wanderings ; he departed with the dawn, laden with his portfolio filled with primed paper, and a palette covered with oil-colours : and it is said that even then he not only sketched, but coloured from nature (dal naturalef ) . When the pedantry of criticism, at the suggestion of envious rivals, accused him of having acquired,, in his colouring, too much of the impasto of the Spagnuoletto * Although it is hinted by some of his biographers, that Salvator studied under his maternal uncle, Paolo Grecco, “ principid a farsi istruire con regola da Paolo Grecco suo zio materno ” ( Vita de S. Rosa ), yet the tame manner of his relation must rather have disgusted him with the art than encouraged its pursuit: and the more respectable authorities make no mention of this circumstance. On the authority of Pascoli, it appears that he not only studied painting, but that he resumed his literary pursuits under the roof of his brother-in-law ; for he observes, in speaking of has devotion to painting and letters, that, at this period, “ proseguiva egli con egual attenzione 1’ uno e P altro studio.” The “ idleness ” attributed to S. Rosa is among the most obvious calumnies directed by a party-spirit even in the present day against this libelled liberate of the seventeenth century. Passeri. OF SALYATOE EOSA. 37 school, it was not aware that his faults, like his beauties, were original ; and that he sinned against the rules of art only because he adhered too faithfully to nature. Return- ing from these arduous but not profitless rambles, through wildernesses and along precipices impervious to all, save the enterprise of fearless genius, he sought shelter beneath his sister’s roof, where a kinder welcome awaited him than he could find in that home where it had been decreed from his birth that he should not he a Painter. Francanzani was wont, on the arrival of his brother-in- law, to rifle the contents of his portfolio ; and he frequently found there compositions hastily thrown together, but se- lected, drawn, and coloured with a boldness and a breadth which indicated the confidence of a genius sure of itself. The first accents of the “ thrilling melody of sweet renown” which ever vibrated to the heart of Salvator, came to his ear on these occasions in the Neapolitan patois of his rela- tion, who, in glancing by lamplight over his labours, would pat him smilingly on the head, and exclaim, “ Fruscia, fruscia, Salvatoriello — che va buono — simple plaudits! but frequently remembered in after-times, (when the dome of the Pantheon had already rung with the admiration extorted by his Regulus,) as the first which cheered him in his arduous progress. - ! Since the great schools of Tuscany, Rome, and Lom- bardy had been established, or rather, since certain pecu- liarities in the works of men of supereminent genius had grown into precedents, and supplied examples which pedants took for rules, it had been the fashion for all aspirants in the art- to make what they called their giro ; and having run through Italy, and studied or worked in the galleries, churches, or stanze of the eminent masters in Rome, Milan, Florence, and Yenice, they returned to their place of per- * “ Go on, go on, (or literally, rub on,) — this is good.” ! The ambition of Francanzani for his brother in-law went no farther at this period than to enable the indigent boy to earn wherewith to “ feed and clothe himself.” “ Perche,” says Pascoli, “ oltre all’ essergli maestro, gli era anche cognato, bramava che guadagnasse tanto almen col pennella che gli bastasse per lo vitto e pel vestito.” — “ For besides that he was his master, he was his brother-in-law, and he was desirous that he (Salvator) should at least earn by his pencil as much as might procure him clothes and suste- nance.” 38 LIFE AND TIMES manent sojourn, pursuing tlie line and adopting the “man- ner” of some admired and chosen chief, whom chance or coincidence of taste had rendered the “ god of their idolatry.” Originality was rare; it stamped the supremacy of the few, and left the many to earn such inferior honours as might he attained by a happy adoption of the technically styled “ Maniera Raffaelesca, Corregesca, or Tizianesca,” terms referring to men whose very errors had become precedents, and whose merits had assumed a character of almost divine authority. To Salvator Rosa, who now adopted painting as a profes- sion, the beaten track lay broadly open ; but that there was a track , and that a beaten one, was enough to deter him from entering upon it. In his wayward and original mood he left to tamer talent, and more regulated feelings, the hackneyed routine of academies and work-rooms; and striking into a line which no example justified, no precedent recommended, he betook himself to that school where no master lays down the law to aspiring genius, no pupil fol- lows servilely his paralysing dictates ; — the school of Na- ture ! Parental authority now in vain opposed itself to a voca- tion which made a part of constitutional temperament. Obstacles became stimulants, difficulties served but “to bind up each corporal faculty ” to the cherished purpose ; and the young enthusiast, no better accommodated than the pious pilgrim whose scrip and staff make up his whole travelling equipage, set forth upon his giro, animated by that zeal which leads to the great truths of scenic, as of moral nature, and flushed with that ardour without which there is no genius, no success ! The steps of Salvator were now directed to those wild but splendid regions of his own country, which modern art had not yet violated. Pull of difficulty and peril, they might be deemed impervious to mediocrity ; but they were alluring to one, who, lonely and proud in spirit, could find in the trackless solitudes of Nature, magnificent and endless* com- binations of the sublime and the terrific, well suited to satisfy an imagination vehement and pregnant with voli- tion, which could not relish nor endure the insipidities and restraints of conventional forms, — an imagination, which OF SALVATOR EOS A. 39 “man delighted not,” and to which the ivories of man afforded not a sufficient excitement.* Salvator Rosa is supposed to have been in his eighteenth year, when, issuing forth with the dawn of a spring morning (an hour and a season finely adapted to his age and enterprise), he began his giro , and for the first time hade farewell to his native Naples. In proceeding under the Pizzafalcone to the Porta Capuana, his point of egress from his brother-in-law’s resi- dence, he must have passed by the Palazzo Beale, the then newly-erected residence of the Spanish viceroy. There, under golden domes, slumbered at that early hour the puissant and favourite court-painter Spagnuoletto ; while his numerous Sequaci, at once servile and factious, filled his anteroom, and waited for the master order that dictated their daily work in the corridors of palaces and the choirs of churches. Salvator mag too have passed that sumptuous dwelling provided in the Episcopal palace by the Cavalieri dejputati of the cathedral of Saint Januarius, for the great and persecuted Domenichino, when haply even at that moment the sublimest painter of the age may have dreamt of the dagger of Lanfranco, or the poison cup of Bibera, of which, when awake, he lived in perpetual and nervous apprehension.! The young artist, in flying from the vices and crimes of the social order of that day, which under the influence of particular circumstances invaded even the tranquillity of the humanizing arts, may have felt proud and elated in the * “ Salvator Rosa,” says Sir J. Reynolds, “ saw the necessity of toying some new source of pleasing the public in his works. The world were tired of Claude Lorraine’s and G. Poussin’s long train of imitators.” “ Salvator therefore struck into a wild, savage kind of Nature, which was new and striking.” The first of these paragraphs contains a strange anachronism. When Salvator “ struck into a new line,” Poussin and Claude, who, though his elders, were his contemporaries, had as yet no train of imitators. The one was struggling for a livelihood in France, the other was cooking and grinding colours for his master at Rome. Salvator’s early attachment to Nature in her least imitated forms, was not the result of speculation having any reference to the public : it was the operation of original genius, and of those particular tendencies which seemed to be breathed into his soul at the moment it first quickened. From his cradle to his tomb he was the creature of impulse, and the slave of his own vehement volitions. ! Domenichino when at Naples lived in daily dread of assassination by his professional rivals. 40 LIEE AND TIMES consciousness of the career he had struck out for himself, which left him free and unshackled in his high calling, alike remote from the degrading distinctions of patronage and the persecuting malice of envy. Although nearly all his biographers have alluded to this early and singular giro , yet few of its positive details have been preserved. It appears, however, from the portrait- scenes preserved in his singular landscapes, of marine views, headlands, castellated rocks, antique ruins, and savage coasts, identified by some particular and authenticated fea- ture, as well as from the physiognomy and costume of his beautiful little groups, known by the name of his “ figurine,” that he must have traversed and studied much among the wild and sublime scenery of La Basilicata,* La Puglia, and Calabria, the Magna Gramia of the ancients : and it is pro- bable, too, that he was led to this marine circuit (then un- touched and unstudied) by those classic associations which distinguish all his compositions, whether of the pencil or the pen. Nearly the whole of the Greek colonies had been confined to these romantic coasts, which still preserve ves- tiges of the brilliant population that once was spread over them. But if even Cicero in his time could exclaim, “ Magna Graecia nunc non est,” the desolation which in the days of Salvator brooded over that terrestrial Eden, was of a yet deeper and sadder character. All, however, that these once flourishing regions had lost, (the bustle of their commercial ports, and the splendour of their philoso- phical schools,) was redeemed in the imagination of the young poet-painter, the boy philosopher, by the magnificent desolation and melancholy grandeur that remained ; while to the monuments of empires past away, and the beauties of art, still visible in ruins consecrated by the touch of time and marked by the flight of ages, were contrasted the grotesque and curious groupings of a living age, with all the picturesque forms of existing religious institutions and new political combinations, which, though thinly scattered over a vast and diversified surface, came forth in a vigorous and striking relief. * Pascoli, who supposes it was by the advice of his brother-in-law that he made this giro , observes, “ Depingere gli faceva, le vedute piu belle di quel belli ssimo si to, cosi s’ ando per alcun tempo istruendo e mantenendo,” 6tc. — Vita di S. Rosa. OF SALVATOR ROSA. 41 Such was the imagery which, with a force that vibrated to the last hour of life, agitated a mind alive to all that is elevated and sublime, and operated on a fancy eager for the strongest and strangest excitements. Such were the sub- jects of Salvator’s early studies, such the models of un- touched sublimity, which enabled him to start forward an original master, at an epoch when every possible mode of originality appeared to have been exhausted. The count- less landscapes now so widely scattered throughout the civilized world, and so highly prized in all its countries, are either portraits of scenes sketched at this period, or trea- sured in a memory singularly tenacious and retentive. Some represent the savage valleys which lie spread at the foot of Monte Sarchio (the first stage of his wanderings), with all their volcanic remains, their surfaces of pumice and tufo, and screen of bleached calcareous hills ; others represent fragments of the Classic ruins of Beneventum, its noble arch and amphitheatre ; others, exhibiting only undulating and sterile mounds and some formless ruins, preserve the characteristic features of the ancient Eclano :* while a dark and desolate plain, dimly lighted by the livid flashes of a turbulent and stormy sky, retraces what was once the site of seductions which Hannibal found more irresistible than the Boman legions. It was at this period that Salvator pro- bably sketched the “ prima intenzione ” of his great picture of “ Democritus,” or philosophy smiling amidst death and corruption, at the ambitious projects and final destiny of man. His scene was the site of a once superb and luxurious city ; his Democritus was himself : and the moral of his picture, the simple result of his own melancholy reflections, as he leant on the tomb of the freedman of Saturninus, and sketched the ruins of that Cannae whose splendid palaces and voluptuous population were now only represented by tombs and funeral inscriptions. f The subjects which presented themselves in the course of his wanderings through La Puglia and along the shores ol the Adriatic, and which in detached features so frequently appear in his works, were, the headlands and castellated * “ II ne reste de cette ancienne ville que quelques debris de murailles, sans forme, et un fragment de quelque edifice auquel on ne sait quel 110m donner,” &c. — St. Non. + Voyage Pittoresque. — St. Non. 42 LIFE AND TIMES rocks of Monte Gargano the romantic port of Bari; the sea-lashed cliffs of San Vito, with their fortress-monastery and embattled cloisters, manned by warlike monks, living in constant hostility to the Barbary corsairs ; the grottoes of Palignano, looking l-ike the submarine palace of some ocean deity ; the Canusium and Brundusium of Horace ; and the wizard caverns of Otranto, described by Pliny, and worthy of the incantations of “the Maga” of the Capitol, the first idea of which probably suggested itself to the imagination of the wandering painter amidst scenes admi- rably consonant to visions so wild. The neighbourhoods of Psestum and of Salernum are still marked as the frequent and favourite haunts of Salvator ; and he is said to have reproduced in numerous replicos , the scenery of La Cava,fi a site full of savage sublimity and of noble recollections, consecrated alike to religion and to liberty. It is, however, both biographically and traditionally as- serted, that the mountains of the Abruzzi and Calabria, (the most savage and elevated of the Apennines,) command- ing on either side views of the Adriatic and Mediterranean, detained for the longest period his pilgrim steps. The curious antique towns, sheltered among their cliffs, some- times raising their fantastic edifices in the bosom of an extinct volcano, sometimes perched on the almost inacessi- ble pinnacle of a frightful rock, and inhabited by beings full of the restless energy and uncomprising independence which form the moral attributes of mountainous regions, must have possessed a singular charm to one who presented in his own temperament and character the very abstraction of all such qualities. In these remote and elevated sites, the old spirit of the Greek colonies was far from extinct ; and at the period when Salvator visited them, that singular conspiracy was brooding, which was soon afterwards or- ganized, for the purpose of separating Calabria from the Austro-Spanish dominions in Naples, and of founding, or rather restoring, the republic which had flourished under the first Greek colonists. J There the young enthusiast * In La Puglia. 4 St. Non, in observing that it was among the solitudes of La Cava Sal- vator Rosa sought for models of “Ze genre grand , noble , et severe terms it himself “ ce triste desert X The principal conspirators were the celebrated Tomaso Campanella, the author of several philosophical works, and a number of monks under the OF SALVATOR ROSA. 43 may liave first been awakened to the causes of his country’s degradation, and have become a patriot from reflection, as he was an ardent lover of liberty from instinct. It appears, however, that he occasionally escaped even from these last boundaries of social aggregation ; that he directed his wanderings to the higher chain of the Ab- rnzzi, and that he studied and designed amidst those am- phitheatres of rocks, which, clothed with dark pines, and dashed with bursting torrents, were still freshly stamped with the commotions of that Nature, which in such alti- tudes knows no repose. There, almost within view of the bold and solitary student, hills sunk to valleys, valleys swelled to hills, — rivers shifted their courses, and latent fires broke forth to scathe the vigorous vegetation which their own smothered ardours had produced. There, amidst earthquakes and volcanic flames, in an atmosphere of light- ning, and the perpetual crash of falling thunderbolts, may this Dante of painting have first taken in the elements of his famous “ Ptjruatorio !” for from such phenomena, which in their destructive sweep and mystic reproductions regard not human interests, man first borrowed his faith of fear, his god of wrath ! the unremitting torture of ages, and fires of eternal punishment ! the purgatory of one church, and the hell of all! The event which most singularly marked the fearless enterprises of Salvator in the Abruzzi, was his captivity by the banditti, who alone inhabited them, and his tem- porary (and it is said voluntary) association with those fearful men. That he did for some time live among the picturesque outlaws, whose portraits he has multiplied without end, there is no doubt; and though few of his biographers allude to the event, and those few but vaguely, yet tradition authenticates a fact, to which some of his finest pictures afford a circumstantial evidence. Salvator, who by temperament was an Epicurean, was on system a Stoic ; and even many of his profession and country, who might have pardoned his genius and his successes, never forgave him that rigid morality, those severe unbending protection of some Calabrian bishops. One thousand five hundred banditti were subsidized as allies, and, with three hundred monks, were already under arms, when the conspiracy was detected by the Neapolitan Govern- ment, and the chiefs put to death by the most cruel and-prolonged tortures. 44 LIFE AND TIMES principles, which in his precepts and his example shamed the vices of his contemporaries, while they secured him the respect of the first and best men of his age. His associa- tion, therefore, among the banditti of the Abruzzi, must have been a matter of accident in the first instance, and of necessity in the second ; and he seems to have turned the singular event exclusively to the profit of his art ; and to have derived no other result from an adventure, which to a being so fanciful and imaginative may not have been wholly destitute of charm, than an accumulation of those images to which his fame stands so largely indebted.* The social and political position of the Neapolitan ban- ditti in the beginning of the seventeenth century, forms a curious trait in the history of that beautiful and unfortu- nate country, where despotism and lawlessness even still meet and agree in their extremes, and where the sovereign continues to tolerate an order (if he no longer avails him- self of its assistance) which arises out of the misrule of his own government. In the remotest antiquity, the moun- tains of the Abruzzi were under the special protection of the god of all thieves, Mercury, as they are now in the holy keeping of Saint G-ologaro, the Mercury of the Catholic mythology, and the especial patron of Calabria. The genuine banditti, however, of the seventeenth century, were no vulgar cut-throats, who, like the Maestrillos and Tra Diavolos of modern times, confined their exploits to road robbery and indiscriminate plunder and assassination. They were, in fact, more nearly allied to the brave, bold Condottieri, and the black and white bands of Medici and of Suffolk, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; and though, when unhired, they lived at large and wild, with their hands against every man, and every man’s hand * The contemporary biographers of Salvator Rosa have alluded with timidity to this event. Some have passed it over in silence. The spirit of party has availed itself of an adventure so singular, and turned it with great virulence against the victim of its calumnies. A candid English writer observes, “ A roving disposition, to which he is said to have given full scope, seems to have added a wildness to all his thoughts. We are told that he spent the early part of his life in a troop of banditti, and that the rocky desolate scenes in which he was accustomed to take refuge, furnished him with those romantic ideas in landscape, of which he is so exceedingly fond, and in the description of which he so greatly excels. His Robbers , as his detached figures are commonly called, are supposed also to have been taken from the life .” — Encyclopaedia Briiannica, Art. Rosa. OF SALYATOR ROSA. 45 against them, yet they occasionally rivalled in dignity and importance the standing armies of existing legitimates, fighting like them for hire in any cause that paid them, and attacking the rights and liberties of all who stood in the way of the ambition, cupidity, or despotism of their employers, with all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of legitimate warfare. Like the marine letter of marque, half pirate, and half national, their troops were regularly enrolled and disciplined ; and though their ranks were filled with the wild and the worthless — with men horn out of the pale of civilized society, or driven beyond it by their crimes, — yet many among them were of a superior cast : they were outlawed gentlemen of Naples, escaped from the wheel and the scaffold, to which their efforts in the cause of their country had condemned them ; who, seek- ing shelter in the savage wilds of the Abruzzi, became, by their talents and rank, chiefs and leaders of men associated and armed against society under the influence of far dif- ferent causes. It is an historical fact, that the number, skill, valour, and fidelity of these bands had rendered them, at the period here alluded to, so formidable in the eyes of the Austro-Spanish government, and so respectable in the estimation of the people, that, by a strange inver- sion of principle, these natural enemies of society fre- quently became its chosen champions.; and even the go- vernment, against whom they were so often and so openly at variance, was glad to take them into pay, and employ them in its service. When, however, they were in hosti- lity to the legitimate cause, the same government pursued them with regular troops to the verge of their inaccessible fastnesses ; and burnt, tortured, and hanged the same per- sons as enemies, whom they had previously recompensed and encouraged as allies A * “ Chaque Viceroi, chaque commandant de place, chaque employe du gouvernement avait des bandits sous sa sauvegarde; auxquels il assurait l’itn- punite et la recompense des violences et des assassinats qu’il leur faisait com- mettre pour son compte. Les couvens meme avaient leurs assassins ; et dans la conspiration du Pere Campanella on vit avec etonnement que les moines de la Calabre pouvaient mettre sous les armes plusieurs milliers de bandits. Les brigands campaient presque aux portes des villes, et Ton ne pouvait passer sans escort de Naples a Caserta ou a A verso.” — Sismcndi, Liierat. du Midi. 46 LIFE AND TIMES The stronghold of this singular order had long been in the Abruzzi. There, amidst “ Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, And shades of death,” they held with their families a wild and precarious, but not a joyless existence ; while occasionally they were brigaded into separate bands, and distributed, under the protection of the government, among the towns and cities of the king- dom, or garrisoned the domestic fortresses of the factious Neapolitan barons, and others of the same rank, who lived in perpetual hostility with that ruling power, by which they were perpetually distrusted and oppressed. Many of these haughty nobles (themselves flying from the circles of their native metropolis) exercised the old trade of the Italian highwaymen, and reclaimed their ancient rights as feudatory princes over the adjacent country. Upon these occasions they were sometimes joined, and sometimes opposed, by the banditti of the Abruzzi, as the interests or the feelings of these formidable outlaws led them to embrace or to reject their cause. The conflicts of unregulated interests, and of lawless but powerful volitions, — the stern elevation of character, reck- less of all human suffering, beyond all social relations,— the play of strong antipathies, and operation of strong instincts, — the fierce rebuff of passions, wild as the- elements among which they were nurtured, — the anatomy of the mixed nature of man, laid bare, and stripped of all disguise, were subjects of ennobling study to one who saw all things as a philosopher and a poet — one who was prone to trace, throughout the endless varieties of external forms, the deep-seated feelings that produced and governed their ex- pression. In the fierce guerilla warfare of the Abruzzi, between the Spanish and G-erman troops and the mountain- bands, may be traced the leading character of that vast and wondrous battle-piece # which is destined to be the study of successive generations of artists ; and to the necessities of the outlaw’s life we are indebted for many of those sin- gular groupings and views of violence and danger, which * Now in the Musee at Paris. OF SALVATOR ROSA. 47 form the subjects not only of the pencil, hut of the graver, of Salvator liosa. There is one engraving which, though evidently clone a coljpo di pennello , seems so plainly to tell the story of the wandering artist’s captivity, that it may, as an historic fact, if not as a chef d' oeuvre of the art, merit a particular description. In the midst of rocky scenery appears a group of banditti, armed at all points, and with all sorts of arms. They are lying, in careless attitudes hut with fierce watch- fulness, round a youthful prisoner, who forms the fore- ground figure, and is seated on a rock, with languid limbs hanging over the precipice, which may be supposed to yawn beneath. It is impossible to describe the despair depicted in this figure: it is marked in his position, in the droop of his head, which his nerveless arms seem with diffi- culty to support, and in the little that may be seen of his face, over which, from his recumbent attitude, his hair falls in luxuriant profusion (and the singular head and tresses of Salvator are never to be mistaken). All is alike des- titute of energy and of hope, which the fierce beings grouped around the captive seem, in some sentence recently pro- nounced, to have banished for ever. Tet one there is who watches over the fate of the young victim : a woman stands immediately behind him. Her hand stretched out, its fore- finger resting on his head, marks him the subject of a dis- course which she addresses to the listening bandits. Her figure, which is erect, is composed of those bold straight lines, which in art and nature constitute the grand. Even the fantastic cap or turban, from which her long dishevelled hair has escaped, has no curve of grace ; and her drapery partakes of the same rigid forms. Her countenance is full of stem melancholy — the natural character of one whose feelings and habits are at variance, whose strong passions may have flung her out of the pale of society, but whose feminine sympathies still remain unchanged. She is art- fully pleading for the life of the youth, by contemptuously noting; his insignificance. But she commands while she soothes. She is evidently the mistress, or the wife of the Chief, in whose absence an act of vulgar violence may be meditated. The youth’s life is saved : for that cause rarely fails to which a woman brings the omnipotence of her feelings. O • 48 LIFE AND TIMES The time spent by Salvator among these outlaws has never been verified ; but it is probable, and indeed evident, that he remained sufficiently long to fill both his imagina- tion and his memory with accumulated combinations of the magnificent and the terrible. It is not impossible that the adventurous artist owed the security in which he pursued the interests of his art, in such abodes of violence and danger, to the exertion of talents both musical and poetical, not less calculated to amuse his ferocious hosts by the mid- night fires of their earth-embosomed dens, than to capti- vate the voluptuous auditory of a Neapolitan saloon. One almost sees the melancholy severity of the well-pictured female who saved his life, softening into feminine emotion as she listens to lays composed for the syrens of the Chiaja, which she once may herself have merited and received ; while the stern features of her bandit lover now relax into pleased attention at some humorous improvviso which re- calls his native Naples, now contract into looks of dark dis- trust as he watches the mellowed expression of those bright black eyes, whose wildness never before softened to other accents than his own. The mountain auditory of the lyrist of Renella were, indeed, banditti, the outcasts of society ; but they were Italians, and original conformation may have triumphed over habits little favourable to the arts, or the tastes they engender. Under what circumstances Salvator was restored to civil- ized society, the biographers, who scarcely do more than allude to his capture, have not detailed. Whether he escaped, or was liberated by the caprice or the generosity of the banditti, is unknown ; but it is certain, that after having wandered through the most inaccessible regions of the kingdom of Naples, under every hardship incidental to poverty in such perilous and unaccommodated enterprises, he returned to the capital at an epoch marked by the resi- dence of the illustrious Lanfranco in that city, and by the intrigues of the school of Spagnuoletto, which not long after assumed a character of political importance.* * “ Salvator Rosa se mit ensuite sous Ribera, ou il profita beaucoup. II y resta jusqu'a vingt ans, qu’ayant perdu son pere, Ribera le mena avec lui a Rome. Pendant auatres annees il y fit des etudes considerables .” — Abreye i le la Vie des plus fameux Peintres , p. 351, tom. i. 1745, Paris. Every word of this is false , and in direct contradiction to all the Italian OF SALVATOR ROSA. 49 Fresh from the stupendous altitudes of the Abruzzi, with all their mightiness impressed upon his mind, the ardent disciple of Nature must have felt the superiority of her great school over all of mere human institution ; and he must have been little inclined to enrol himself, even if he had possessed the means, among the followers of the masters who then reigned supreme over the public taste of Naples. The state in which he found his wretched family on his return, plunged him in despondency ; and that buoyant spirit which encountered fatigue and danger with such cheerfulness and patience, flagged and drooped under home inflictions, which were all directed at the heart, and which zeal and perseverance could not remove, nor enter- prise and ardour hope to overcome. The first illusions of early youth were fled, and the real and inevitable miseries of life, of which during the rest of his days (even in the bosom of prosperity) he entertained so keen and painful a conviction, came upon his apprehen- sion in truths which sensibility sometimes anticipates, but which philosophy and reflection never fail to substantiate. ITe perceived that the talent and industry of his father, the piety and virtues of his mother and innocent sisters, the genius and high spirit of his brother-in-law, were alike insufficient to save them from neglect, contempt, and dis- tress ; while on every side, crawling mediocrity and una- bashed impudence snatched the meed of worth and merit : he saw the moral order of things everywhere deranged; and the laws of justice, he once fancied immutable, every- where violated. For the talents of Francesco Francanzani he appears to have entertained the highest respect ; yet he found him, in spite of a genius none disputed, declining in his art, for want of that protection which, under despotic governments, holds the place of public suffrage. This young and original painter, reduced to struggle for the daily morsel that scarcely fed his family, # became sullen and soured to fero- writers on the same subject. Ribera’s visit to Rome occurred after he had studied with Caravaggio in 1606, and before Salvator was born. When Rosa did enter the school of Ribera (Spagnuoletto), “ la frequen- tasse poco tempo says Lanzi, whose fidelity may always be depended on. * “ Ne alcun soccorso sperar poteva dal cognato che aveva numerosa fami- glia da sostentare.” — Pascoli. 50 LIFE AND TIMES city ; and neglecting all tlie higher inspirations of his art, he executed only coarse subjects in the coarsest manner, for those homely customers, whose vulgar piety and strong energies found something analogous to their own feelings in the strongly-conceived martyrdoms which his cynical in- dignation dashed carelessly off for the public market. These melancholy forecasts were soon converted into more painful realities. A few days after Salvator’s return, Vito Antonio Rosa died in the arms of his son, and be- queathed to the maintenance and protection of an unpro- vided youth of eighteen, an helpless family, deprived, says one of his biographers expressly, “ d’ ogni umano provvedi- mento,”* of every human provision. There is scarcely any position in the series of human ills (a fearful array !) more heart-rending in its contemplation than that of youth blasted in the spring of its brief enjoy- ment, checked in the first flow of its warm and genial emo- tions, and repressed in its first ardent aspirations, by some untoward destiny, which anticipates the march of time, and hurries on the inflictions “which flesh is heir to,” ere the diminished sensibility of age has prepared the heart for their endurance. Such was the lot of Salvator Rosa ; a man, who from the internal evidence of all he said, wrote, or painted, was evi- dently endowed with sensibilities approaching to malady, and who, gifted with the true temperament of genius, was framed to receive all impressions in their utmost force and intensity. Alive, as he appears to have been through life, to all the “relations dear and all the charities” of consan- guinity, he now stood in the midst of that helpless family, to which he was to be as “ Father, son, and brother,” with no other means of rescuing them from the famine which already assailed them, than those his pencil could procure. His portfolios teemed with splendid sketches, which, at the distance of a century from his death, would have procured any price, but which then would not purchase a morsel * Pascoli expressively says, that the death of his father left him rather in misery than poverty, “ La morte del padre, che lo lascio miserabile piu tosto che povero.” OP SALYATOR ROSA, 51 of bread. He liad resources in his genius and classical education which should have afforded him a liberal exist- ence, and have led at once to fortune and to fame, if merit and success were inevitably cause and effect ; but he was oppressed even then with an intuitive conviction that worth and independence are stumbling-blocks, not stepping-stones, in the path of fortune. The prevailing usage of the Neapolitan School had been to give but a short time to the study of design, and to pro- ceed, almost immediately after the acquirement of its first elements, to that stage of the art, which they called “ a pittorare,” or “ washing-in.” There was in this hurried mode of proceeding, which Salvator acquired in his brother- in-law’s workshop, something- analogous to his own bold, prompt, and rapid perceptions ; and he had made such pro- gress before his giro in Calabria, that he had already exe- cuted some landscapes on canvas (“ si fece ardito di por mano alle tele, ed a poco a poco si stese alia misura di quattro palmi,” says Passeri). Such, however, was his poverty at the moment which required all the advantages which the mechanism of the art could lend his genius, that he was unable to purchase the canvas to paint on, and was reduced to the necessity of executing his pictures upon that primed paper on which his boyish talents had first displayed themselves. Thus pressed, the young aud obscure land- scape-painter of Penella had no chance of appearing in the arena where the Spagnuoletto, the Lanfranco, the Domeni- chino, and their protected pupils, were disputing the prize of pre-eminence. In want and privation, and destitute of that tranquillity of mind so necessary to the concentration of genius on its subject, the only market open to him was the miserable bulk of one of those few rivenditori who then, as now, held their stand for second-hand, damaged, and valueless goods in the Strada della Carita. Thither, after having worked in his desolate garret all day, in view of penury and its concomitant discontent, the young artist was wont to repair at night, and timidly hovering near the old bottega of his virtuoso Shylock, to seize some propitious moment for entering and drawing from beneath his thread- bare cloak one of those exquisite designs which have since contributed to his immortality. It is no stretch of the 52 LIFE AND TIMES imagination to suppose him grouped with his shrewd chap- man beneath the flame of a pendent lamp, such as still lights the similar shops of Naples, holding up one of his pictures for the old man’s observation; his own fine face, with its “ African colouring ” and passionate expression of impatient indignation, contrasting with the wizard look which escapes from under the Jew’s large flapped, yellow hat, while he affectedly underrates a work of which he well knows all the merit. At last the purchase is made and the miserable pittance is given ; — that scantiest price which hardly sufficed to satisfy with a “vile morsel,” the famine of those who depended solely on Salvator’s exertions, even for this scanty sustenance. With such means, and for such rewards, Salvator Rosa continued to labour with indefatigable but unrequited industry. All his recreations were laid aside. Pausilippo no longer re-echoed to the sweet tones of his lute. The Cloris and Irenes of his enamoured boyhood lived unsung, at least by Ms melancholy muse. ITe neither wrote nor read poetry. His studies, all bearing upon his art, were confined to sacred and profane history, the events and characters of which are spread over his smallest and least important landscapes ; for even in his delineations of those savage forests, which, like his own Hante, he loved best, man and his great moral agency are constantly to be found. There were (as critics have asserted) among these early productions of his pencil, of which some are still extant, many which were afterwards repeated by himself upon a great scale. The stamp of originality, and the total absence of that mannerism then so prevalent, distinguish these his earliest no less than his later works. In their execution there was a freedom almost miraculous in so young and inexperienced a practitioner ; and in the selection and con- ception of the subjects, there were evidences of the same bold, brilliant, and poetical imagination — the same deep sagacious study of Nature, which characterized the finished works of his mature age. All was vast ; all was character- ized by strength and magnitude. A rock, a tree, a cloud, exhibited the elevation of his fancy. His most minute figures were marked by an expression which painted a character, while it indicated a form. His “Robber Chief” Or SALYATOE EOSA. 53 was always distinguishable from the ruffians he led,* less by his habits than by those distinctions which high breeding on the human, as on the brute subject, rarely fails to impress. The light leafing of his trees, which seem to vibrate with a motion of the passing air, the breaking up of his grounds, his groups and figures all in movement, exhibit a life and an activity that excited correspondent sympathy in the spectator, and evinced that Nature in his works, as in her own, knew no pause. Yet these early works, con- taining the prima intenzione of many after-productions, which, if better executed, were not more powerfully con- ceived — these first and beautiful efforts of Salvator’s genius sold, says his friend Baldinelli, “ at the lowest or vilest prices ” — “ ad ogni prezzo piu vile.” It is singular that he, who afterwards stood forth as the only eminently original master which Naples ever produced, should have excited no attention, at the time that the Neapolitan School had attained to an excellence, and enjoyed a reputation, it never before and never after possessed, and when the public taste consequently may be supposed to have reached its maxi- mum. But the state of painting in Naples at that epoch, both as an art and as a profession, throws some light upon a fact, which appears strange at least, if not mysterious. The Greek origin of Naples suggests the idea of its early excellence in the arts. The fine organization of its fantastic people, to whom the term genius has been applied as generic — the remembrance that a school of design existed in Sicily before one was established at Athens — the fact that the art of painting was never lost there ; and that those black- visaged Madonnas which supplied the Church with its first commodities in that line, though called of the Greek School, were executed by Neapolitan masters before the age of Cimabue — all tend to impress the preconception, that the school of Naples should have been pre-eminent, and have given to Italy some of her most original and illustrious masters. The fact, however, is quite otherwise. Naples * A splendid illustration of this remark lies before the author, as she writes, in an etching of Salvator’s. It is a single figure, of a Captain of Banditti. He is alone, near a rock ; his hair floating wildly on the wind, his countenance marked by that deep moral melancholy, that pensive and meditative sadness, which the turbulent remorse of vulgar minds never produces. 54 LIFE AND TIMES produced but one original master, whose merits sbe never acknowledged till posterity forced tbem on her apprehension — and that master was Salvator Rosa. Her school of paint- ing, which alternately took' the epithet of Zingarescha, Raffaelesca, and Caravaggesca, till the manner of all met and combined in the school of Spagnuoletto (the second epoch of painting in Naples), was ever in the eyes of the great Italian virtuosi a mere school of mannerism, “ La Scuola dei manieristi.”* The genius of the people was turned to another art, in which they have distanced all other nations ; and the establishment of a school of painting in the land of the Syrens was but an effort of fashion, and of the domineer- ing emulation of the age. But what the leaders of the Neapolitan School of Painting wanted in originality they supplied by energy, and by that “ certo fuoco animat ore,” which seems the birth-right of their volcanic clime. The same fierce passions which armed them against each other in their work-rooms, and united them against all foreign intruders upon their exclusive monopoly of the national suffrage, came out in the details of their pictorial composi- tions, which rarely reflected other forms and aspects than those presented by the wild, acute-visaged population by which they were surrounded. In the early part of the seventeenth century, the maimer of the Neapolitan school was purely Caravaggesque. Michael Angelo Amoreghi, better known as II Caravaggio (from the place of his birth in the Milanese, where his father held no higher rank than that of a stonemason), was one of those powerful and extraordinary geniuses, who are destined by their force and originality to influence public taste, and master public opinion, in whatever line they start. The Roman School, to which the almost celestial genius of Raphael had so long been as a tutelar divinity, sinking rapidly into degradation and feebleness, suddenly arose again under the influence of a new chief, whose professional talent and personal character stood opposed in the strong * From the sixteenth century all the great capitals of Italy began to be distinguished by their Schools, which had each some marked and peculiar characteristic. That of Naples, as Lanzi very justly observes, non ha avuto forme cosi originali come altri d’ Italia. Ma ha dato luogo ad ogni buona maniera, secondo che i giovani usciti di patria vi ban riportato lo stilo di questo o di quel rfiaestro.” OF SALVATOR EOSA. 55 relief of contrast, to that of his elegant and poetical prede- cessor. The influence* of this “ uomo intrattabile e brutale,” this passionate and intractable man, as he is termed by an Italian historian of the arts,f sprang from the depression of the school which preceded him. Nothing less than the impulsion given by the force of contrast, and the shock occasioned by a violent change, could have produced an effect on the sinking art, such as proceeded from the strength and even coarseness of Caravaggio, He brought back Nature triumphant over mannerism — Nature, indeed, in all the exaggeration of strong motive and overbearing volition, but still it was Nature ; and his bold example dissipated the langour of exhausted imitation, and gave excitement even to the tamest mediocrity and the feeblest conception.]; The languid public of Home, startled into emotion by representations so new and so striking, com- municated its feeling to all Italy ; and the fame and influence of Caravaggio obtained an eclat from his “ Gripsy Fortune-teller,” and his “ Gamesters,” scarcely less bril- liant than that extorted by the divine Madonnas of Haphael, and the laughing cherubs of Coreggio. The temperament which produced this pecular genius was necessarily violent and gloomy. Caravaggio tyrannized over his school, and attacked his rivals with other arms than those of his art. He was a professed duellist : and having- killed one of his antagonists in a rencontre, he fled to Naples, * Passed observes of the change wrought by Caravaggio, “ fece prender fiafco al gusto buono ed al naturale, il quale allora era sbandito dal mondo, che solo andava perduto dietro a un depingere ideale e fantastico, ma lontano dalla nature e dal vero.” — Vita di Guido Reni. + “ Si propose la sola Natura per oggetto del suo pennello,” says Bellori, in his Life of Caravaggio ; and when, on his first arrival in Rome, the cognoscenti advised him to study from the antiques, and to take Raphael as his model, he used to point to the promiscuous groups of men and women passing before him, and say u those were the models and the masters provided him by Nature.” Teased one day by a pedant on the subject, he stopped a gipsy-girl who was passing by his window, called her in, placed her near his easel, and produced his splendid “Zingana in atto di pre d i re Tav venture,” his well-known and exquisite Egyptian Fortune-teller. His “ Gamblers” was done in the same manner. — See Bellori , Vita di Michel Angelo da Cara- vaggio, . X Of the awe which he inspired, Passeri has given a very characteristic anecdote in his Life of Guercino, p. 374. 56 LIFE AND TIMES where an asylum was readily granted him.* His manner as a painter, his character as a man, were both calculated to succeed with the Neapolitan School ;f and the “ maniera Caravaggesca” thenceforward continued to distinguish its productions, till the art, there as throughout all Europe, fell into utter degradation, and became lost, almost as com- pletely as it had been under the Lower Empire. Eesembling their master in character, in principles, and in genius, the pupils of Caravaggio, while they ambitiously governed public taste, as carefully excluded all who were not educated in the master-faction ; and they pursued with deadly persecution all foreign masters, whose celebrity ob- tained for them any of the great public works, commanded by particular congregations or corporate bodies of Naples. These bandits of the arts were Bellisario Corenzio, Giambat- tista Caracciolo, and Giuseppe Libera, called Lo Spagnuo- letto. The first a Greek, and originally a pupil of Arpino ; the second a Neapolitan, and wholly and devotedly of the school of Caravaggio ; and the last a Spaniard, who im- bibed his first inspiration at the easel of the armed assassin, * In a warm dispute with one of his own young friends in a tennis-court, he struck him dead with a racket, haying "been himself severely wounded. Notwithstanding the triumphs with which he was loaded in Naples, where he executed some of his finest pictures, he soon got weary of his residence there, and went to Malta. His superb picture of the Grand Master obtained for him the cross of Malta, a superb golden chain, placed on his neck by the Grand Master’s own hands, and two slaves to attend him. All these honours did not prevent the new knight from felling back into old habits. “ II suo torbido ingegno,” says Bellori, plunged him into new difficulties : he fought and wounded a noble cavalier, was thrown into prison by the Grand Master, escaped most miraculously, fled to Syracuse, and obtained the suf- frages of the Syracusans by painting his splendid picture of the Santa Morte for the church of Santa Lucia. In apprehension of being taken by the Mal- tese knights, he fled to Messina, from thenee to Palermo, and returned to Naples, where hopes were given him of the Pope’s pardon. Here, picking a quarrel with some military men at an inn-door, he was wounded, took refuge on board a felucca, and set sail for Rome. Arrested by a Spanish guard at a little port (where the felueea cast anchor) by mistake for another person, when released he found the felucca gone, and in it all his property. Traversing the burning shore under a vertical sun, he was seized with a brain fever, and continued to wander through the deserts of the Pontine Marshes, till he arrived at Porto Ercoli, when he expired, in his fortieth year. + “ Cr -i quelle sue ombre terribili, con quel fracasso di scuri e di lumi, con quei grand tratti a mecchia, che non lasciano distinguere i contorni, con quelle sue ignobili minacciose figure, sorprese il pubblico.” OF SALVATOR ROSA. 57 whose genius he nearly equalled, and whose atrocity he far surpassed. Giuseppe Ribera had been brought in his infancy from his native country by his father, a follower of the Spanish interests ; and he was placed in his childhood in the school of Caravaggio (1606) . It was in vain that in aftertimes he was sent on his giro , and that in the course of his itinerant studies he adopted for a time something of the ennobling and the beautiful, from the Roman, Tuscan, and Bolognese masters : Nature and Caravaggio still held the ascendant ; and he returned to preside over a school which was equally celebrated for its genius and its ruffianism; — for producing the boldest bravoes and the best painters that Naples ever boasted.* The national partiality of the Viceroy soon distinguished Lo Spagnuoletto from among his condisciples. Loaded with honours, created painter to the court, and assuming over his friends and coadjutors Corenzio and Caracciolo, which his genius and particular position gave him, he yet admitted them to his confidence, and formed by their aid those “Razioni de’ Pittori,” those conspiracies of the painters, which in the course of time produced a very different effect from that intended by the court-painter of the Spanish Viceroy. His object was to exclude from Naples all talent, except that which emanated from his own school; and, backed by the influence of the Government, and the ferocious courage of his two bravoes and their followers, he gave full play to those dark passions, which, while they pointed his poniard, directed his pencil to the representation of human suffer- ing, the deformities of Nature, torture methodized into system, and agonies detailed with frightful fidelity. While the writhings of Saint Bartholomew, the spasms of Ixion, and the colourless muscles of the attenuated Saint J erome employed his genius, he was armed, with his two associates, against the fame and the lives of the most eminent men of his day. The execution of the public works, altar-pieces, and the decoration of the several chapels of the magnificent * “ Cos il tempo che corse da Bellisario al Giordano e la piu lieta epocha di questa istoria ; avendo riguardo al numero de’ bravi artefici e alle opere di gusto. E'pero la piu tetra non pur della scuola Napolitana, ma della pittura; ove si abbia riguardo alle cattive arti, e a’ misfatti che vl occorsero.” — Lanzi. 3—3 58 LIFE AND TIMES cathedrals of Italy, had always been the objects of ambition to the most eminent of the Italian painters. In the best ages of the art, merit and reputation always decided the choice ; but in its decline, intrigue and the interference of Government uniformly influenced the decision. At the period in question several great works were designed, whose execution was to be committed to masters, at the will of the particular convents to which the churches to be decorated belonged. The choir of the Certosa, the great churches of the “ Spirito Santo” and “ Gesu Nuovo,” were to be en- riched by the arts : but the work most coveted by the great foreign masters, and still withheld from the Neapolitan cabal, was the royal chapel of the Duomo of St. Januarius, the temple of the people and the object of national veneration. A committee, with the title of “ Cavalieri deputati,” had been appointed to superintend the works of the Duomo ; and they had obeyed the people in successively calling upon the illustrious Annibal Caracci, and his immortal pupils Guido and Domenichino, to undertake the work : but the intrigues, the persecutions, and the violence of the court- painter were found more influential than the wishes of the whole nation ; and these great men successively paid the forfeit of their peace or of their lives, for having accepted the invitation and intruded upon the gloomy and desperate conspirators. The injustice and indignity with which Annibal Caracci had been treated by the chiefs of the Neapolitan School,* combining with his deep sense of the ill-treatment of his patron Cardinal Earnese, sent him back to Borne, to die of a broken heart ; and his pupil Guido, who had succeeded him, and the venerable Arpino, both saved their lives by flight. The narrow escape of Guido and his. distinguished pupil Gessi, and the fate of the two ingenious artists they had left behind them,t had reduced the committee to despair of ever seeing the pictures in their great national churches completed by the most illustrious masters of their age; and at last, yielding to intrigues * He arrived in Naples, 1609, and began his work in the Gesu Nuovo ; but, persecuted and calumniated by the faction, “ quel divino artifice,” says Lanzi, “ returned to Rome, where he shortly after died.” + Gio. Battista Ruggieri and Lorenzo Menini were seduced on board a galley in the Bay of Naples, and disappeared. A mystery long hung over their fate. OF SALVATOR ROSA. 59 secretly favoured by tbe Viceregal Court, they divided tlie works among the formidable triumviri. Corenzio and Caracciolo bad tbe frescoes for their portion ; and the great altar-pieces were reserved for their chief, Spagnuoletto ; but the Cavalieri deputati, struck with repentance for their transient weakness, suddenly recalled their orders, com- manded the paltry labours of the two enraged Frescanti to be effaced, and declared that Domenichino, the greatest his- torical painter that Italy ever produced, was alone worthy to execute works which were to do honour to the piety of a devout people, and to the munificence and judgment of a wealthy order. Domenichino reluctantly accepted the invitation (1629) ; and he arrived in Naples with the zeal of a martyr devoted to a great cause, but with a melancholy foreboding, which harassed his noble spirit, and but ill-prepared him for the persecution he was to encounter. Lodged under the special protection of the Deputati in the Palazzo dell’ Arcivescovato, adjoining the church, on going forth from his sumptuous dwelling the day after his arrival, he found a paper, ad- dressed to him, sticking in the keyhole of his anteroom. It informed him, that if he did not instantly return to Pome, he should never return there with life. Domenichino im- mediately presented himself to the Spanish Viceroy, the Conte Monterei, and claimed protection for a life then em- ployed in the service of the Church. The piety of the Count, in spite of his partiality to the faction, induced him to pledge the worn of a grandee of Spain, that Domenichino should not be molested ; and from that moment a life, no longer openly assailed, was embittered by all that the little- ness of malignant envy could invent to undermine its enjoy- ments and blast its hopes. Calumnies against his character, criticisms on his paintings, ashes mixed with his colours, and anonymous letters, were the miserable means to which his rivals resorted ; and, to complete their work of malignity, they induced the Viceroy to order pictures from him for the Court of Madrid ; and when these were little more than laid in in dead colours, they were carried to the Viceregal palace, and placed in the hands of Spagnuoletto to retouch and alter at pleasure. In this disfigured and mutilated condition they were dispatched to the gallery of the King of Spain. Thus drawn from his great works by despotic 60 LIFE AND TIMES authority, for the purpose of effecting his ruin, enduring the complaints of the Deputati, who saw their commission neg- lected, and suffering from perpetual calumnies and persecu- tions, Domenichino left the superb picture of the Martyr- dom of San Gennaro, which is now receiving the homage of posterity, and fled to Rome ; taking shelter in the solemn shades of Erescati, where he resided some time under the protection of Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini.* Obliged, however, at length to return to Naples to fulfil his fatal engagements, overwhelmed both in mind and body by the persecutions of his soi-disant patrons and his open enemies, he died in 1641, says Passeri, “fra mille crepacuori,” amidst a thousand heart-breakings,” with some suspicion of having been poisoned. Meanwhile Lanfranco, the quondam condisciple of Do- menichino in the school of the Caracci, his powerful rival and deadly foe, received an invitation from the Jesuits of Naples to execute the principal pictures of their new * It was at this peiiod that Domenichino was visited by his biographer Passeri, then an obscure youth engaged to assist in the repairs of the pic- tures in the Cardinal’s chapel. “ When we arrived at Frescati,” says Passeri in his simple style, ‘’Domenichino received me with much courtesy; and hearing that I took a singular delight in the belles lettres, it increased his kindness to me. I remember me, that I gazed on this man as though he were an angel. I remained till the end of September occupied in restoring the chapel of Saint Sebastian, which had been ruined by the damp. Some- times Domenichino would join us, singing delightfully to recreate himself as well as he could. When night set in, we returned to our apartment ; while he most frequently remained in his own, occupied in drawing, and permit- ting none to see him. Sometimes, however, to pass the time, he drew caricatures of us all, and of the inhabitants of the villa ; and when he suc- ceeded to his perfect satisfaction, he was wont to indulge in immoderate fits of laughter ; and we, who were in the adjoining room, would run in to know his reason, and then he shewed us his spirited sketches, (‘ spiritose galan- terie.’) Fie drew a caricature of me with a guitar, one of Cannini (the painter), and one of the Guarda Roba, who was lame with the gout ; and of the Sub-guarda Roba, a most ridiculous figure. To prevent our being offended, he caricatured himself. These portraits are now preserved by Signor Giovanni Pietro Bellori in his study .” 1 — Vita di Domenichino. 1 P. Bellori (who -wrote the Lives of the Painters and of the famous traveller Pietro della Valle) was nephew to Francesco Angeloni, who was, at the moment here alluded to by Passeri, secretary to the Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini, and a resident at Frascati; by which means he probably became possessed of the designs and caricatures which passed into the hands of his nephew Bellori. OE SALVATOR ROSA. 61 and magnificent church, II Gesu, (1631.) Lanfranco, the popular Parmegiano of tlie seventeenth century, who, if he could not surpass, frequently approached the excellence of Domenichino, and alone disputed with him the palm of glory — Lanfranco had long enjoyed the most brilliant ex- istence and dazzling reputation of any painter of the age. Beared in the anterooms of feudal nobility, the favourite of the great and the reverenced of the vulgar, a knight of the Roman empire, an intimate of cardinals and the protege of popes, he yet was by temperament independent; and conscious alike of his genius and his influence, he epito- mized in his person all that has been written of the pride, pomposity, and love of display, which at that particular period distinguished Rubens and others of the most emi- nent artists.* Endowed with a rapid and indefatigable power of application, so falsely supposed incompatible with genius, his works were more numerous and more generally successful than those of any painter of the age. His prices were enormous, his receipts immense ; hut his prodigality superior to both. Splendid, luxurious, and ostentatious, his villa of La Yigna, near the Porta San Pancrazio, was the resort of the festive, the elegant, and the dissipated of Rome ; and his beautiful wife, Cassandra Barli, (a true Roman lady of the Claudian day,) haughty and “ di spirito molto resoluto,” encouraged and participated in the expen- sive habits of her husband. The secret disorder which such extravagance had intro- duced into the affairs of Lanfranco, induced him to accept the offers of the Padri Gesuiti, whose liberality, as bound- less as their wealth, gave him his own prices. Accompanied by his superb wife, his three beautiful and accomplished daughters, his Seguaci, or school, and a retinue of servants and equipages, he arrived in Naples with all the eclat of a travelling prince. His showy reputation and bustling character were well adapted to the Neapolitan manners, * When John Duke of Braganza, afterwards King of Portugal, invited Rubens to Villa Viciosa, that artist set out with such a train of followers, that the Duke, apprehending the expense of entertaining so pompous a visitor, wrote to stop his journey, accompanying his excuse with a present of a hundred pistoles. The sumptuous painter refused this gift ; and replied, that he had not proposed to paint, but to recreate for a time at Villa Viciosa, and for that purpose had brought a thousand pistoles to spend there. 62 LIFE AND TIMES and strikingly contrasted with the modesty and retirement of the sublime but melancholy and ruined Domenichino. That he was the rival, and had been the personal enemy of the eminent painter, who had been preferred by the Neapolitan dilettanti to their native artists, rendered his reception, even by the formidable “faction,” gracious and flattering.* He was immediately presented to the reigning Viceroy, the Duke di Medina, and earnestly prayed by the Vice-queen, a Spanish lady of great beauty, to paint her picture. All the Neapolitan artists now hurried to II Gresu, and crowded beneath the cupola, where, mounted on a lofty platform, Lanfranco was already creating that be- atific vision of Paradise, which was to surpass the “ glory” of his cupola of St. Andrea at Home. All were anxious to attract the attention of this celebrated artist, either by their personal merit, or by decrying the talents of his im- mortal rival ;t and the highest as well as the lowest among the Neapolitan painters (all alike vain and self-opinionated) sought his suffrage for their works, or endeavoured to get his testimony in favour of their peculiar maniera. One there was whom poverty or pride held aloof from the circle which crowded round the platform of Lanfranco : too obscure to attract his notice, too unbending to seek it ; and though not wholly unknown as the author of those bold sketches which sold “ad ogni prezzo piu vile,” still known only by the familiar and insignificant appellation of II Salvatoriello. It happened that as the Cavaliere Lan- franco was returning one day in his splendid equipage * The following original letter of Lanfranco to his friend at Rome, Signor Ferrante Carlo, paints the flattering reception he received at Naples, and forms a strong contrast to the epistles of his great rival. “ Sign. Ferrante, mio Signor, “ La do nuovo che sono arrivato con sanita a Napoli per grazia di nostro Signore, con quella parte di famiglia che V. S. sa : dove sono molto ben visto e accarezzato; talche il contento saria perfetto, se non fosse la rimembranza non diro della patria e di Roma, ma degli amici e padroni che sono in essa. Dei padri Gesuiti ho recevuto, e ricevo giornalmente gran favori, come fa Cassandra da molte genti.li donne di questa paese.” f The rivalry of Domenichino and Lanfranco began in their boyhood, when they were both pupils of the Caracci. Passeri, however, observes, “ Col tempo cessarano tutte le ostilita e le perfidie and if Domenichino really died of poison, and not (as is much more likely) of a broken heart, Lanfranco by this attestation stands clear of a crime not very consonan with his frank, loyal, and amiable character. OF SALYATOE EOSA. 63 from La Chiesa del Gesu to his lodgings by La Strada della Carita, he was struck by a picture in oil which hung outside the shop-door of a rivenditore , with other odds and ends of second-hand wares. Lanfranco stopped his car- riage, and ordered Antonio Bichieri, his favourite pupil, to alight, and bring him the painting which had attracted his attention. The rivenditore was struck by an honour so little to he expected. The carriage of the great Signor Cavaliere Lanfranco stopping before his miserable hulk, was a distinction to excite the envy of all his compeers in the Strada della Carita ; and he came forward with many gesticulations of respect, wiping the dust from a painting on canvas, four palms in length, which had lain for weeks unnoticed at his shop-door; while “hells” and “purgato- ries,” saints and martyrs, had gone off with successful ra- pidity. Lanfranco took the picture into his carriage ; and a nearer inspection convinced him of the accuracy of his first rapid decision. It was labelled “ Istoria di Agar e del suo figlio languenti per la seta.” The affecting story of Hagar had already been treated by Guercino ; and the virtuosi of other and distant countries made pilgrimages to Bologna,* to view that master-piece of art which now at- tracts the eyes even of the unlearned, amidst all the splen- did works which surround it in the gallery of the Brera at Milan. Guercino had taken that moment in the story of Hagar, when, having been brought back to the arms of Abraham by “ the angel of the Lord,” she is again driven forth through the jealousy of Sarah. She is still in all the force of health and pride of beauty; and she pauses at the threshold of the timid Abraham’s dwelling to expostulate and to reproach. The scene is suited to the action ; and the commodious pastoral dwelling, from which she is sent an outcast, exhibits all the rural wealth of that Patriarch who is described as being very “ rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.” But another epoch and another view of the story of Hagar had been taken in the picture which now fixed the attention -of the chief of the Bom an school. The scene was the wilderness of Beersheba ; but so boldly This picture originally hung in the Sampieri gallery at Bologna. LIFE AND TIMES 64 conceived, so desolate, and so dreary, tliat Nature could alone furnish its details in those vast regions where few then had ventured to study. The incident was that, so terrible . and affecting in the life of the young outcast mother, when, having long wandered through pathless de- serts and under burning skies, she beholds her last hope extinguished; “for the water was spent in the bottle” which Abraham had put on her shoulder, and the bread had long been devoured which stood between her child and death. She was no more the same blooming and indignant Hagar as at the moment of departure ; but that Hagar who had, indeed, been “hardly dealt with.” She appeared to have just “ cast her child under one of the shrubs,” and had “ sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bow-shot ; for she said, Let me not see the death of the child ; and she sat over against him, and lifted up her voice and wept.” There was in the conception of this picture a tone of deep and powerful feeling, a gloomy and melancholy origi- nality, which probably struck on the imagination of Lan- franco even more than its execution. He sought for the name of the painter, who was evidently of no school, who copied no master, and whose manner was all his own ; and in a corner he perceived a superscription unknown to fame, and by its diminutive termination almost consigned to ridi- cule. It was “Salvatoriello.” The rivenditore either could not, or would not, give any intelligence concerning the painter ; and Lanfranco, paying without hesitation the price demanded, carried home the picture in his carriage, and gave general orders to his pupils to purchase all they saw bearing the signature of Salvatoriello, without reserva- tion. When he departed for Home, Hagar was the com- panion of his voyage, and became the chief ornament of his picture-gallery at La Yigna, # where he shewed it himself to Passeri. * All that has been said in the modem biographical sketches of Salvator Rosa, particularly by Fuseli and Pilkington, of the patronage afforded him by Lanfranco, amounts to the solitary fact alluded to by his own contem- poraries, that Lanfranco bought some beautiful but low-priced pictures of Salvatoriello, when at Naples, for La Vigna. Neither Bellori, nor any of the Italian biographers of Lanfranco, make the slightest allusion to his ever having spoken to or seen Salvator. In the life, however, prefixed to Sal- vator’s satires, it is said, that Lanfranco “assisted him with money and OF SALVATOR ROSA. Go This incident of the purchase of TIagar, and the sweeping order that followed it, caused considerable sensation in the school of Spagnuoletto, and among the dilettanti of Naples; which the rivenditore who had sold the picture, and others of his brethren who were in possession of works by the same hand, made use of to raise the humble price hitherto demanded for the quadretti of the young and neglected artist. They now began to place some value on pictures, which they had hitherto considered it a risk to purchase, even at prices which scarcely repaid the expense for canvas and colours. But if the public and the profession took some interest in an incident so trifling, it operated like a spell on the indigent and depressed Salvatoriello. There is a proud consciousness accompanying the highest order of genius, which no neglect can stifle, no failure ex- tinguish. It is a part of that genius itself, springing out of its discrimination, and belonging to its instincts. It may be wounded, blighted, disappointed, but it can never be deceived. It will appreciate the superiority out of which it arises, in spite of the dictum of passing opinion and the temporary decrees of a misjudging generation. Equally remote from the petulant arrogance of pretending medio- crity, as from the canting submission of that seeming virtue Humility, it judges, boldly but calmly, of the merit it accompanies, by a standard which contemporary opinion cannot influence. This cheering confidence was not want- ing amidst the efforts of the miserable Salvatoriello, through all the neglect and obscurity of his young and struggling instructions,” “con consiglio e col denaro lo incoraggi a proseguire i suoi studj.” Neither Baldinucci nor Passeri (the chief authorities for all that has been written of Salvator Rosa in modern times) says anything on the subject. The account given by Passeri is as follows ; “ Quando ritorno il Lanfranco a Roma da Napoli P ultima volta, che vi mori, condusse seco quel quadro di Agar, e me lo fece vedere, e per verita era tocco con gran gusto pittoresco. Quei bottegari che si avvidero, che un Lanfranco, pittore di quella stima, comprava i Quadri di Salvatoriello, da loro cosi chiamato, fecero argomanto che fossero di valore, e cominciarono a fare istanza di volerne ; ed egli a cui non manco mai P accortezza, fattosi destro, si pose in maggior altezza di prezzo.” P. 418. Pascoli, who wrote later, however, observes that Lanfranco having pur- chased his picture, sought his acquaintance, encouraged him to study, and employed him in painting others. The perpetuated poverty of Salvator during his youth, is the best comment on this variable text. 66 LIFE AND TIMES days ; and it broke forth frankly, though perhaps indis- creetly, in the hour of his more prosperous fortunes. He knew his own merit from the first ; and a feeling conviction of the contempt and indifference with which he was treated in his native country was, perhaps, the suffering he was the least able to support. The discrimination of one of the first masters of the age (a foreigner to whom he was unknown even by name) had found him out, and this decision in his favour gave him a confidence that raised those drooping and susceptible spirits, which were but too prone to sink into the deep gloom of cheerless despondency. It had also the dangerous effect of awakening a scarcely concealed emotion of triumph over those, who, by all the arts of intrigue and servility, had failed to obtain the suffrages of the great umpire, who had lavished them on the only one who had neither sought his notice, nor availed himself of his favour. Greedy of honour and of fame, as Baldinucci describes the young painter to have been, (“ avido di onore e di stima,”) and reckless then, as through life, of all sordid views, he yet immediately raised his prices ; and though frequently refused his de- mand, (for there came no more Lanfrancos to the shop of the rivenditori^) he persisted in the courageous resolution of not underselling himself, even when famine stared him in the face, and when the exigencies of his family urged him to the sacrifice of that self-respect, which his haughty spirit never after forfeited. The judgment passed by Lanfranco on his works, by making him known to fame, exposed him to the envy and hatred of the less distinguished candidates for that illus- trious painter’s notice ; and the indiscretion which naturally belonged to his youth, his ready wit and petulant spirit, the brilliant repartees and bitter sarcasms with which he replied to their taunts and calumnies, raised against him that species of enmity, the most deadly, because it is founded on wounded vanity, which never forgives. The painters of Naples, many of them ingenious, but all unedu- cated, attacked him on the score of his presumption, and on the miserable necessities which obliged him to work for the rivenditori ; a circumstance then considered as positive degradation. These vulgar sarcasms he retorted by epi- grams, distinguished no less by their classic elegance than OP SALVATOR ROSA, 67 their causticity. He sung the satires he wrote; and while he drew the laughter ou his side, he armed the dull (always the most numerically powerful) against him. Those versa- tile talents, however, which raised him an host of enemies, procured him one friend, who was well calculated, by his genius and the peculiar cast of his position, to appreciate all that was singular and admirable in the young painter’s character. This friend was Ancillo Falcone, the first and best of the pupils of Spagnuoletto, whom for a time he rivalled, and in a peculiar style finally surpassed. Falcone was sixteen years older than Salvator, and was now himself the chief of a school, which, partaking of his own manner, still perpetuated the style of the school of his gloomy master. Flis great talent was displayed in the representa- tion of battles, in which he was long inimitable, and in which he was never surpassed but by his friend and dis- ciple, Salvator Bosa. Falcone was, indeed, the Xenophon of his art, and, as it afterwards appeared, was well calcu- lated to fight the battles he painted. The energy of his character and the elevation of his mind were exhibited in all he executed. Fie drew up his forces on canvas with a skill that shewed him no less an able tactician, than an exquisite artist. His subjects were all chosen from history; and his belligerent groups, of all nations and eras, various in their costume and physiognomy as in their arms and evolutions, were all vital in their expression. The motions and attitudes of his figures, and even of his horses, were full of nature and propriety; and it was difficult to believe that this warrior-painter had never seen a battle fought until long after his fame as a painter of battles was esta- blished. But it was easy to discern through his earliest productions, the vocation of the future Captain of the Compagnia della Morte. The merits of the obscure Salvatoriello were, probably, made known to Falcone through the incident of Lanfranco’s distinction ; Falcone, by generously opening to him his own school, and presenting him to Spagnuoletto, acquired for himself and his chief the glory of having counted among their disciples one who was destined to surpass them both. But though a friendship thus begun terminated only with the lives of Falcone and Bosa, the benefit derived by the latter, in a professional point of view, was not consider- 68 LIFE AND TIMES able/* He rather passed through the schools of Spagnuo- letto and Falcone, than studied in them; and, as Vasari says of Coreggio, was still a painter “made by Nature, rather than by any particular master.” Falcone was, in- deed, willing to give his young disciple the advantages which rules and the mechanical instruction of the art could afford ; but he could do no more — he could not procure him employment ; and the unfortunate youth continued, as before, to labour for the rivenditori ; but, from the increase of his prices, with infinitely less success. His pictures, as they were chiefly landscapes, enriched with groups and incidents taken from profane history, and from the more brilliant adventures of heroic poetry, were not adapted to the Neapolitan market, and in the self-will of honest un- comprising genius he refused to prostituted his talents to the bad passions and peculiar prejudices of his times and country. He adhered pertinaciously to the delineation of the scenery of Nature, and of human incidents ; and when called on by his employers for a subject of terror and suffering, he chose to exhibit the punishment inflicted on a tyrant, rather than the agonies of a divine and innocent being. The neglect he endured in his native country, whose suffrage he (like all patriots) would have preferred to every other, preyed upon his spirits, and added to his embarrass- ments: while the consciousness of his superior merits, which he carried to excess, and an ambition which never slumbered, alone supported him through this period of obloquy and distress. * It is singular that Passeri, who lived in habits of intimacy with Rosa, and must have taken many of his details from Rosa’s own mouth, never men- tions his having studied either with Spagnuoletto or with Falcone. Pascoli, however, observes, that “ he was esteemed and beloved by Ribera,” and that while he frequented his school he greatly improved himself in design and colouring. + “ E molto fu egli fiero di se medesimo, che se conosceva, e tenevasi in pregio.” — Pascoli. OE SALVATOE EOSA. 69 CHAPTEK IV. 1634 - 5 . It is one of the peculiar attributes of genius, or of the temperament which produces genius, that its energies in- crease in proportion to the pressure of those adverse cir- cumstances which require its exertion. The dark moment of Salvator’s life, when famine had already begun its ravages in the miserable family* for whose support he still toiled in vain, was the instant which gave birth to his resolution of leaving Naples, t and of seeking the way to fortune by a broader path than that which was open to him in the land of his birth — a land wholly unworthy of the genius it wanted knowledge to appreciate, or patriotism to recom- pense. With all that promptitude of will, which through life left him no languid pause for timid consideration, he resolved on visiting Pome ; and the execution of his project followed close upon its conception. Eriendless, if not hopeless, he began this journey in his twentieth year;J leaving Naples with such heart-burnings of deep-seated indignation, as those only feel, who, loving their native land, are driven from it by a neglect, which no triumph of foreign suffrages can ever obliterate or assuage. In catching a last view of the paradise he was leaving, he is said to have shed tears. Eor Salvator, like all persons of genius not early corrupted, was a patriot ; and his fre- quent returns to his worthless country, debased as it was by ages of political degradation, attest the love he bore it. But if “some natural tears he dropped,” tears soon dry at twenty : and while he trod, step by step, that Appian Way, of which Horace had bequeathed him the poetical topo- graphy, his spirits rallied ; and the images of the antique * “ Trovossi egli colla madre col restante della famiglia, in miserabilissimo stato ed oltremodo affiitto dalle miserie, fino a mancargli il necessario sosten- tamento, nel tempo appunto in cui maggiori abbisognavagli i comodi, e la quiete per altendere agli studj ! ! ” — Vita di Salvator Rosa , tratta da vari Autori. *j* “ Parendogli di far torto al suo nome, tenerlo ristratto e fra le mure di Napoli, voleva farlo noto anche fuori, e trasferre a Roma.” — Fascoli. X In the year 1634-5. 70 LIFE AtfD TIMES world, which rose in sublime succession on bis view, from Capo da Chino to the Porta San Giovanni, in awakening the classical associations of his well-furnished memory, opened new sources of moral and graphic combinations to his vigorous and reproductive imagination.* Salvator, like Horace, performed the greater part of this journey on foot ; and he is said to have arrived under the mouldering walls of Pome, in much the same plight as Ber- nardo Tasso had done before him, who entered “ La grande Boma” with two shirts under one arm, and his “ Amadigi” under the other. The whole wardrobe of Salvator was strapped to his back, and his whole fortunes deposited in the portfolio which gave it balance. In entering the greatest city of the world at the Ave Maria, the hour of Italian recreation, — in passing from the silent desolate suburbs of San Giovanni to the Corso, (then a place of crowded and populous resort,) where the princes of the Conclave presented themselves in all the pomp and splendour of Oriental satraps, — the feelings of the young and solitary stranger must have suffered a revulsion, in the consciousness of his own misery. Never, perhaps, in the deserts of the Abruzzi, in the solitudes of Otranto, or in the ruins of Passtum, did Salvator experience sensations of such utter loneliness, as in the midst of this gaudy and multitudinous assemblage ; for in the history of melancholy sensations there are few comparable to that sense of isola- tion, to that desolateness of soul, which accompanies the first entrance of the friendless on a world where all, save they , have ties, pursuits, and homes. With none to receive and none to direct him, Salvator, guided by the instincts of poverty, retraced his steps from this gay quarter of the city, and sought one of those dreary “ inns in the suburbs, many of which are formed out of the tombs of antiquity, affording an asylum, and but an asylum, to the indigent living.”! Shortly afterwards Milton arrived * Of this first visit to Rome, Passeri, whose acquaintance with Rosa did not take place till some years afterwards, makes no mention : all his other biographers allude to it. b “ La voie Appienne, abandonee aujourd’hui, dans la partie qui conduit de Rome a Albane, sur une longueur de trois lieues, n’est plus qu’une ligne droite tracee par deux files de tombeaux ruines qui semblent se toucher. J’en connois qui sont devenus des Cabarets.” — Bonsletten , Voyage dans le Latium. Or SALVATOR BOS A. 71 in Home, under very different circumstances. He was received by the learned and the noble, “ with the greatest humanity.” Sonnets and distichs in his honour poured forth from the Bom an muse ; and Cardinal Barberini came forward to the door of his apartment to receive him, as princes only are received. Milton and Salvator, who, in genius, character, and poli- tical views, bore no faint resemblance to each other, though living at the same time both in Borne and Naples, remained mutually unknown. The obscure and indigent young painter had, doubtless, no means of presenting himself to the great republican poet of England — if indeed he had then ever heard of one, so destined to illustrate the age in which both flourished. In the early period of the seventeenth century, Borne, in preserving some of the exterior forms of her ancient gran- deur, had lost the substance of that power which, partly derived from spiritual authority and partly from temporal dominion, had once nearly subjugated Europe, and paved the way to an universal monarchy of her pontiffs. In one half of the Christian world the power of Borne was now contemned ; and if in the other half the head of the Boman Church was venerated as a father, there were those among his children who resisted him with reason and with success. Struggling for prerogatives once regarded as inalienable rights, upholding jurisdictions which many considered but as long-established abuses, the representatives of St. Peter continued to exhibit some semblance of their former supre- macy ; and by much pretension, deep policy, exquisite sup- pleness, and unwearied patience, they hid from the world, if not from themselves, the decay of their influence and the precariousness of their sway. All the Catholic kings, on their accession, still sent ambassadors to Borne, who were called “ di obedienza,” or of obedience. Every Catholic crown in Europe was represented by a member of the Con- clave, who took the name of protector. The high society of the Christian metropolis consisted almost exclusively of these foreign ambassadors and the connexions and followers of the “Dei Cardinaloni and the intrigues of the Con- clave,! the disputes for precedence, and personal quarrels * De Retz. ! Called by De Retz, “ les finoteries da Conclave.” 72 LIFE AND TIMES of the diplomatic coteries,* afforded the only disturbance that broke upon the monumental tranquillity of the “ Eter- nal City;” which the institutes of a fatal religion were rapidly depopulating, and which a resistance to the pro- gressive improvements of the age, was separating from all European interests and illumination. Eor the rest, Rome enjoyed a profound peace ; and while the vilest corruption existed in the morals of the people under a neglected internal police and the worst of domestic governments, the increasing passion for luxury and show, in the idle and worthless princes, and in the sumptuous and ambitious cardinals, f united with public tranquillity to favour the arts, and to render Rome under Urban VIII., as she had been under Julius II., the great studio of Europe. Maffeo Barberini, who in 1623 was elected pope under the title of Urban VIII., was in the full flower of his age, when Salvator Rosa arrived for the first time within view of the cupola of St. Peter’s. Urban was a mere domestic Pope ; bustling and interfering at home, but confining all his views abroad to the preservation of peace. He viewed with selfish indifference, or sought only to remove by fasts and prayers imposed on the people, the horrible ravages of famine and pestilence, which raged in the Roman States during the greater part of his reign. But he was full of active solicitude to provide against the probable attacks of his powerful neighbours, by fortifying the Quirinal, and furnishing the Vatican with an arsenal for four legions, destined to guard his infallible person. Cautiously avoid- ing ; European politics, he directed all his views to Church diplomacy. Pie suppressed the female Jesuits (1631), gave the cardinals the title of “Eminence,” conferred on the Capuchins that of the “ true sons of St. Erancis,” published a solemn bull against snuff-taking in church, and by his poetical effusions became the magnus Apollo of the ante- chambers of the Quirinal, where admiring Camerlinghi and * The factions of Spain and France, headed by their respective Cardinal Protectors, kept up a sort of civil war in the heart of the city, in which il aigreurs et niaiserie” (ill- nature and silly rivalry) were accompanied by open murders and secret assassinations. p Cardinal de Retz, though in exile, was obliged to put eighty servants in livery, in order that he might not be “ sur le pied des plus gueux des Cardi- naux-moines,” who could not go with less than this “ Livree roulante” to any of the functions. OE SALVATOR ROSA. 73 obsequious Monsignori assigned him the adjunctive appel- lation of “the Attic bee.” # But the passion of the ponti- fical poet for writing odes to Saints, and epigrams on sinners, did not interfere with his devotion to the arts, respecting which he was a true Barberini. An inordinate influx of wealth into the coffers of this powerful family, for which there were no other employments than the erection of palaces and villas, or the collection of works of art to adorn them, had rendered this family the titular patrons of most of the living artists ; and the purchase which they had made of the ancient fief of Palestrina (the site of the wars of Sylla) from the illustrious but declining house of Co- lonna, had opened a new source of virtu to Italian cogno- scenti. The excavations also carried on by the Barberini at Palestrina,! and the Mosaics found there, (the commence- ment of their celebrated collection,) had awakened in the wealthiest members of the family a passion for the arts, which reflected on almost all the living artists of the age. The elevation of a Barberini to the pontifical throne was, therefore, supposed to promise “ im secolo oro per la pit- tura” (a golden age for painting) ; and the aspiring artists of the times, untaught by the melancholy fate of the Caracci, looked up to the protection of a particular family for that fortune which the suffrages of a public should alone bestow. Patronage, substituted for opinion, produced dependence, and palsied competition ; and the exclusive influence of the Pope, cardinals, and princes of the Barberini family, threw the destiny of the arts into the hands of one, whose medio- crity and inordinate personal vanity rendered him the least proper for so arduous and important a situation. Lorenzo Bernino, or Bernini, the son of a Plorentine artist, a Neapolitan by birth, a sculptor, architect, and painter by profession,]; was one of those extraordinary instances of precocity which never fail to astonish the shal- * The “ Poemata Maffei Barberini” are now little known, and are rarely to be found, except in a Roman library. “ Nous avons de lui (Urban VIII.) un gros recueil de vers latins : et il faut avouer que l’Arioste et le Tasse ont mieux reussi.” — Voltaire. ! It was in these excavations that the Portland Vase was found, so long the ornament of the Barberini palace at Rome. + He was born in 1598. His picture by Leone, done in his twenty-fifth year, exhibits him as a well-looking youth, with a certain air of audacity and self-possession extremely illustrative of his character. 4 LIFE A2TD TIMES 74 low, which frequently impose on the profound, and which seldom realise in their maturity the promise of the prema- ture excellence of their youth. A head sculptured by the clever boy at twelve years old, and placed by the vanity of his father for exhibition in the church of Santa Prassede at Borne, excited much attention ; and Pope Paul V. (a Bor- ghese) was talked into a curiosity to see the ingenious child. Presented at the Vatican, the little artist was ordered by the Pope, “by way of a joke,” (“come per ischerzo,”) says Bellori, to draw him a head with a pen. “What head would you have ?” asked the unabashed boy. “ Nay,” said the Pope, “ if I am only to ask and have, give me a St. Paul.” A beau ideal of the head of St. Paul was sketched with rapidity ; and whatever was its merit, it was finished “ con sommo diletto emaraviglia del Papa” — “to the great content and wonder of his Holiness.” The fortune of a boy, who could delight and astonish a Pope, was thus laid upon the broad and sure foundation of all fortunes in Pome. The Pope, as the price of a miracle by which he was so largely benefited, filled the hands of the tiny artist with golden medals ; and, giving him up to the care of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, said, in the child’s hearing, “ Speriamo che questo giovinetto debbe diventare il Michelagnolo del secolo” — “ Let us hope that this boy will become the Michael Angelo of the age.” The prophecy was sufficient to defeat itself; and Bernini, beginning where he should have ended, became the greatest coxcomb, if not the greatest genius of his time. Bandied by cardinals, bequeathed as a legacy from pope to pope, adulated by the dependants of the Conclave, and eulo- gized by all the poets of the day, the young Bernini received a little fortune for every bust he executed, at the same age at which Guido was grateful to his patron (a tailor) for six scudi given him for one of his divine heads : yet, in the eyes of posterity, what a distance between Guido and Bernini ! The accession of Maffeo Barberini to the pontifical throne crowned the fortunes of the lucky Lorenzo and one of the first acts of Urban VIII. was to create his favourite * When Bernini presented himself to Urban, a few days after his eleva- tion, the Pope addressed him in the following flattering manner : “ E' gran fortuna la vostra Bernini, di vedere Papa il Card. Maffeo Barberini ; ma assai maggiore e la nostra, che il Caval. Bernini viva nel nostro pontificato.” — “ It is a singular piece of good fortune for you, Bernini, to behold Maffeo OE SALYATOE EOSA. 75 (already made a Knight of the Holy Boman Empire by Gregory XY.) architect to the Basilicum of St. Peter. His pensions were at the same time enormously increased, and his two brothers were collated to benefices in the Lateran and St. Peter’s. Diligent as he was ambitions, his inde- fatigable vanity led him to apply himself to all the arts. While he wrote childish verses with the Pope, whose ambi- tion aimed at blue stockings no less than red , he pursued architecture, sculpture, and painting, with contemporary success,* far more brilliant than had ever been obtained by the more powerful and concentrated geniuses who had pre- ceded him. A fawning courtier in the saloons of princes, Bernini was at Borne, like Lebrun in Paris, a tyrant to the arts. He saw no merit in the artist who did not bow dow n before the throne to which fashion and patronage had raised him. His disciples were his slaves ; and of the many who sought his notice, few derived substantial benefits from his patronage ; wdiile years of anxious expectation and pining servitude were for the most part repaid only by a conviction of the fallacy of waiting on the capricious favour of a man whom fortune had spoiled, and whose overweening vanity obscured his better judgment, and lessened the value of his talents. When Salvator Bosa arrived at Borne, his prosperous countryman was in all the first flush of triumph at the completion and success of his great work, the Baldichino of St. Peter’s, f which had cost the State for gilding alone, an Barberini Pope, but much more so for us to have Bernini living in our pon- tificate.” — See Bellori. There was a period, says Sir J. Reynolds, when to name Vandyke in com- petition with Kneller was to incur contempt. The character of the eighteenth century in England resembled that of the seventeenth in Italy. It was the age of English mediocrity, the reaction of that powerful burst of national genius developed by the civil wars and the revolution. * Louis XIV. invited Bernini to France, from which the ill-requited Poussin was so happy to escape. Bernini had, during his residence in Paris, five louis a day, five thousand crowns as a cadeau , a pension of two thousand for himself and five hundred for his son ; yet the designs he made for the Louvre were never made use of. This idle prodigality of kings is the result more of ignorance than of vice. If they usually know little of the arts, they are even still less aware of the value of money. L The materials were torn from the Pantheon, — that Pantheon which M. Angelo would have deemed it sacrilege to touch ! The difference between this Baldichino and the Cupola of St. Peter’s gives the precise difference 76 LIFE Al^D TIMES hundred thousand golden scndi, and which was exposed to the public on the feast of St. Peter, with religious pomp and dramatic effect. The splendid school of the Caracci had passed, or was passing away. Domenichino was living in solitude in the shades of Frescati, preparatory to his second fatal journey to Naples. Lanfranco was still in Naples, whence he only returned to die. Guido, whose morbid sensibility had been wounded to the quick by his would-be protector Cardinal Spinola, had recently left Some in disgust, and had retired to his native Bologna ; where in his old age he enjoyed that noble independence he had struggled so hard through the precarious fortunes of his youth to obtain. Caravaggio had long before met his frightful death in the deserts of the Pontine Marshes. The great passions which had animated these lofty geniuses were stilled ; and the energizing warfare of contending talents was succeeded by the blasting influence of patronage and the degrading arts of intrigue. With much the same influence on the arts as their bar- barous ancestors had exerted on the manners and habits of the Mistress of the world, “ Gli Oltramontani,” more gene- rally known in Europe by the generic name of the Flemish School, had at this time acquired a celebrity in Borne. “ Quel generebaronesco,” as an Italian writer of the seven- teenth century contemptuously denotes this school, included a race of painters, who, issuing from the coarsest ranks of society in France, # Holland, Flanders, and the Low Coun- tries, came to study in the galleries of Borne ; and returned to their native homesf as little tinctured by the beau ideal of the sublime Boman masters in their works, as in their between the genius of Bernini and of M. Angelo ; yet the latter died pos- sessed of a bare sufficiency, and the former worth two millions. Bernini’s fame fell with the age which gave it birth ; and as an artist, the Italians of the present day place him in the same line with his friend Marino as a poet. The Baldichino, however, the Daphne and Apollo, the fountain of the Piazza Navona, and the noble Colonnade of the Vatican, are testimonies of a talent sufficient to justify the regret that its possessor should have- descended to those littlenesses, which should only belong to envious mediocrity. * The French artists, though included in the term “ Oltramontani,” and though they deviated in many respects from the purity of the Italian schools, are not to be confounded with their Dutch and Flemish neighbours, either in respect of manners or style. This looseness of the Italian epithet tends to confound under one name things essentially distinct. f With very few exceptions, of which Vandyke is the most conspicuous. OP SALYATOE EOS A. 77 character and habits they were touched by the refinement of Italian manners. Between the passionate, imaginative, and high-toned beings who filled the superior ranks of the arts in Italy, and the significantly named Oltramontani there existed the same disparity in point of morals as in their respective styles of painting. The “ Aurora” of Guido and the “ Pish- wife” of Durer, the grand action of Domenichino’s painted Epics and the interior of Teniers’s Pot-houses, the heaven that looked from the eyes of BaphaeFs “ Saint Cecilia” and the oblique glance of Wander’s grotesque Bamboeeiate, were not more contrasted than the views, thoughts, and manners of men, who equally saw Nature in all her truth, but saw her under different impressions, and seized her in different aspects. The cause in which painting was first engaged in Italy, had given an holy elevation to all that issued from its great schools: and those brilliant and lofty imaginations, which had dared to conceive and to represent the Divine presence, and which went no lower in the scale of creation than to paint those “ middle spirits” 46 Between th’ angelic and the human kind,” could see no merit in the well- depicted viscera of a dead fish, or the disgusting details of a slaughter-house ; while from the exhibition of the moral vices of the lowest of the people, or the infirmities and deformities of physical nature, however exquisitely or faithfully delineated, they turned revolted and abashed. # The manners and customs of the two Schools effected a still wider separation between their members. The Italian artists were elegant voluptuaries ; more fastidious than intemperate, gallantry to excess was their master-vice; and their villas, their gardens, their superb costume, the care lavished on their persons, of whose beauty posterity may still judge in the galleries of Borne, Elorence, and Bologna, were all rendered conducive to their dominant passion, to which religion herself stands indebted for the Magdalens and Madonnas with which love furnished her altars and her shrines. * The remark of Sir J. Reynolds, “ that the character of a nation is more marked by its taste in painting than by any other pursuit, however consider- able,” is here strictly applicable. 78 LIFE AKD TIMES The vice of the Oltramontani was that most opposed to gallantry — drunkenness ; * and the quaint picture of these painters, left by the worshipper of Domenichino, illustrates at the same moment their habits, so new to Home, and the impression they made on the fastidious minds of the Italian artists. t But while the Italians were loud and open in their expressions of disgust, not only at the brutal manners, but at the low, gross, and vile subjects which the Blemish School was introducing into the arts, (“ subjects,” says one of their body, “ which may amuse the people, but can never touch souls elevated by one noble idea,”) this new style was received with universal approbation by the public. It was neiv , and it was nature ; and the sympathies of the people were all in unison with its coarse but faithful and admirable representations of the scenes in which they most delighted, and the habits with which they were most familiar. Even the great caught the infection. The “ stilo Bambocciato” * Salvator Rosa alludes to the drunkenness of the English and German artists in more places than one in his Satires. “ Imbriacar gli Inglese e gli Alemanni Con il vino non gia, &c. &c. &c. ***** Andar con quei Fiaminghi alia Taverna Che profanando in un la terra e 1’ Etere, Flan trovato un batismo alia moderna.” I “ At this time ” (sa} T s Passeri) “ the Ultramontanes, according to their different nations, assembled together, the French with the French, the Dutch with the Dutch, the Flemish with the Flemish : and when money was rife, and one of their countrymen arrived at Rome, he was obliged to invite the whole band of his compatriots to a sumptuous feast, given at some of the most celebrated taverns. To these feasts every one contributed his share, though the novice was the principal pa} r master. The recreation lasted twenty-four hours, at the least, without the parties leaving the table; for the wine was brought to them in hogsheads. This brawl they were wont to call the baptism. Their indiscretion in giving this holy appellation to their festivity arose from the circumstance of a new name being affixed on the novice, generally derived from some peculiarity in his face, figure, or demeanour. Peter Wander, who was ill-proportioned, was christened the Bamboccio , by which name he was ever after called.” Salvator Rosa has left on poetical record, not only his contempt for the vices, but for the ignorance and bad taste of these men, and his indignation at their having vitiated and degraded the noblest of the arts. “ Mira con quanti obbrobrj e quanti eccessi Dagli artefici propri oggi s’ oscura II piii chiaro mestier che si professi.” La Pittura. OF SALYATOR ROSA. 79 became a fashionable caprice, and the snperb galleries of princes and pontiffs were “ infected with these vilenesses, fit only for pot-houses and taverns.”* Interest, with its ever sure instincts, soon directed the talents, which were to live by the public, to the public predilections ; and as many of the Italian artists as were not devoted to the manner of Raphael and the Caracci, or had not swelled the train of Bernini, became imitators of the Blemish School, and disciples and followers of Wander, and of Miele, at that epoch the most popular of its chiefs. f From the followers of Bernini and the school of the Oltramontani, Salvator Rosa stood equally aloof. To have added his distich or sonnet to the tributary effusions offered to the “ arbitero delle belle arti,” the arbiter of the fine arts of the day, — to have joined the drunken brawls and rude wassailage of the Ultramontanes, — and to have em- ployed a pencil, consecrated by Nature to her highest sub- limity, upon the coarse delineation of vulgar life, would have been to follow the common path: but Salvator was not only morally, but physically, incapacitated for such a course ; and his ardent temperament and contemplative mind still hurried him to objects consonant to the impulses of the one and the combinations of the other. Having visited the churches and galleries, J and, with his usual * “ E questi quadri son tanto apprezzati Che si vedon de’ grandi entro gli studj Di superbi ornamenti incorniciati.” La Pittura. To this Pnsseri adds his prosaic and indignant testimony. “ Non resta- vano perd costoro di infettare alcune gallerie digne di gran personaggi con quelle vilta, che erano soltanto proprie da casali e da camere di locande.” — Vita di Giov. Miele. This embraces the whole secret. The Flemish painters (some blame- able excesses of ill-taste apart) painted those objects which will ever be most interesting to nations who can boast of “a people;” subjects which, while they “ prate of the whereabout ” of real life, and call on the sympathies of the fathers and husbands of the laborious classes, are much better adapted for the small apartments of this portion of society, than historical pictures. It may be added, that dead fish and dead game are at least not more offen- sive objects for familiar contemplation than murdered saints and tortured martyrs. Both schools had reason on their side; but neither, perhaps, could place itself in the proper situation for judging dispassionately of the other. X “ Comincia subito a andar vedendo le maravigliose pitture, e scolture, che in ricca copia P adornano (Roma) &c. &c. &c.” — Pascoli. 80 LIFE AND TIMES impetuosity, decided at once in favour of Michael Angelo and Titian, * in whom he found nature and truth undis- figured by the ignorant anachronisms which shocked him even in the pictures of [Raphael, he gave up his days and his nights to Ancient Borne. He was wont to climb the loneliest and the loftiest of her seven hills, and from the summit of Mount Aventine to sketch some great feature of desolation which the Borne of the Caesars presented to his pencil. He loitered long and often in that noxious but interesting suburb, where stand in singular opposition the temple of Yesta and the house of Cola di Bienzi. He wandered along the infected shores of the Tiber, and kept pace with the fearful and wretched galley-slaves, who dragged some crazy vessel through the muddy stream, freighted with filthy rags (then the only exportation of the “World’s great Mistress”); he visited those deserts into which the Porta Leone (the Trigemina of antiquity) con- ducts, — a spot consecrated to melancholy meditation, where the tomb of C. Cestius and the vast unfrequented Basili- con of St. Paul f seem to rise as landmarks of time on the boundaries of desolation. He penetrated mouldering ruins, and plunged into noxious excavations, insensible during * Notwithstanding his great admiration of the genius of Michael Angelo, he disapproved of the conception of the Last Judgment, as not being suffici- ently sublime; though the manner in which it was executed rendered it in his eyes a school of study. He has on this subject given his opinion freely in one of his Satires, for he never seems to have been daunted by a name, however great; nor dazzled by an authority, however antiquated. 1 Michel Angelo mio, non parlo in gioco; Questo che dipingete e un gran Giudizio, Ma del giudizio voi n’ avete poco. My Michael Angelo, I do not jest, Thy pencil a great judgment has express’d; But in that judgment, thou, alas! hast shown But very little judgment of thine own ! ! Salvator Rosa , la Pittura. f Since the above was written, this most ancient and interesting church has been destroyed by an accidental fire, and its immense riches in antique marbles utterly lost. 1 The nudity of the figures in Michael Angelo’s Last Judgment had been objected to by a contemporary critic; and Michael Angelo’s own friend, Lodovico Dolce, in his Dialogue on Painting, attacked him on this point with unsparing severity. Boscoe censures this accusation of Salvator’s as hypercritical. OF SALYATOE EOSA. 81 the day to the effects of his perilous enterprise, hut de- voured by night, on returning to his dreary inn, by a parching fever, the inevitable consequence of that indis- cretion which had exposed him to the malaria of the in- fected suburbs of Eome. The rapid, but bold and splendid sketches he struck off at this period, were disposed of in the Piazza Navona, once the Circus of the Agonalia, and “now,” says Evelyn (a contemporary of Salvator’s), “ a mercat for medals, pictures, and curiosities ; ” or were sold or pledged to the Jews # of the G hetto, then the mart of all brokerage and usury : for it appears that works bearing no name of fashionable no- toriety were as little estimated in Eome as in Naples. To the ineffectual struggles which Salvator at this period made for a bare and miserable existence, he has himself unequi- vocally alluded in a cantata, which, though dashed with a splenetic humour and a caustic pleasantry, is still a feel- ing and a fearful picture of the trials to which genius and sensibility are exposed from their false position in an ill- organized society, founded on principles discordant with themselves, and at variance with the interests and the hap- piness of man. f CANTATA BY SALVATOR ROSA. TRANSLATED. No truce from care, no pause from woe, Fortune, — for ever still my foe. Seems not to know or to remember I live and feel in every member; — Am nerve, flesh, spirit, pulse, and core. And throb and ache at every pore. Yet from my first-drawn sigh, through life, I ’ve waged with fate eternal strife; Have toil’d without reward or gain, And woo’d the arts — but woo’d in vain. For, while to Hope I fondly trust, I scarce can earn my daily crust. For me bright suns but vainly shine. In vain the earth yields corn and wine. * Baldinucci. F Burney calls this poem a gloomy and grumbling history of this painter’s life, in which the comic exaggeration is not unpleasant. The music to which it is set, with the exception of the refrain , which is measured melody, is recitative. It is the composition of Bandini. 4—3 82 LIFE AND TIMES Whene’er of peace I idly dream, Discord is sure to rule supreme ; Ventures my little bark to sea? Up springs a storm express for me; My drench’d sails should I spread to dry, Down pours a deluge from the sky : Nay, should I seek those Indian plains Whose sands are gold, — for all my pains, I ’d find transmuted into lead The ore of the rich river’s bed. When driv’n by Nature’s pinching wants, In the Mercato's coarse throng’d haunts I higgling stand, spite of all care I ’m juggled of my frugal fare. And find (my hard-made bargain done) My pound of flesh, a pound of bone. If forced I seek the princely state. The domes of those we call the Great, Corruption’s self my bribes will slight, And find my buona mano light. While, as I saunter through the court, I grow the jesting page’s sport; For threadbare cloaks meet no respect. And challenge only cold neglect. Out on my cloak ! the very Jews To take the paltry pledge refuse; In every stall its credit ’s blown, To the whole Ghetto too well known; And they who buy all ends and fags Will not accept my well worn rags ! By night, by day, my harass’d mind No rest, no peace, no balm can find. My waking thoughts are thoughts of care ; My night-dreams — castles in the air ! While all around is pomp and state, ’j The meanest vessel gold, or plate, No rood in country, shed in town, Could I, alas ! e’er call my own : Rich but in hope, and when that ’s fled, An hospital reserves its bed. In summer, when the dog-star glows, I ’m dress’d as though the Tiber froze. For this you ’ll guess the ready reason — I ’ve but one suit for every season. Yet, could I earn my daily pittance, Fortune, I ’d make thee an acquaintance ; I prize not toys, which ne’er should find A place within the noble mind. But my most ample means are scant To meet life’s simplest, humblest want. Great God ! yet “ I ’m a painter too,” And can I find no cheering hue OE SALVATOE EOS A. 83 To tinge this darksome sketch of life, Where all is effort, evil, strife. Oh no ! one sombre tint pervades, My verdure browns, my sunbeam shades. Shed o’er my scenes eternal gloom, And dims their lights and chills their bloom. Yet when my frozen spirits play. And fancy lends a genial ray, My pencil in its wanton sport Brings the well-freighted bark to port ; Bestows fair sites on whom I please, Raises rich leafy woods with ease ; But, of such varied wealth the maker, I work and starve without an acre. Success, pursued, still seems to fly, Hope’s smile has still its kindred sigh ; Youth’s joys are dull’d, its visions flown, Y et friends still cry, “ Hope and work on “ Hope still, starve still:” — to say the best. This counsel ’s but a sorry jest ; For, take it on Salvator’s word, Of the rich, noble, vulgar herd, Few estimate, and few require. The painter’s zeal, the poet’s fire. The surest road to recompense Is to conceal superior sense. Better, far better meet our doom, And. sleep within the peaceful tomb, Than cursed with wit, sense, worth, and spirit. To trust to industry and merit — Than live a beggar and a slave, The scorn of every fool and knave. Tlie doom which the unfortunate painter so impatiently anticipated in this wild and melancholy production, was now apparently hastening to its crisis. The mental energy which had hitherto sustained him, sunk under the influence of physical infirmity ; and the dreadful malady inflicted by the malaria, which had long preyed on his vigorous con- stitution, now stretched him senseless on his dreary couch. Triendless, penniless, and obscure, it is probable that he owed the medical attentions which saved his life to one of the charitable institutions with which Tome abounds, and which arise out of that abuse which necessitates their existence. The “ hospital bed” reserved for unprosperous genius, to which Salvator alludes, sanctions this melancholy supposition, though none of his biographers assert the fact. His life was preserved; but of his restoration to perfect 84 LIFE AND TIMES health no hope was given, but from the healing halm of his native air. # As soon as he was enabled to encounter the fatigue of the journey, he left Home, more depressed in spirit and in circumstances than he had entered it. He had at least left Naples with hope and with health ; he now returned to it blasted in both. CHAPTER Y. 1685 — 1639 . On reaching the threshold of his native city, Salvator found that he had no longer, even there, a shed that he might call his own. His little family was dispersed under the exigen- cies of their necessitous position. His mother had been charitably received under the indigent roof of her brother, Paolo Grrecco ;+ and Erancanzani and his wife were steeped deep in miseries, which hurried on the fate of that eminent genius, by plunging him into excesses, for which his despair was alone perhaps accountable. J Stunned as the susceptible mind of Salvator must have been by such an accumulation of evil, he yet attempted to parry the mass of affliction, which was inclosing him on every side, by the powerful resistance of genius energized by affection. He entered with fresh zeal upon the art he was almost on the point of abandoning in utter hopelessness, and applied himself once more with cheerful§ and laborious diligence to his easel. * “ Fu assalito da una continua febbre, per liberarsi dal quale gli fu d’uopo tornare a respirare 1’ aria nativa.” — Vita di S. Rosa. f “ Giulia Grecca la sua madre, che retirata s’ era col fratello pittore per vivere . ’ ’ — Pascoli. X Reduced to despair, Francanzani became careless of his art, and painted only for the common people, and in the coarsest manner. At last, be- coming guilty of some capital crime (rio da morte), he was condemned to death ; but he was not publicly executed, being poisoned in the dungeons of the Gastello Nuovo, out of respect for the profession (per rispetto al profes- sione). The crime of which he was accused remains as mysterious as its punishment. It was probably political, as he was engaged in the conspiracy of Masaniello. — See Lanzi , Ticozzi , §c. § u Allegramente,” is the phrase applied by Pascoli to the cheeriness of spirit with which he resumed his profession at Naples. OF SALVATOE EOS A. 85 Triumphant in Salvator’s failure at Home, hut annoyed at his return, the whole profession in Naples, with the exception of Falcone, rose against him. The freedom with which he still discussed the works of the mannerists (“ manieristi”), the epigram couched in every remark that dropped from his lips or his pen, kept alive the hatred which his uncompromising spirit had awakened, and which in all his poverty shamed the servility of the “ dependants ” of the art,* who had not blushed to assume an appellation which generically marked their degradation.! All his efforts to obtain an adequate price for his incomparable works were now unavailing ; and after a fruitless struggle, all means of subsistence from the exertion of his splendid talents seemed wholly to vanish. That his countryman Tasso had died in an hospital, afforded perhaps no solace, though it lent a precedent to the unfortunate Rosa, for the insufficiency of mere genius to succeed, in countries under the yoke of particular insti- tutions. Thinking deeply, as men will think who feel strongly ; J environed on every side by importunate hut successful mediocrity ; beholding vice always prosperous, and crime secure of impunity, when protected by the garb of religion, or robed in the ermine of state, he took, even at this early period of life, his bitter but just view of society, which no after-prosperity could obliterate. In what deep characters this experience was engraven, his grand but ter- rible pictures, his severe but merited satires, evince. The youth, the health, the spirits of Salvator were now fast yielding to the conviction of neglected merit and, un- availing worth — the most insupportable of all inflictions — when an event occurred, which, though the least connected in appearance with a destiny so obscure, rescued him from despair, and threw a gleam of sunshine on the gloomy per- spective of his future life. Francesco Maria Brancaccia, a noble Neapolitan and Bishop of Capaccio, was among the numerous cardinals created by Pope TJrban VIII. ; and being obliged by his promotion to attend the Court of * “ In Napoli poco miglioro la sua fortuna, anzi, contrariato da quei pittori de’ quali come troppo loquace di soverchio sparlava, gli mancarono intieramente le occasioni di lavorare .” — Vita di S. Rosa. ! The disciples of Spagnuoletto were called “ Suoi Dependenti.” J “ Les grandes pensees viennent toujours du coeur.” — Voltaire'. 86 LIFE A1S T E TIMES Home, and form an establishment upon tliat princely scale, of whose extravagance Cardinal de Betz so grievously complains, he sent to Naples for a young ecclesiastic, a dependent of his house, to take charge of his household (“ La Famiglia”), and to fill the office, at that time so important in Home, of Maestro di Casa to a prince of the Church. The young Padre Gfirolamo Mercuri had been a fellow- student with Salvator at the Collegio Somasco, and was then, as ever after, the most enthusiastic of his ad- mirers. But, poor and dependent himself, his admiration hitherto had been as profitless as it was ardent. His promotion, however, to the dignity of first domestic in .the household of a “ granporporato” (a situation coveted by ecclesiastics of much higher rank than that of the un- beneficed G-irolamo), was an unexpected influx of fortune, whose tide he generously sought to turn to the purposes of friendship. He invited Salvator to accompany him to Home, and held out such inducements to his hopeless countryman, as easily persuaded him to try once more his fortune in the great European market of the arts. In company with some other young Neapolitan adventurers, Hosa embarked on board a felucca, and in the latter end of the year 1635 returned to Home. There, however, he no longer found himself a friendless stranger. Kind arms were now extended to receive him ; and an hospitable roof afforded him at least a temporary shelter.* Girolamo Mercuri, who is described as one “ chi fu sempre uomo onorato ed amorevole,” (who was always an honour- able and benevolent man,) was not the only friend whom Salvator found in the Brancaccia palace. The Cardinal’s guardaroba, Signor Nicola Simonelli, an ecclesiastic and noted preacher of the day, was also a Neapolitan ; and from * Of the circumstances of this second journey to Rome, Pascoli seems as ignorant as Passeri was of the first. His account of Salvator at this period is, that he arrived at Rome, for the second time, in his twenty-fourth year, and painted already “ da Maestro : ” but not having any introduction, he was obliged to sell his pictures to brokers and petty shopkeepers, who seeing the genius displayed in these exquisite productions, and observing that their author was unknown and without funds, contrived to conceal his very exist- ence, till Salvator, discovering the artifice, made himself known, by entering the service of the Cardinal Brancaccia. Passeri’s account, however, who appears to have made the acquaintance of Salvator about this time, may be received in preference. 03? SALYATOE EOSA. 87 the moment of his introduction to his ingenious country- man, he became, in the technical language of the times, “ suo parziale,” (his protector or partisan). It appears that the excellent Girolamo Mercuri not only received Salvator with “ carezze grandi,” but assigned him an apart- ment in the vast palace of his master, which perhaps even then, as in the present day, might have been hut half inhabited, and capable of sheltering, unknown to its lord, many houseless and indigent refugees. The image of Salvator now presents itself, as of one occupying a remote and deserted room marked by a faded and dreary splendour, and destitute of all comfort and accommodation. Labouring with unabated, though as yet unrequited, diligence, he was obliged to recur to his own fine and flexible figure, reflected in a large dusky mirror, for the models he was unable to procure.* He was not, however, the less devoured by an ambition for distinction ; and he worked not less to obtain a name, than to supply the exigencies of the passing day (“ tanto per cagione di vivere, quanto per introdursi nelle cognizione di tutti”). But it was in vain that he produced those beautiful cabi- net-pictures called his “quadretti,” fine combinations of that vast stock of imagery he had accumulated in his peripatetic study of nature, and animated them by living figures full of moral effect and human interest. His galley- slaves, his bandits, his way-worn travellers, his shipwrecked mariners, his armed cavaliers, though allowed to be executed “ di buono gusto” by contemporary umpires, were still deemed in themselves ignoble subjects by the academic pedantry of one class of virtuosi ; while by another class, who saw no merit beyond the delineation of a Hutch kitchen, or a market brawl, they were censured as wild and extra- vagant.! The friends of Salvator in vain recommended to him the usual routine which led to fashion and success in Borne, and advised him to enter one of the reigning schools of the day, to enlist himself under the bamiers of Andrea * Baldinucci asserts he never after made use of any other model for his male figures : the grace, spirit, and mobility of his own were all-sufficient. *f- “ Erano pero, figurine piccole, e tele non molto grandi toccate mirabil- mente con tinte grate e di buon gusto, ma di soggetti vili, cioe baroni, galeotti, e marinari.” — Passeri. 88 LITE AND TIMES Sacchi, Pietro Cortona, Nicolas Poussin, or, greater than all, the Cavalier Bernini ! At this period many of the galleries of the virtuosi and of the leading artists were open during the winter evenings to the young students of Pome. They were effectively lighted, and supplied with living models ; and to the con- gress of students thus assembled, the name of “ accademia” was given. Domenichino had first introduced this mode in Pome for the benefit of his own pupils ; and Nicolas Poussin and other foreign artists had been proud to avail themselves of the advantage of working under the eye of the greatest painter of the age. Since the fortunes of Domenichino had “ fallen into the sear,” and he had taken up his residence in Naples, the most fashionable accademia in Pome was the studio of Andrea Sacchi, where a certain “ Caporale Leone,” a military Apollo, and a living rival of him of the Belvidere , presented one of the finest models, for the grace and spirit of his attitudes, that art had ever studied. But Salvator frequented none of these associations, which belonged more to the pretensions of the modern school, than to the genius of the old masters. When not shut up in his solitary workroom in the Brancaccia palace, he was transfixed in the Sistine chapel before the gigantic splendours of Michael Angelo’s Last Judgment. This he was wont to call his school of anatomy ; and though enthusiastic in his admira- tion for Titian’s colouring, the genius of Michael Angelo was that with which his own alone associated. If he fol- lowed any school save that of Nature, it was the school of this his great prototype, whose “Three Pates” in the Palace Pitti at Plorence, might pass for the “ Weird Sis- ters” of Shakspeare, or “The Sorceresses” of Salvator Posa. While all the artists of the age were following particular masters, or copying each other, Salvator added one rule to that catalogue which they venerated, and he despised, — that is, not to be confined to any rule : and his pictures exhibited in the shops of the Poman riven ditori, while they startled the precise judgments of professional critics, obliged them to invent a specific term for such unauthorized and eccentric productions: they called them his “ Capricci.” If, as it is observed by one whose opinions on the arts are OE SALYATOR ROSA. 89 oracular, “ if the very foundation of the art of painting he invention, and if he who most excels in that high quality must he allowed to he the greatest painter, in what degree soever he may be surpassed by others in the more inferior branches of the art,” # Salvator Bosa, even at this period, w r hen he was known only by the ludicrous appellation of “II Salvatoriello,” was one of th q first, because one of the most original painters of his age or country. But whatever were the professional merits of Bosa, he, in an eminent degree, wante'd the more appreciable personal merit of ductility. He neither would nor could (says one of his biographers) “ accommodarsi al corteggio delle anti- camere” — “submit himself to the dangling in antecham- bers” — and his stiff and unbending temper left him, after some months’ residence in Borne, without so much patron- age as would procure him the painting of a “ sopra porta,” in any of the most inferior churches of the Trastevere.f His good friends Mercuri and Simonelli were themselves strangers in Borne, and natives of a country equally feared and hated by the Boman Court. They could only have as- sisted him in a manner from which, to judge by the senti- ments on pecuniary matters expressed in his own letters, his pride must have revolted. How little these two amiable ecclesiastics had been able to push him on in his profession, is evinced by their having pressed him to leave Borne, and accompany them on a visit they were about to make with their “ eminentissimo padrone” to Viterbo. The Cardinal Brancaccia had been recently made Bishop of that diocese, and, in obedience to ecclesiastical etiquette, was obliged to visit his see, and perform service in its venerable cathedral. Salvator accepted this invitation of his friends, because (says Passeri) “non aveva ricapito in Boma,” he had no other asylum in Borne than the Cardinal’s now deserted palace. It was this terrible consciousness of not having “ where * Sir J. Reynolds. I Sopra porta , the space over a door. — Even Salvator’s country was against him; for Naples, like Ireland, imprinted a stigma on all she sent forth. “ S’il y a en Italie une nation qui soit portee a une reforme, ce sont les Neapolitains; temoin, les prisons de l’lnquisition, qui sont remplies de personnes de leur nation. Car, on peut dire hardiment que de dix qui sont accuses a ce tribunal, il y en a neuf qui sont de Naples ou du Royaume.’’ — Voyage Ilistorlque d'ltaUe , 1719. 90 LIEE AXD TIMES to lay liis head,” save as the charity of friendship allotted him an eleemosynary shelter, which probably inspired those lines which he has woven into one of his bitterest satires : “ Virtude oggi nemmeno ha tanta paglia Per gettarsi a giacere, e a borsa sciolta Spende 1’ oro dei re, turba che raglia.”* The luxury and magnificence of the “ Porporati ” of Borne were at this period carried to an excess which royalty could not surpass. The journey of a Cardinal to his diocese, or w T hen on a diplomatic mission, resembled the royal progress of a travelling sovereign, rather than the journey of a sub- ject. In Italy they were generally accompanied by a train of an hundred domestics, including in this denomination their chaplains, and the ecclesiastics comprised in their household. Their carriages were all glass and gold, with silver springs and velvet linings ; and their sumpter-mules were laden with rich furniture and with bedsteads,! which were sometimes composed of solid silver set with precious stones, and provided with mattresses of eider-down ; while a troop of cavalry brought up their rear, — no unnecessary accompaniment to the well-laden caravan. The unfortunate painter, in feeling the humility of his position with all the bitterness and acrimony of proud but neglected genius, may yet have considered this splendid and graphic cortege, as it wound up the romantic heights of Viterbo, with a painter’s eye. The clerical habits of the monkish Camerieri, the broad green hats of the Capellini, which distinguished them from the inferior members of the household, the gallant bearing of the gaily-dressed footmen, the sumpter-mules, with their gaudy trappings and merry bells, and the armed guard which closed the procession, tinged with the lights of a brilliant sunset on the entree of one of the most picturesque cities of Italy, must have presented images so consonant to Salvator’s views and feelings, as to have cheered his spirits and stolen him from the contem- plation of his own hapless situation. Yet, even then, one prophetic thought may have crossed his mind, that the high and mighty prince, to whom he was too insignificant * “ While prodigality showers wealth upon public singers, genius can scarcely procure a sheaf of straw to rest upon .” — La Musica. “ Which gratification the Italians much glory in, as did our grand- fathers in England, in their inlaid wooden ones .” — Evelyn s Memoirs. or SALVATOR ROSA. 91 even to be known, might be rescued from oblivion, and reach posterity through the accident which connected the name of Brancaccia with that of Salvator Bosa. It is usual with the members of the Conclave, when vi- siting their distant dioceses, to throw off much of the state and ceremony they are compelled to assume at Borne ; and (obliged by the narrowness of the circle) to live on a more intimate and familiar footing with the officers of their house- hold, in order to avoid that ennui which is the tax of all un- occupied grandeur. It was possibly from this circumstance that the zealous Maestro di Casa was enabled to present to his eminence the painter who had so long occupied a deserted attic in his palace. The Cardinal was much pleased (molto contento) with the new member of his establishment, and sufficiently satisfied with what he saw of his drawings to give him the portico and the “ Loggia ” of the episcopal palace to paint in fresco. The subject was left to Salvator’s own se- lection; and, obliged to consult the genius of the place, which by its publicity was ill-adapted either to sacred or profane history, Salvator chose a subject purely poetical, the “ scherzo de’ mostri marini,” the “idle disport” of marine deities floating on sunny seas, or mounted on the backs of sportive dolphins. This piece, though not deemed among the most perfect productions of its author, had yet sufficient merit in the eyes of his new patron to induce him to bespeak the grand altar-piece for the Chiesa della Morte of Viterbo at the hands of Salvator. # This was the first and last public work ever assigned to him in the Boman States by a member of the Grovernment. The Cardinal again left him the choice of his subject, and he chose the incredulity of St. Thomas, — a bold and perilous theme ! Salvator seized that moment in the life of the sceptical saint, in which, having said, “ except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and thrust my hands into his wounds, I will not believe,” he finds himself called upon by his divine Master to bring his doubts to the proof. The figures were, in the technical phrase, “ di grandezza naturale,” large as life. This historical picture, though, only the second he had ever executed, and the first on a great scale, was declared * At this period, and not before, Pascoli supposes that Rosa “ s’ accomodo al servizio del Cardinal Brancaccia suo paesano,” accepted service under his countryman the Cardinal. 92 LIFE AND TIMES by the critical umpires of a succeeding age, to be painted “ con qualche gusto,” with some taste. This faint praise was, however, confined to the mechanical execution. The intellect which suggested the choice of subject was not appreciated by the canting virtuosi,* who overlook in Sal- vator those first requisites of an historical painter, — great mental powers, and a facility of combination which always rendered him the painter of the philosophy of human nature. While mounted on his platform before the high altar of the church “ della Morte,” he attracted the attention of one of those loungers to whose idle intrusions all the churches of Italy are liable. His splenetic pleasantry, his epigrammatic turns, seem to have had a peculiar charm for this unknown acquaintance, whose habit bespoke him of some rank in the Church, and who soon became a fixture at the “ altare maggiore.” The charm of Salvator’s conversation, which had first attracted the stranger, was succeeded by another of still greater effect. One of the most delightful talkers of his day (on the testimony of all his contemporaries) was also one of the best listeners; and the daily visitor of the Chiesa della Morte found, perhaps, the only willing auditor in Viterbo for his eternal recitations of his own verses. This visitant was the Della Cruscan Abbate, Antonio Abbati, a genuine seicentisto , and one of the fashionable poets of the day, whose sonnets without sentiment, and epigrams without point, procured him a contemporary repu- tation in the blue-stocking coteries of that age of literary feebleness and fatuity. Such names as the Abbate’ s just serve in the present day to fill up the lists of the pains- taking Tiraboschis and Crescimbenis, which preserve with faithful accuracy all the authors li Of all such, reading as was never read.” It has been remarked by many as singular, that Salvator never once attempted to repay the Abbate Antonio in kind. After the lapse of years, when Abbati returned from Ger- many, where he had long resided, and found Salvator’s fame * The disgust expressed by Sterne at professional criticism must be par- ticipated by every person of strong feeling and good sense who visits Italy. At every step one is inclined to repeat, “ Of aU the cants f &c. OF SALVATOK EOSA. 93 as a poet far beyond bis own, “si stupeva,” says Passeri, be was astonished. But be was much more surprised at the modesty and forbearance of the young painter, than capable of appreciating the merits of bis singular and highly poetical satires.* The frescoes of the episcopal palace, (the only frescoes which Bosa ever executed,) the grand altar-piece of the Chiesa della Morte, and some exquisite quadretti, which from time to time he sent from Yiterbo to the Boman market, were now gradually, though slowly, opening the way to that brilliant reputation, which Salvator is described as seeking with fretful impatience, and with a scarcely- repressed indignation ; when his savage independence ap- pears to have taken alarm at the obscure and humiliating position he was gradually assuming in the household of the Cardinal Brancaccia. Between the frank and friendly attentions of his college companion and equal, Mercuri, and the dependence of the “ creato ” of a great personage, there was a difference clearly appreciable by one whose spirit was as free as the elements he delighted to paint, and wild as the regions he loved to haunt. In leaving the protection of the Cardinal, Salvator may have been in- fluenced by circumstances which never reached the know- ledge even of his most active biographers. Patronage, which is made for mediocrity, is never an atmosphere for the free breathings of genius. He who through life had said that “ liberty was beyond price, and that the honours and wealth the world could give would not purchase him,” f may have felt the weight of the first chain he ever wore, however lightly it may have lain. It is easy to charge the protected with ingratitude ; but who, save the victim, can know the daily, hourly, little grievances inflicted by the caprice of wealthy pride upon the object of its degrading protection ? which, if “ 'patient merit of the unworthy take,” the impatient pride of the highest order of sensi- bility spurns at every risk : a word, a look, even a gesture, from the haughty porporato , may have been sufficient to have stirred up the “ bile,” roused the “ spirit,” kindled the * Pascoli, however, says, that the Abhate’s admiration of the literary talents of his young friend induced him to correspond with him for some time after he left Viterbo, and on all occasions to seek him out. f Pascoli. 94 LIFE AND TIMES “fire” of one who has described himself as wholly made np of such unquiet elements. But, however this may have been, Salvator Bosa, after a year’s residence in the Episcopal palace of Yiterbo, de- parted, not for Borne, but, to the astonishment of all, for Naples. Eor this singular return to a country where he had only to expect the persecution of enemies and the neglect of friends, his biographers assign a reason, con- nected equally with his affections and his interests, — namely, that he was preyed up On by the maladie du pays , and influenced by a hope that his absence, at Borne, might have raised his pictures in the estimation of a capricious public, easily satiated with works whose author is always within the reach of a command.* Whether the distinction conferred upon him by the pro- tection of the Cardinal Brancaccia, or the increase of his reputation at Borne from the circulation of his small pic- tures, were influential in procuring him a better reception at Naples than his genius had yet obtained for him, does not appear ; but that he sustained a superior post in his native country during this visit, to any he had ever before arrived at, is attested by most of his biographers. f The hostility of the painter faction was now entirely directed against its great victim Domenichino, who, urged by his necessities, had once more returned to Naples ; and Ancillo Ealcone, who alone took no part in the disgraceful illiberality of his brother artists, renewed his friendship with Salvator Bosa, and now perhaps first discovered that identity of feeling and opinion upon subjects of deeper interest than the arts, which so intimately united them in the fearful events of a future day. Eor the present, how- ever, the ambition of Salvator was all directed to Borne, to the obtaining, by force of superior genius alone, the suf- frages of her refined public, and of those fastidious virtuosi who assembled from all parts of Europe in congress within her walls. Erom time to time he continued to send his pictures to his friends Mercuri and Simonelli, whose zeal * Pascoli simply says, “ Gli cadde in animo di rivedere la patria, e, preso da lui congedo, si messe in cammo.” f Pascoli alone says, that he was deeply disappointed by his reception in Naples; and that his mortified feelings at the insensibility of his country- men induced him, for the third time } to leave that city. OF SALVATOE EOSA. 95 in his cause increased with the gradual developement of his genius, and who had long desired for their countryman a distinction, which intrigue and influence, rather than merit, were calculated to obtain.* * * § A company, or, in the Italian phrase, a congregation of virtuosi had instituted two public exhibitions of pictures at Home, upon the feasts of Saint Joseph and of Saint John (San Giovanni Decollato). The exhibition, which had the virtu of Europe for its spectators, was held at the Pan- theon. It had become an arena, in which the rival geniuses of Pome had to contend, not only with each other, hut with the great masters who had preceded them, and whose chef s-cT oeuvre the Poman nobility, in all the pride of pro- perty, were wont to transfer on these occasions from the galleries to the Pantheon. t Where so many competitors presented themselves, pa- tronage and influence naturally interfered ; and every “Me- cenate” (Maecenas) had one or more dependents to recom- mend to the congregation, which, like other congregations, was swayed in its elections by its own interests, and the power and rank of protecting patrons. Salvator Posa, who had no “Mecenate,” and was no man’s “ dependente,” made no effort to enter the already over-crowded lists. A picture, however, which he sent from Naples for sale, to his friend Nicola Simonelli, made its own claim on the suf- frages of the congregation, to whom the zealous Simonelli presented it; and the “ Prometheus”^; of Salvator took its place by the side of the capi cT opera of Titian and Leo- nardo da Yinci, effacing all the contemporary productions which surrounded it.§ This picture, which gave “una * It is probable that, during this second visit to Naples, he painted his Saint Nicola de Bari in the church of the Chartreux of San Martino, where he had formerly exercised his talents with his burned sticks. J Salvator complains of this in his letter to Riccardi thirty years after- wards, when he had reached the summit of his ambition. + Besides prose criticisms and commendations of ‘ s The Prometheus,” a poetical eloge was published with the signature of “ The Demosthenes of Painting,” and supposed to be written by Simonelli. Passeri calls this pic- ture “ un Tizio lacerato dall* Avoltojo,’’ Tityus torn by the Vulture. The fate of the giant and of Prometheus is so similar, that the picture may answer for either; but the beautiful figure of the sufferer has nothing gigantic in its proport ; ons : it is all human symmetry and human suffering. § The following description of this noble picture by Monge, is equally characteristic of the work and its author : — “Si Ton demandait ce que les artistes entendent par la fougue, ilserait 96 LIFE AND TIMES fama strepitosa al nome del S. Bosa,” a decided reputation to the name of Salvator, cancelled for ever the diminutive of Salvatoriello, modestly affixed to it. All Borne was occupied with praising its beauties or decrying its faults. Envy and admiration were perpetually employed in analyz- ing its pretensions to the public suffrages. But the public, with its sure instinct, decided in favour of the laborious Salvatoriello of the rivenditori of the Piazza Navona ; and the fame of the future historical painter was laid upon the firm basis of the public opinion. The echo of the applauses which rose under the dome of the Pantheon, reached Salvator in his remote work-room in Naples ; and the entreaties of his friends Mercuri and Si- monelli for his return were so warm, their accounts of his success so brilliant, that (says Passeri) Bosa “ prese animo di cost grata e gradita relazione,” took courage from such plus simple de presenter les ouvrages de S. Rosa, que de chercher une defini- tion. Celle-ci ne saurait concevoir qu’imparfaitement la fievre d ’imagination designee par le mot fougue ; tandis que tout la retrace chez le peintre Napo- litain. . . . Ici Promethee enchaine sur les sommets du Caucase, voit un aigle dechirer son foie toujours renaissant. Ses membres contractes an- noncent les douleurs atroces qu’il endure. On croit entendre les echos de ces apres rochers redire ses mugissemens.. Une figure seule, isolee, souf- frante, captive toute notre attention. Ce n’est done pas les graces, le mouve- ment, le grand nombre de figures, qui produisent l’interet dans les arts: l’ex- pression est tout. Le reste n’est souvent qu’un prestige mal-adroit qui decele l’empressement et la froideur de Pimagination.” Notwithstanding the agony impressed in the features of Prometheus, nothing can be more beautiful or sublime than “ the patient energy ” of the countenance. The mouth is that of the Apollo Belvidere, something dis- torted by pain. The wound made by the vulture is small, but, as Passeri observes, sufficiently large to show the injured intestine. The anatomy of this figure is worthy of Michael Angelo; and its moral expression equally worthy of him, whose own Prometheus is drawn under the same inspiration as directed the pencil of Salvator. “ A silent suffering, and intense — The rock, the vulture, and the chain ! All that the proud can feel of pain. The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense of woe. Which speaks but in its loneliness; And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a list'ner, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless — ” The Prometheus of Lord Byron. This picture afterwards became one of the chief ornaments of the Corsini palace, where it now is. OF SALVATOE EOSA. 97 pleasing news, and, once more bidding adieu to Naples, arrived in Home ere the sensation awakened by his Prome- theus had subsided. Neither the merit, however, of the picture, the genius of the artist, nor the exertions of the few and uninfluential friends his talents had raised up for him, could procure his entrance into the accademia of St. Luke — then an indispensable distinction even for the first artists, but which even the dullest mediocrity, when backed by influence, never failed to obtain. Salvator was struck to the soul by the injustice of his rejection ; but, like the statues of Brutus and Cassius in the funeral procession of Junia, he was, perhaps, only the more conspicuous for this exclusion. His bettered fortunes, however, though but comparatively good, now enabled him to indulge in the master-passion of his existence, — inde- pendence. He declined the eleemosynary home, which he still could command in the uninhabited vastness of the Brancaccia palace, and for the first time became the master of a shed which he could call his own. He hired a house in the Via Babbuina, close to the fountain from which it takes its name, and near to the Strada Margutta. His first household acquisition was singular for an Italian and one so young, — he collected books, and with very small means acquired a tolerable library. “With his books,” says Pas- coli, “ and his pencil, he now passed his time ; while his poetry, and the spell of his fascinating conversation, drew around him some of the young literati and artists, whose taste for music and poetry, and whose habits of life, assimi- lated to his own.”* With this little band he formed the “ crocchio ristretto,” the select circle, which the Italians love so much, and in which the subjects of despotic governments find their sole indemnification for the absence of those public assemblies only tolerated in free countries. The centre of his own circle, Salvator’s superior intellect soon raised him above the equality of companionship. Prom an associate he be- came a chief ; and men who were afterwards notable in arts, science, and literature, were then distinguished by the ap- pellation of “his followers.” * “ Tiro per mezzo di sue rime, e della sua suave e dolce conversazione, alcuni giovani coetanei a un intima amicizia, e se rende talmente padrone degli animi loro, che ne faceva cio che voleva.” — Pascoli. 5 98 LIFE AND TIMES But the admiration which he awakened in the enlight- ened few who surrounded him, rendered him only the more restless and impatient under the slowness of his progress to that high position in his profession, which, even then, he deemed himself worthy to take beside the first masters of his age. His exquisite Prometheus had brought more applause than profit. He had still to contend with the empirics of the Academy, who saw no merit in the man that belonged to no school, whom no Cardinal recommended as his “ creato,” and to whom no prince assigned the sym- bolic representation of his own virtues on the ceilings of his palace. In the midst of his private intellectual enjoyments and public professional mortifications, arrived the Carnival of the year 1639 ; and Salvator, for once flinging aside his palette, and locking up his studio, suddenly resolved to open for himself a new career of fashionable notoriety, and to start for the goal by a path, the least obviously calculated to lead to success.* Whether he thus acted in utter reck- lessness of a world he contemned, or from his painfully earned experience of its inconsequence and frivolity, the result of his new speculation was favourable beyond what the doctrine of probabilities could have anticipated. Much of the splendour and ingenuity which distinguished the Carnival festivities of the Middle Ages was still in fashion in Italy. Poets, philosophers, and statesmen — artists, musicians, and mechanists — contributed to the cele- bration of the Christian Saturnalia. The ancient “ Canti Carnascialeschi ” of Prancesco Grazini, so much in vogue in the days of Lorenzo de’ Medici, had been succeeded by the “ Carnavaleschi ” of one whose name had reached pos- terity by works of a far different character : and the Carni- val poems of Machiavelf were still recited in the streets of Plorence by groups of fantastic maskers, habited as ghosts, bandits, monks, nymphs, and satyrs; while his “Prince” was the study of Europe, and its hidden purport the enigma which puzzled alike the tyrant and the slave to solve. * “ Rendendosi impaziente per non vedere quello che piu desiderava di grido, e di acclamazione, gli venne in pensiero per far maggiore apertura alia cognizione della sua persona, di introdursi,” &c. — Passeri. *t Machiavel, affecting the Greek model, introduced into these composi- tions a chorus, and he formed it of bands of devils, the then necessary ac- companiment to all human agency. OF SALYATOR ROSA. 99 In Rome the Carnival, more joyous, and even more fan- tastical than in Florence, was of a ruder character, and was occasionally rendered, through the influence of the Papal Government, the medium of the most fearful bigotry.* But the popular entertainment on these occasions was called “ Le Zingaresche,” and consisted of comic dialogues, in which a gipsy, or a group of gipsies, engaged in a “ fierce encounter of the wits,” and told fortunes, revealed love- secrets, and exercised the craft of legerdemain with what skill they might. These dialogues gradually assumed a dramatic form, and were rather sung than spoken, to such accompaniment on the guitar as the ambulatory troop could procure. In the early part of the seventeenth century, an elegant innovation in the Carnival festivities of Rome was intro- duced by Quagliate, the composer, which is notable as the first secular musical drama, or opera, ever exhibited in that city, and as giving an idea of the higher festivities of the Carnival at the particular period when Salvator Rosa be- came one of its most brilliant ornaments. “My master Quagliate,” says the quaint and amusing traveller Della Valle, “introduced a new species of music into the churches of Rome, not only in compositions for a single voice, but for two, three, four, and often more voices in choruses, ending with a numerous crowd of many choruses singing together, specimens of which may be seen in many of his motets that have been since printed ; and the music of my car, or moveable , during the Carnival, com- posed by the same Quagliate in my own room, chiefly in the manner he found most agreeable to me, and performed in masks through the streets of Rome during the Carnival of 1606, was the first dramatic action or representation in music that had ever been heard in that city. Though no more than five voices or five instruments were employed, (the exact number which an ambulant car could contain,) yet these afforded great variety ; as, besides the dialogue of * The particular Rioni , or quarters of Rome, were noted for giving, during the Carnival, mock exhibitions of the trials and executions of Jews. The stages on which these sanguinary scenes were enacted were drawn by oxen. The actors appeared to hang, strangle, or torture the unfortunate victims of Christian hatred after the manner of the Inquisition, for the edification of the faithful. These representations were called “ Le Giu- diate 100 LIFE AND TIMES single voices, sometimes two or three, and at last all five sang together, which had an admirable effect. He pleased the public so much, that there were some even who con- tinued to follow our car to ten or twelve different places where it stopped, and who never quitted it as long as we remained, which was from four o’clock in the evening until midnight.” Towards the close of the Carnival of 1639, when the spirits of the revellers (as is always the case in Home) were making a brilliant rally for the representations of the last week, a car, or stage, highly ornamented, drawn by oxen,* and occupied by a masked troop, attracted universal atten- tion by its novelty and singular representations. The principal personage announced himself as a certain Signor Hormica, a Neapolitan actor, t who, in the character of Coviello, J as a charlatan, displayed so much genuine wit, such hitter satire, and exquisite humour, rendered doubly effective by a Neapolitan accent, and “ i motivi dei lazzi nazionali,” or national gesticulations, that other repre- sentations were abandoned ; and gipsies told fortunes, and Jews hung, in vain. The whole population of Home gra- dually assembled round the novel, the inimitable Hormica. * Evelyn, who visited Rome in 1645, speaking of the Carnival, observes of these Thespian carts : “ One thing is remarkable — their acting comedies on a stage placed in a cart, or plaustrum, where the scene, or tiring place, is made of bushes in a rural manlier, which they drive from street to street with a yoke or two of oxen, after the ancient guise.” b It was at this time the fashion, both in France and Italy, for all actors to appear before the public with a “ nom de guerre,” and to conceal their own. Jean Baptiste Poquelin has immortalized that of Moliere by assuming it in one of his earliest dramatic campaigns. “ II ne fit, (says Voltaire,) en changeant de nom, que suivre l’exemple des Comediens d’ltalie, et de ceux de l’hotel de Bourgogne. L’un, dont le nom de famille etoit Le Grand, s’appelloit Belville dans la tragedie, et Turlupin dans la farce. Arlequin et Scaramouche n’etoient que les noms de theatre.” X Coviello, one of the “ seven masks ” of Italy, or national dramatic cha- racters, is the theatrical representative of the Calabrians. The wit of Coviello, therefore, is supposed to be sharp as the air of his native Abruzzi. Adroit and vain-glorious, a Proteus in character, language, and manner, he still preserves his native accent and habit ; and his black velvet jacket and pantaloons, studded with silver buttons and rich embroidery, were well calculated to set off the handsome person of the wearer, if he happened to possess one, and to give to his figure a certain air of elegance, strongly con- trasted with his conventional mask, with its crimson cheeks, black nose and forehead. Salvator’s reasons for choosing this character (always popular in Rome) are obvious. Or SALYATOR ROSA. 101 The people relished his flashes of splenetic hnmonr, aimed at the great ; the higher orders were delighted with an improvvisatore, who, in the intervals of his dialogues, sung to the lute, of which he was a perfect master, the Neapo- litan ballads, then so much in vogue. The attempts made by his fellow-revellers to obtain some share of the plaudits he so abundantly received, whether he spoke or sung, asked or answered questions, were all abortive ; while he (says Baldinucci) “ come capo di tutti, e pur spiritoso, e ben parlante, con bei ghiribizzi e lazzi spiritosi teneva a se mezza Boma,” “at the head of everything by his wit, eloquence, and brilliant humour, drew half Borne to himself.”* The contrast between his beautiful musical and poetical compo- sitions, and those Neapolitan gesticulations in which he indulged, when, laying aside his lute, he presented his vials and salves to the delighted audience, exhibited a versatility of genius, which it was difficult to attribute to any indivi- dual then known in Borne. G-uesses and suppositions were still vainly circulating among all classes, when, on the close of the Carnival, Bor mica, ere he drove his triumphal car from the Piazza Navona, which, with one of the streets in the Trastevere, had been the principal scene of his triumph, ordered his troop to raise their masks, and removing his own, discovered that Coviello was the sublime author of the Prometheus, and his little troop the “ Partigiani” of Sal- vator Bosa. All Borne was from this moment (to use a phrase which all his biographers have adopted) “ filled with his fame.” That notoriety which his high genius had failed to procure for him, was obtained at once by those lighter talents, which he had nearly suffered to fall into neglect, while more elevated views had filled his mind. Borne then abounded in private societies, or meetings, t which, dignified with the title of “ Accademie,” occupied themselves with literature and the arts ; and “ Conversa- zioni” of a less pedantic character, but still smacking of the Precieuses Bidicules of the Hotel Bambouillet of Paris, * He collected about him, says Passeri, the whole of the Roman popula- tion, to whom he gave the most humorous recipes. It is supposed that he borrowed the technicalities of these recipes from Giovanni Breccio, a cele- brated Roman physician of that day. + Evelyn has preserved on record a most graphic description of these “ conversazioni ” and “ accademie.” 102 LIFE AND TIMES were held by ladies of rank, and were more especially devoted to music, poetry, and gallantry. To such societies, whether held in the seventeenth or the nineteenth century, • — in London, in Paris, or in Pome, — the talents which apply themselves to the senses rather than the intellect, and which, while they amuse all, inflict not the penalty of thinking or feeling upon any, are sure to command success. No Lion that was ever turned out for the amusement of the “ peu amusables” of the supreme English circles, ever excited a stronger sensation, or was in more general request, than the Eormica of the Carnival. To use a Erench phrase applied to the objects of the present day’s idolatry, “ on se l’arracha;” and the account which Pascoli gives of this sudden vogue might answer for a description of the “ grand succes” of any idol of fashionable notoriety in the saloons of the Pue Saint Honore, or the drawing-rooms of the “west end of the town.” “ Posa,” says his biographer, “ who was eminently musi- cal, and accompanied himself on the lute with wondrous skill, now went from one conversazione to another, singing and reciting, ‘ al improwiso,’ thus extending his fame by giving himself up to society. He saw all Pome desirous to possess him ; and it was now easy for him to make his singular genius known to all, not only as a painter, but a poet.” It appears, in fact, from other testimony, that the lute and canzonetti of the delightful Neapolitan musi- cian,* “ gli facessero strada nell’ uscir fuori come Pittore” — “paved the way for the fame of the painter.” t The season, however, of idleness and relaxation, the Poman summer, overtook him in the very delirium of the first enjoyment of that homefelt and tangible fame, which came at once to his senses and apprehension ; and reached * Salvator Rosa, whose satire on the style and passion for music then prevalent at Rome, made him sc many enemies among the professional men of the day, found the Neapolitan canzonette still a novelty, though it had been introduced there so long back as 1611, by Della Valle. All the guitars in Rome were thrumming the canzonettes of Baptista Beilis, which were but awkward imitations of that original excellence which Salvator had acquired at the fountain-head. Through all his struggles, and in the midst of all his labours, says Baldinucci, “ Si diletto in oltre modo della musica, e suono il luto ” — “he delighted beyond everything in music, and played upon the lute.” f Pascoli. OF SALVATOB EOSA. 103 him not in the faint breathings of distant report, hut in the glances of bright eyes and the bravos of beautiful lips, which a young and handsome improvvisatore was* well cal- culated to extort. Physically incapacitated for exercising his professional art during the enervating heats of this season,* and, perhaps, unable to call in those stray spirits and wandering thoughts, whose pleasant but profitless intoxications forbid the concentration necessary to great works, Salvator frankly gave himself up to the delicious and novel sensations of pleasing and being pleased. If the genial emotions of pleasure which circulated through his veins and warmed his imagination suffered any alloy, it was because his position in society enabled him to take a clearer view of its worthlessness than he had yet had an opportu- nity of obtaining. If its vices, in his more sober days, struck on his moral sense, and called forth the splenetic humour discernible in his Satires, he was now most alive to its ridicules, its pretensions, and, above all, to the bad taste so characteristic of the literary pretenders of that “un- happy century,” since branded with the dishonourable ap- pellation of “il cattivo secolo della lingua.”f Too petulant to enter into any compromise with his feelings upon any subject, the admirer of Dante and Boccaccio expressed his opinions of the seicentisti poets with more wit than discretion. The ephemeral composi- tions of the time, though crowned by academies, tempted him to give a practical expression to his opinion, as novel as it was dangerous and imprudent. Salvator was a passionate admirer of the old national drama of Italy, from which Shakspeare and Moliere have alike largely drawn. Its classic original, £ and fine adapta- tion to the taste and humour of the Italians, gave it a particular charm to one who was, in an eminent degree, a scholar and a patriot. He observed, therefore, with im- patience and indignation the old “ Commedia a soggetto,” with its rich and racy humour, hunted down by the miser- able “rimatori” of the times, as being too national, too * See his letters. I The captive age of literature. — Baretti. J Derived Irora the Atellane farce. The actors in these plebeian, but national dramas, unlike the histriones or common players, kept their tribe, and served in the army. The function therefore was not deemed derogatory to a free man. 104 LIFE AND TIMES Italian for the taste of the influential house of Austria; while insipid pastorals, and tame and timid imitations of the cold Greek tragedy, inundated the country, — alike setting aside the broad farce of the “sette maschere,” the “Suppositi” of Ariosto, and the “ Mandr agora ” of Ma- chiavel. The reigning drama was a compound of cold conceit and crude pedantry. The real purpose of the stage, the correction of man by man, and the representation of the possible relations of society under moral and amusing fictions, was wholly laid aside ; and the abortive attempts of the fashionable writers (of whom Tiraboschi has given a list of several hundred) were as foreign from life and nature as from the peculiar humour of the Italian people. Their sentiment was exaggerated, and their comedy a dull buffoonery, which preserved the coarseness, without any of the raciness, of the old Italian play. Nor is this a matter for surprise ; for, though wit may sometimes be found to characterise the hterature which thrives under despotic governments, humour is almost exclusively the result of free institutions.* The old “ Commedie a soggetto,” although they had their prescribed outlines, or “ Pistoletti,” frequently written by men of talent, still left so much to the genius of the actor, that they may be considered as performed impromptu. The outline studied behind the scenes, the actor came forward, and, entering into the full conception of the part, gave vent to his originality, and filled up the canvas with such curious details, such hits at national, local, and tem- porary peculiarities, and such flashes of humour and of satire, as his native powers of observation, of mimicry, or of wit enabled him to command. The characters, however, of this drama were so defini- tively prescribed by ancient authority, and were so indica- tive of the provincial peculiarities of the Italian States, (always divided, and always prone to ridicule each other’s follies and deficiencies,) that they had become as conven- * Moliere’s wit is much more striking than his humour. Those of his scenes which abound in the latter qualit}^ are mostly borrowed from the Italian stage ; and if in his works there be any details of humour purely national, they must be considered as the remains of that rude and turbulent freedom of which the Fronde was the last explosion — a freedom which had utterly expired under the iron despotism of Louis XIV. OF SALVATOR ROSA. ]05 tional as the masks by which they were distinguished ; and, impressing a definite tone and colour on each part in the piece, they confined the caprice of the actor within well- determined boundaries. -Of these conventional characters, Pantaloon, or “ Panta- lone dei Bisognosi,” represented the Venetians. Always dressed in a flowing black robe, a round cap, and an elderly long-bearded mask, he images the genuine ancient merchant of Venice: in society, a good easy man; in trade, a keen and shrewd chapman ; he talks morality like a Seneca, and affects gallantry like a Preux. He is the confidant and counsellor of princes, and though a professional peace- maker, is always ready to draw the knife suspended at his side, and mingle in the fight. His ridicule, the ridicule of his nation, is a tendency to prose ; and his display of slip- shod erudition derives additional effect from the lisping Venetian dialect in which it finds utterance. The doctor, “II dottore Balanzoni,” is a Bolognese, an epitome of dogmatism, pedantry, and egotism ; and the heaviness of his discourse curiously contrasts with an in- articulate rapidity in his utterance. A philosopher, an astronomer, a grammarian, a rhetorician, a cabalist, an anatomist, a physician, and a diplomatist, he knows every- thing, decides on everything, and on all subjects is the hero of his own tale. His short black open gown, enormous hat with horizontal flaps, his bloated ruby cheek and purple nose, add to the ridicule of a character, which may be taken as an exaggeration of the literary coxcombs of the university of the learned Bologna. Tartaglia is a Neapolitan mask. With still more loqua- cious tendencies, his volubility is restrained by an organic defect. He is obliged to give minutes to the utterance of syllables ; and the collision of his petulance and perse- verance with this difficulty produces the most ludicrous grimaces of impatience and rage. He is a professed rhodo- montader ; and affecting the bravo, his efforts to bolt out some fierce or violent threat, produce effects not to be con- ceived by those who are ignorant of the violence of Neapo- litan gesticulation. His showy habit of green and gold, and his short cloak, are the true old Neapolitan costume. The graceful, agile, and adroit Arlechino, from whom, at an immense distance, has descended the hero of the Eng- 5—3 106 LIFE AND TIMES lish pantomime, is a native of Bergamo, and distinguished by the peculiarities of bis province. The faithless lover of all the soubrettes (columbines), the buffoon of the great, the accommodating agent of the young and the gallant, the torment of old fathers and husbands, he robs misers, ex- horts pedants, beats his master, and is beaten in his turn, and produces the most ludicrous quid 'pro quo's by misap- plied erudition, witty absurdities, and naive questions. He is the especial agent or victim of faerie, and is alternately protected and persecuted by genii and conjurors, according to the exigencies of the story. He is characterized by an half-black mask, close-fitting jacket of many colours, white cap and slippers, and elastic wooden sword. The doubles of Arleehino are Trufaldino and Triagnino, who differ in nothing from their “great original” but in dress, being habited in showy liveries. Brighella is the reverse of Arleehino ; trustworthy, cau- tious, and vigilant. He alternately wearies his master with wise saws, and proverbial similes, and amuses him by mis- applied and far-fetched quotations. His dress and mask are equally conventional, and, before he speaks, his loose white jacket, and pantaloons edged with blue, intimate the character to the expecting audience. Coviello is a Calabrian ; shrewd, satirical, all observing ; with every talent, and every disposition to display it. His habit and general qualifications have already been noted. The reverse in everything to this brilliant personage, is the stupid, blundering, and bulky Pagliaccio (the model of the clown of an English pantomime, and of the Pierrot of the Erench stage). His supposed ponderous figure is buried in a large, gathered, and voluminous linen dress (resembling the old Irish shirt of many ells), appropriately set off with enormous buttons. His hat is white, flexible, and capable of receiving every form. His face, independent of a mask, is rubbed with white powder, which gives him the appearance of a miller’s boy; and he puffs it out by a trick of swelling his cheeks with his breath. Always advising bold measures, he is the veriest coward in nature ; and affecting agility, he is always stumbling ; and he drags with him in his falls his feeble old master, whom he effects to support. Pulchinello is the true Neapolitan mask, and the idol of OF SALYATOR ROSA. 107 the people, both in Naples and throughout the Pope’s dominions. This exquisite comic character may be con- sidered as a broad caricature of the common people of Naples, as Nature and a series of oppressive governments have left it. Quick, witty, and insolent, vain, boasting, and cowardly, Pulchinello is hurried by his volcanic and incon- siderate temperament into every species of misfortune. In his broad Neapolitan patois, he gives utterance to the pleasantest sallies, and the most biting satire, with a naivete that seems to mingle great simplicity with great shrewdness. Whatever is most ludicrous in the extreme of Neapolitan manners, is assigned to Pulchinello. lie howls like the Lazzaroni, boasts like a Spanish lion, flies to covert on the least appearance of danger, and, when all is over, is the first to join in the cry of victory. His wit, roguery, and cowardice, render him the Italian Falstaff; and his affectation of gallantry, with a person grotesquely ridicu- lous, recalls occasionally the adventures of the delightful knight in the Merry Wives of Windsor. His frequent allusion to maccaroni, the favourite diet of the Neapolitans, has so confounded his identity with this national dish, that they have become inseparable in the imagination of the other Italians. It is scarcely necessary to add, after this description, that Pulchinello differs entirely from the punch of the French and English puppet-show, with whom he is confounded even by a writer in the Edinburgh He view, April 1823. He has nothing of the facetious itinerant of our streets and booths, but his hooked nose. He wears a black mask and a linen dress, fuller even than that of Pa- gliaccio. The progress of time and of events has added several subordinate characters to these originals of the “ Commedia del arte,” or “a soggetto,” who, with the lovers, fathers, guardians, &c., fill up the piece. The great scope left to the invention of the actor, ad- mitted the introduction of many subjects of local and temporary interest ; and in filling up the canvas of the national character of Naples, Lombardy, and Yenice, sarcasms at particular institutions, or at obnoxious indi- viduals, rendered these masked characters a sort of per- mitted substitute for the liberty of the press. Such were the long-venerated national dramas, the u Com- 108 LIFE AKD TIMES medie a soggetto.” The comedies of the early part of the seventeenth century, on the contrary, feebly conceived and loosely constructed, generally originated in, or were acted by, private literary societies, called “ Accademie,” distin- guished by those fantastic and ludicrous names by which they are now consecrated to eternal ridicule. The members of these societies, who denied that Ariosto was a poet, (pro- totypes of those of the present day w r ho refuse Pope the same title,) and who assisted in the persecution of Tasso, not only composed comedies ad infinitum, but acted or recited them,* until what at first had been a matter of taste or of literary ambition, became gradually a source of profit. This passion for profitable theatricals became a sort of rage : it reached the palaces of princes, the refectories of monks ;fi and finally it infected the holy atmosphere of the Vatican itself. The first in Pome to mount the high-heeled cothurnus of sentimental or heroic comedy, had been that “actor of all work,” the Cavalier Bernini! With the per- mission of his brother poetaster, Urban VIII., and the laborious assistance of his slavish pupils, he planned and constructed a theatre in the spacious hall of the “Fon- deria” of the Vatican, which took the lead of every private theatre in Borne ; and he assisted to confirm that bad taste in the drama of the age, by rendering it the fashion. J The talent which planned and finished the baldichino of St. Peter’s, now devoted itself with equal zeal to painting scenery, inventing machinery, selecting music, and sketch- ing the outline of a drama, which Ottaviano Castelli, one of his numerous followers, and a genuine seicentisto, filled up ■with dialogues, after the manner of Bernini’s friend and model, the Cavaliere Marini. * “ II n’y eut si petite ville ou il ne se format une academie dont l’unique affaire etoit de dormer des spectacles payes.” — Sismondi. + “We were entertained at night with an English play at the Jesuits, where we had dined : and the next at Prince Galicano’s, who himself composed the music to a magnificent opera, where were present Cardinal Pamfilio, the Pope’s nephew, the governor of Rome, the Cardinal ambassa- uour, ladies, and a number of nobility and strangers.” — Evelyn. X “Bernini,” says Evelyn, “ a Florentine sculptor, architect, painter, and poet, a little before my coming to the city, gave a public opera, (for so they call shows of that kind,) wherein he painted the soenes, cut the statues, invented the engines, composed the music, writ the comedy, and built the theatre.” OF SALYATOR ROSA. 109 Tlie dramas of the Vatican had all the faults of the dramatic compositions of that age of degraded literature ; and Bernini, who seems to have been the very type of Bays, introduced some practical conceits, which, in spite even of the bad taste of the times, could only have been tolerated under the sanction- of his influence and fashion, aided by the combined talents of all his disciples, and an audience composed of princes and cardinals. Bernini had scarcely closed his theatre for the season, and was still catching the echoes of plaudits which shook the pontifical edifice to its centre, when the opening of an- other private theatre was announced, at the Vigna de’ Mignanelli, a pretty but deserted villa near the Porta del Popolo. The first day’s performance attracted an audience, distinguished, if not for rank, at least for almost all the talent and discrimination w r hich Borne then afforded. The most noted, and the least expected, of the audience was the Cavalier Bernini himself, seated conspicuously in the centre of the theatre, and surrounded by Bomanelli, Guido Ubaldo, Abbatini, Ottaviano Castelli, and nearly the whole of his school and numerous followers. After some trifling delay, the usual note of preparation sounded, the curtain drew up, and to the delight and surprise of the audience, the popular Pormica of the Carnival came forward for the prologue, habited as the Calabrese Coviello, in the character of the Direttore , or manager of the theatre. He was fol- lowed by a crowd of young actors demanding the “ sog- getto ” of the drama they were about to enact, with clamor- ous importunities. The preliminary gesticulations, the first accents of the Neapolitan dialect of Coviello, set the house in a roar ; and Laughter, “holding both his sides,” indulged himself freely, after his long privations, on the benches of the Ponderia. "When silence was restored, Coviello opened the prologue A hy explaining to his followers the reason of his giving in to so idle an amusement as that of the acting of plays ; and after an humorous description of the ardours of a Boman summer, and its enervating effects, not only on the body, but on the mind, he began to dictate the plan and object of the play he was about to present ; when, to the utter amazement of many, and to the great consternation of * These prologues were in prose. 110 LIFE AND TIMES all, Coviello, in dictating rules for a genuine Italian comedy, introduced as faults to be avoided and ridicules to be laughed at, the very scenes, the dialogues, and even the new-fangled machinery of the applauded theatre of the Vatican. Passeri, the painter, friend, and biographer of Salvator Posa, at this most audacious attack upon one whom he has described as “quel dragone, custode vigilante degli orti Esperidi,” (the “ dragon, the vigilant guardian of the Hes- perian garden of patronage,”) rose from his seat, and timidly turned his eyes upon the potent tyrant of the arts. But the dignity and prudence of Bernini did not permit him to testify the least emotion. With an affected indifference, an apparent unconsciousness of the attack he sustained, he coolly sat out the piece to the end. Not so his irritable poet and protege, Ottaviano Castelli. Condemned to silence by the example of his master, he exhibited his rage, accord- ing to Passeri, “ by violent movements of the head, and by such threatening gesticulations” as intimated a deep-seated and bitter vengeance. The prologue being finished, the comedy began; in which all the old favourites of the Commedie al soggetto were introduced ; but it is probable that the audience was too refined, and too deeply imbued with the tastes of the sei- centisti, to relish its humour; for Passeri observes, that <( non fu cosa^considerabile” — “ it was no great thing.” The prologue, however, with its severe attack on Bernini and the reigning dramatic taste, was the subject of conversation throughout all Pome ; and though one of the fashionable preachers of the day, a young ecclesiastic named Nicola Mussi, had taken upon himself the responsibility of the di- rectorship of the Teatro Mignanelli ; yet it was soon known that the originator of all, the' manager, composer, scene- painter, and principal actor, was no other than the painter of Prometheus ! the elegant improvvisatore of the Strada Babbuina. While some were applauding the wit and the courage of the fearless young artist, and others were censuring his temerity and insolence, envy and self-love, wounded in the very life-nerve of sensibility, were preparing to avenge the injury they had sustained from truth and taste, by means to which the base and mediocre are sure to resort. A comedy was announced for a particular day, to OF SALYATOR ROSA. Ill be performed in tbe theatre of the Palazzo Sforza, in the Borgo Vecchio, under the direction of the poet Ottaviano Castellani, and the patronage of his Maecenas, the Cavalier Bernini. The mot de Venigme was universally understood, and the public were prepared to witness the most signal vengeance that ever was taken on a bold and independent spirit, who dared to get the start of his age, and expose the follies and the vices by which it was degraded. The theatre was crowded at an early hour. Those who had a few days before so willingly laughed with the Coviello of the Teatro Mignanelli, now came as willingly to laugh at him ; that he was present and conspicuously seated, was no impediment to the friendly intention. The prologue opened with a tame parody of the prologue of Coviello. It exhibited a crowd of persons assembled to hear a Commedia da recitarsi, a written comedy, or one ready to be recited ; and while the reciter (who had not yet appeared) was expected, a sort of conjuror, or, as the Ita- lians call such personages, a chiromante , stepped from the crowd, and offered to tell the fortunes, and relate the lives, of any of the company who would show him their hand. The person who first offered himself to this inspection was, to all appearance, the Formica of the Carnival, habited and masked as the Coviello of the Mignanelli. The Chiromante having perused the lineaments of his hand, began what was intended for the history of Salvator Bosa ; in which the grossest calumnies, interwoven with facts well known, left no doubt as to the personal allusion. He took for his groundwork the humble birth of Salvator in Naples, the miseries and misfortunes of his early life, his indigence and fruitless struggles in Borne, his adventures among the ban- ditti of the Abruzzi ; and upon this canvas he engrafted such follies, vices, and crimes as most degrade humanity, till, borne away by the rage of insatiable vengeance, and stimulated to greater exertion by the coldness of the dis- gusted and indignant audience, he burst forth into a sudden explosion of abuse against the profession which could admit such members into its body. As the audience consisted chiefly of the most eminent artists and virtuosi in Borne, this tirade was the signal for the most unequivocal manifes- tation of anger and professional indignation. The audience 112 LIFE AND TIMES rose simultaneously, and left the theatre. Even Bernini and Romanelli were obliged to follow the general example, lest they should be included in the conspiracy of Castellani, who in vain besought the spectators to return, assuring them that he meant no offence to the profession in general^ and that his attacks were all directed against an individual who degraded it. None paused to receive his excuses ; and he was left alone on his own stage, before his drama, which was to follow this dull and malignant prologue, had even begun. A violent cabal was the result of these infamous calum- nies, which the friends of Salvator Rosa designated as “ cose improprie, mendaci, ed imposture,” “lies, impostures, and improprieties.” The enemies of the young artist (and they were all whose pretensions and mediocrity could not stand the test of his acumen) crowded round the standard of the slanderous Castellani ; while the few distinguished by their wit, judg- ment, and independence, became the partisans of one, whose spirit and genius were, in spite of every obstacle, now finding their own level. Salvator, in whom the virtue of discretion so rarely mani- fested itself, behaved on this occasion with equal prudence and dignity. The attack, like the character of the miserable hireling Castellani, the bravo of his party, was below notice or resentment ; and Salvator avenged himself on his calum- niators by taking from this moment a higher position in society, both as a private and a professional man, than he had hitherto, by the fatality of circumstances, been enabled to occupy. CHAPTER Y I. 1639—1647. With the Carvinal and summer of 1639 terminated the idle but not inelegant dissipations of Salvator Rosa. Although the light-hearted frolics of this gay and brilliant period of his life were enjoyed in the saloons of the great, in the OE SALYATOR ROSA. 113 academies of the learned, and in the private theatres of the virtuosi of the day, (and these were chiefly artists and ecclesiastics,*) yet was this the epoch which furnished a ground-work for calumnies, which the spirit of party even still circulates in Italy, to the prejudice of one whose crime lay not in the freedom of his morals, or the licence of his conduct, hut in the boldness of his opinions and the inde- pendence of his principles. Passeri, however, supposes that Salvator hesitated for a moment whether he would not pursue that path to notoriety which he had so successfully opened, by cultivating the drama and becoming a professed play- writer ; but he soon gave up the idea, though a favourite one, because such compositions, “ come cose disgregate, non partorirano troppo buono nome” — “ being unconnected with his profession, were injurious to his reputation:” — a proof of the gravity and respectability of a profession which Ra- phael and Michael Angelo had rendered almost sacred in public opinion. t He withdrew, therefore, with infinite pru- dence, from pursuits thus fascinating, and confined, as it is expressly said, “ his modest recreations (‘ sue modeste re- creazioni’) to the intimate society of his particular friends.” Painting, the business of his life and the object of his am- bition, was resumed with new ardour, and followed with an increasing success. His vogue had now brought forward his genius ; and the verses of the amusing improvisator e did more for the author of the Prometheus than the Prometheus itself. Known as a dramatist, an actor, a poet, a painter, and a * One of the great objections of Milton to academical education was, that men intended for the Church were permitted in such institutions to act plays. “ Writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of trincalos, buffoons, &c., in the eyes of courtiers and court ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles.” “ Ses comedies furent fort a la mode, et chacun a son exemple voulut etre acteur.” — Abrege de la Vie des plus fameux Peintres, tom. i. Of these comedies I cannot find a trace, though all Salvator’s biographers allude to them. In a letter which now lies before me, from the learned and excellent Abbate Cancelliari of Rome, it is said that Salvator Rosa accom- panied his musical farces, composed by himself, upon various instruments. These were probably a species of buffo-cantata ; but it is likely that his dramas were mere sketches or “ canevas ,” after the manner of the cornmedia del arte , which the actors filled up. His own parts he acted al improvviso. This style of composition is still followed in the minor theatres of Naples. — ■ See Goldoni's Memoirs. 114 LIFE AND TIMES musician, all obstacles to fame were removed. Tbe species of fashion he now enjoyed, however lightly founded, became of the most solid benefit ; and commissions for his admi- rable landscapes poured in with a rapidity which required all his well-known facility to execute.* Yet, with a success as brilliant as it was rapid, Salvator was again sinking into despondency. Insensible of the good he possessed, he smarted under the privation of that species of fame which he most emulated. It was in vain that his exquisite landscapes enriched the select gallery of the Palazzo Eeodele,t and took their places among the chefs-d’oeuvre of his own admired Titian in the princely gallery of the Spada.^ The vogue which his landscapes and small figures obtained, rather wounded than satisfied the ambition of their author. His powerful genius de- manded vastness of space, extension of form, and all the high concomitants of philosophical conceptions, historical incidents, and moral and poetical combinations. The ele- ments of his Titans, his Regulus, his Catiline, were floating vaguely and as yet vainly in his imagination. He panted to obtain some of the great public works which would have admitted a display of these high and conscious powers ; but they were in the exclusive gift of the Grovernment and its partisans ; and his attack on Bernini had deprived him for ever of advantages, which were daily lavished on Bo- rn anelli, and on others, whose mediocrity was their best recommendation to the jealous arbiter of the fine arts. While Salvator thus repined at a destiny which threw * “ Datosi allora tutto a dipingere, ebbe molte commissioni per mold quadri, e come velocissirao era nell 1 operazione, facile assai gli reusciva il saziare ognuno che ne bramava : guadagno in poco tempo grosse somme di danaro.” — Pascoli. • Salvator was wont to finish before night a cabinet picture begun in the morning. + The Feodele gallery was in high estimation in the seventeenth century. But many of the great galleries of that age have merged into other collections, or have found their way to foreign countries. The mal-administration of their domestic affairs had reduced many of the Roman nobility to dispose of their finest pictures long before the French Revolution. J These landscapes still hang in the Spada gallery. I am told that a celebrated Italian artist has said they are the only original pictures of Salvator now in Rome : — a strange assertion, which many in Rome will doubtless contest. Both the credulity and the scepticism of the Italian virtu- osi are, to say the least of them, rather curious. OE SALYATOR ROSA. 115 his genius into thraldom, and (as he deemed it) brought more profit than glory, his sudden and extraordinary suc- cess excited the rancorous envy of a profession accused beyond every other of indulging in that irritable self-love which views an enemy in every competitor, and is more jealous of the success than of the merit of a rival. The success of Salvator was of that kind which is never par- doned — a success obtained in brilliant society. The man and the artist had each their share in the malice thus excited. It was industriously circulated that the author of Prometheus could not paint an historical picture ; that he was incapable of executing anything beyond those small landscapes and marine pieces which owed their vogue to their originality. Put in granting him this one master-quality, they ceded him that which placed him above all who attacked and all who opposed him, and rendered him worthy to enter the lists with those two great masters of landscape, whose splendid reputations were at their acme when Salvator came forth “to share the triumph and partake the gale” of their popularity. These illustrious men were Claude Lorraine and Grasp ar Poussin. # The Jiguristi, as the historical painters were then affectedly called, in contradistinction to that new genus in the art, the jpaesonti , had been rapidly declining in number and in merit, when Adam Elzheimer,t called 11 Tedesco , first opened a school of landscape in Pome under the pon- tificate of Paul V. The rapid progress made in this new and refreshing branch of art by Yiola,J by Vincenzo Ar- * Pietro Berrettini, or Pietro da Cortona, a contemporary of these great masters, though an historical painter, also executed landscapes of some merit, chiefly for the Sacchetti family, from whose once splendid gallery they have been transferred to the Capitol. An Italian critic has observed of Berrettini, “Era Pietro un pittore che faceva bene cib che voleva, e cosi ancora i Paesi. Non che voglio paragonarlo in questo genere con Poussino, Claudio, e Salva- tor Rosa .” — Risposta alle rijiessioni critiche del Signor Marchese D’Argens, p. 64. f Adam Elzheimer, the son of a poor tailor, was born in 1574, and died in 1620, when Salvator Rosa was just five years old. Although he was the founder of a school of landscape, this beautiful branch of painting was occa- sionally and incidentally cultivated by the Caracci and their pupils, and it employed some of the first geniuses of the Roman and Lombard Schools. Among the pupils of Adam Elzheimer was David Teniers. t Born in 1600, and died in his eightieth year. It became the fashion at 116 LIFE AND TIMES manno, and other disciples of the Oltramontanes, opened the route to that ultimate perfection which was obtained under Urban VIII., and which bestowed upon the reign of the Barberini pope the title of “ 11 secolo d’ oro dei Pae- santi,” — the golden age of landscape-painters. At the moment when Salvator came to illustrate this golden age with new splendour, Claude Grelee, called Lor- raine, reigned supreme over the school of landscape-painting in Borne, and, it may be added, in Europe. It is related in the Life of this extraordinary person, that it was the con- stant complaint of his father, Pierre Grelee, an humble pastry-cook in a little town in Lorraine, that his son Claude was so imbecile that he never could teach him to make a pie or heat an oven. Pierre’s brother (a stonemason by trade) advised him to make the lad a priest, because the proverb says, “ If your child is good for nothing else, he will be good for the Church.” But there was as little chance of making Claude a priest as a baker ; for if he could not be taught to make a pie, neither could he be brought to learn to read. Much parental persecution ensued. The “ Imbecile” could feel, if he could not learn ; and he escaped from the tyranny of the parental government, and hired himself as a servant of all-work with some Flemish artists who were going to study in Borne. It was at one of the initiatory festivals of his Oltramontane masters, that the culinary duties of Claude Grelee developed some latent talents for the gastronomic art, which his father had never been able to elicit : and Agostino Tassi, a Boman painter, whose tastes were of the palate as well as of the palette, seduced this pains-taking scrub from his masters, and hired him, at an increase of wages, in the double capacity of cook and colour-grinder.* Rome at this period to reform the vignas and villas on the model of the fan- ciful buildings introduced by Viola into his landscapes. Of this fact the Villa-Pia near Rome is said to be an example. * Agostino Tassi, “ malvagio uomo, ma pittore eccellente,” “ a bad roan, but a good painter,” was one of the most extraordinary geniuses of his age. Having, for some of his many extravagances, been condemned to the galleys, he amused himself by sketching the scenes and groupings which his new situation presented to him, and which he afterwards reproduced with admi- rable effect in the frescoes with which he covered several of the palaces of Rome and Genoa. His house was filled with young artists, who assisted him, and whom he paid by his instructions, and by keeping a good table for them. Claude was hired simply “ per le domestiche facende et per macignargli OF SALYATOR ROSA. 117 It was in the studio of his new master that Claude first felt those aspirations to a new and higher calling, which, had they been devoted to another cause, were sufficiently mira- culous to have been deemed the mysterious operation of grace working upon imbecility independently of its own volition, and beyond the sphere of its own energies. Prom the stupor of unidea’d dulness, from the lowliness of homely avocation, from an obscurity the most apparently impervious to any ray of prosperity, suddenly started forth one of the most successful candidates for immortality, which the art of painting ever produced. He who had not suffi- cient comprehension to make a tart or to spell a homily, was now involved in the study of pure abstractions, calcu- lating refractions of light, and measuring aerial perspectives by luminous or ideal lines. “ Le voila,” says one of the briefest, but most delightful of his biographers (the Baron Den on), “ le voila qui etablit dans le vague les graves et solides verites de la geometrie ; en un mot, le voila devenu le plus grand paysagiste de l’univers.” In his thirty-sixth year, Claude Grelee was cooking cutlets and grinding colours ; in ten years afterwards, Claude Lor- raine appears on the scene, the friend of the elegant Car- dinal Bentivoglio, the distinguished favourite of Urban VIII., the courted of him who was courted by all, Bernini, and the patent painter of fashion to all the aristocracy of Europe. “ The road to his gallery (says one of his histo- rians) was closed against all who held not the highest rank in the state.” Pontiffs, potentates, and princes, became the exclusive candidates for the splendid products of his creative genius. His enormous prices limited his purchasers to the enormously wealthy ; and. the public were in a manner shut out from bidding for pictures of which three popes, succes- sively, and two sovereigns, sought to be the exclusive mono- polists. Whatever could be spared of the fashionable predilection which existed in favour of Claude, was given to his eminent condisciple and pupil, Graspar Dughet ; who had, by the favour of his first master, kinsman, and protector, Nicholas i colon ” — for domestic services and to grind colours. Tassi endeavoured to give him some instructions in painting, and failed in the first instance ; but he lived to see this scrub become the first painter of the age. 118 LIFE AND TIMES Poussin, taken the name of Poussin.* Taught in the schools, and protected by the influence of such men, and above all strongly recommended by Bernini, f Gaspar Poussin began his career under circumstances so intoxi- cating, that his success is the more to be admired ; for adversity is the true school of genius ; which, like religion, requires persecution to prove its divine origin. The effect of the ever-effective chiaro oscuro had been reiterated to repletion, by Adam Elzheimer and his school. It was the genius of Claude which developed the new mystery of perspective, until his glorious pictures seemed to open vistas through the walls they decorated. The creator of a vegetable aristocracy, this master painter of the elements ennobled the nature he copied, and was the first to stamp a beau ideal upon her material aspect, as Raphael had before done upon the human countenance. Those suns that seemed to set in a radiance which rivalled their meridian ; those waters that never rippled but to summer breezes ; that halo of light and lustre which fell over Eden scenes of almost unearthly loveliness ; the splen- dour of architecture; the fair round forms of ruminating cattle, reposing in deep shades, or cooling their fervid sides in lucid streams, afforded combinations, which, in their end- less variety, seemed to exhaust the powers of scenic nature, and to bid defiance to rivalry or imitation. G-aspar Poussin, more learned than Claude, and more deeply tinged with the profound erudition of their common master Nicholas, produced pictures, in which every image was susceptible of a commentary. Deficient in the brilliant idealism and splendid colouring of Lorraine, his works are characterized by a pastoral elegance and sylvan propriety, which produced for him the title of the u gentile arte- ficer% * Gaspar Poussin, bom in 1613, died in 1675. He and Vandervert were both pupils of Claude. Gaspar, however, came into his studio the highly finished pupil of N. Poussin, with whom it is supposed that Claude also studied. *f* Gaspar Poussin painted the frescoes of Bernini’s palace for nothing, and ever afterwards the Cavalier was his “ proneur titre." J Pouissin had, in common with Salvator, the gift of celerity, and he too began and finished his landscapes in a day. His great pictures are in the Palazzo Pamfili Doria at Rome, and they give the name of “ Gran Sala di Poussino” to one of its apartments. The finest is said to be that of the OP SALVATOR ROSA. 119 He scattered over his landscapes the most beautiful fea- tures of the Tuscan and Tiberine territories ; and the broad foliage of his elegant plantains, his limpid fountains and silver streamlets, his gentle undulations and fair pavilions, his perpetual verdure and cool skies, tempered down to the delicacy of his Arcadian figures, # exhibited a nature chosen and selected with practised judgment, such as she is seen in the descriptions of Tasso, of the fairy gardens of the volup- tuous Armida. In the works of both these illustrious masters, in the radiant sun-lights of Claude, and the serene heavens of Poussin, the terrestrial world lies wrapped in a sweet repose. Nature, in her tranquil beauty, always appears the bene- factress of man, not his destroyer ; the source of his joys, not the tomb of his hopes and the scourge of his brief existence ; and such she appeared in the works of the two powerful geniuses who presided over landscape-painting, when Salvator Rosa came forth upon that arena, which they had hitherto exclusively occupied, and dispelled the splendid but* “ unreal mockery” of elements always genial, and na- ture always undisturbed. His magic pencil threw all into life and motion and fearful activity. The “ famoso pittore delle cose morali” could not separate the scene from the actor. He could not separate subordinate matter from him, who was mocked in being told he was made to rule over it : and representing Nature as he saw her in those mighty regions he had most studied, he painted her the inevitable agent of human suffering, mingling all her great operations with the passions and interests of man, blasting him with her thunder-bolt ! wrecking him in her storms ! burying Bridge of Lucacio on tie Via di Tivoli. In an adjoining chamber are some landscapes by Salvator Rosa. * They look like poets in disguise, realizing their own pastoral dreams in scenes of their own ideal conception. “ Le figure non sono d' ordinario, bifolchi, pastori ed armenti, come ne’ quadri fiaminghi; ma personaggi presi dalla favola o' dall’ antica storia.” — Ticozzi. These figures, however, were generally painted by Nicholas Poussin, as Claude’s were by Borguignone and Filippo Lauri. Claude was wont to say, I sell my landscapes, and make a present of my figures, “ Vendo i paesi, e regalo le figure.” His oxen, goats, and aquatic birds, are however deemed admirable; but moral nature seemed shut out from his view. He saw her in her tangible forms, and not, like Salvator Rosa, in her spirit. 120 LIFE AND TIMES him in her avalanches ! and whelming him in her torna- does ! * The least of his landscapes was pregnant with moral in- terest, and calculated to awaken human sympathies. His deep and gloomy forests, whose impervious shade is relieved by the silver bark of the shattered oak that forms the fore- ground, are only given as the shelter of the formidable bandit, whose bold and careless figure, strangely armed and wildly habited, fixes the eye beyond all the merits of the scenic representation. The long line of stony pathway cut through masses of impending rock, is but the defile in which the gallant cavalier, bent on some generous enter- prise, is overtaken by the pitiless outlaw — or, by the rush of storms, which seem to threaten destruction at every step his frighted steed advances. The way-worn traveller, the benighted pilgrim, the shipwrecked mariner, introduced as accessories into the main scene, become images that engage the heart as well as the eye, and give to the inanimate character of landscape a moral action and an historical interest. Such drear and fearful aspects of nature, mingled with such views of society, concealed an arriere pensee , which, if it did not strike at once upon the apprehension of the spec- tator, worked its way through his imagination. The many , in gazing on the works of Salvator, felt, they knew not why — the few (and those few the great) became enamoured of pictures, which gave them a sensation, even though that sensation was one of terror: and the public, always ido- latrous of originality, and prone to excitement, were not to be satiated by representations powerfully calculated to awaken all their sympathies. The people of Home are described as moving in dusky groups through the hallowed roimd of the Pantheon, on the festival of San Giovanni Decollato, muttering their un- taught criticisms, and after having enquired, “ Have you seen the Titian, the Coreggio, the Veronese, or the Parme- giano,” never failed to add “ and our Signor Salvator ?” for our Signor Salvator need fear no competition with the * “Admirable paysagiste, son style austere, ses formes terribles excitent le frissonnement qui fait eprouver la nature a la vue des montagnes escarpees et des rocs sourcilleux.” — Monge. OF SALVATOR ROSA. 121 Titians and Gruidos, tbe Gruercinos, nor with, any other master. The reverence of the people, which had bestowed upon Rosa the title of the Signor, and their exclamations when his pictures were exposed in the Rotunda, “ stomached many honourable men,” says Passeri ; “ and the ostenta- tions plaudits of his admirers served but to increase the mass of envy he had already excited ; though he, poor gen- tleman, was innocent of it.” * The title of “ II Signor,” conferred upon Rosa by the people of Rome, was the only one he ever received. But the aristocracy of Nature had been admitted by her unsophisticated children ; and the letters patent of nobility which she had conferred, were ac- knowledged as legitimate claims to reverence and esteem. Neither coping with Claude Lorraine, nor with Graspar Poussin ; nor associating with men whose plain and rustic characters, t in despite of their professional talents, stood curiously and coarsely opposed to his own, Salvator, with respect to his fraternity, stood alone “ Among them, but not of them, In a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts,” as singular in his habits of life, as in the bold originality of his works. A stoic upon principle, but a voluptuary by temperament, Salvator endeavoured to assimilate opinions and tastes so little in accordance. Scarcely escaped from penury and ab- solute want, he already began to find “ Le superflu, chose tres necessaire.” His dress became as remarkable for its studied elegance, * Speaking of the three celebrated landscape painters of the seventeenth century, Lanzi observes, that the influence of fashion alternately exalted Claude, G. Poussin, and Salvator Rosa; but that in the beginning of the eighteenth, Rosa united all suffrages, and was “ il piu acclamato.” t Claude Lorraine, out of his art, remained the same inept and simple person, even in the height of his reputation, as when he was cooking and grinding colours for Tassi. His mind was like a dark space into which some accidental aperture admits one bright gleam of light. His friend G. Poussin, who imitated without possessing the learning of his master Nicholas, was a simple and ignorant man, who had no existence out of his workroom, except in the chase : and he devoted himself to this pursuit with such incautious ardour, that it brought on a complication of dis- orders, of which he died in the meridian of his reputation. 6 122 LIEE AKD TIMES as it was affectedly free from the sliowy splendour of that ostentatious age. # “ It was a fine sight (says his friend Baldinucci) to see him pass along the streets of Borne, with a certain dignified deportment, followed by a servant with a silver-hafted sword', while all who met him gave way to him.” The many pictures he painted of himself, and the descrip- tions left of his person by his contemporary biographers, are proofs, that the personal vanity which his enemies have numbered among his vices, was not without some founda- tion ; and it appears that if he had been good for nothing else, he would have been at least bon a peindre. A person so distinguished, a character so ardent, with passions which time failed to subdue, and an imagination which lent its magic even to the merest objects of sense, naturally involved him at this period of his life, and in a society where love was the business of all ages and ranks, in ties, to which he brought more truth, devotion, and sin- cerity, than he found. f A cantata which he wrote at this period, and which was set to music by his friend Cesti, gives the impression of his being the most miserable and discontented of mankind. “ All his lyrics,” (says the elegant writer, who first made them known to the English public,) — “ All his lyrics were complaints against his mistress or mankind. But in his fifth cantata, he deems his afflictions, like the stars of the firmament, countless ; and makes the melancholy confession, that out of six lustres which he had passed, he had not known the enjoyment of one happy day.” This querulous melancholy, inseparable from the temperament of the highest order of genius, which is so prone to feel and to suffer, gives a charm to the character of Salvator, which his occasional * “ Vestiva gallante, ma non alia cortegiana; senza gale, e superfluity” ■f One of the most beautiful of his cantatas, rescued by Dr. Burney from oblivion, is a proof of this assertion. It is a vow of fidelity to his mistress, under all circumstances of time and change ; and if the terminating stanza be deemed a conceit, it is certainly the prettiest that Italian poesy has been guilty of. “ E se la natura avara Del suo mortal tesoro Di questo crin mai le rubasse 1* oro Povero, ma contento Lo vedro bianco E P amero d’ argento.” Cantata VII., set to music by Luigi Rossi. OF SALVATOR ROSA. 123 flashes of gaiety and humour, his splenetic pleasantry and comic representations of the follies and vices of society, rather relieve and heighten, than decrease. While his pa- thetic cantatas, and their plaintive compositions, drew tears from the brightest eyes in Home, the “ potent, grave, and reverend signors ” of the conclave, did not disdain to solicit admission to those evening conversazioni of the Via Bab- buina, where the comic Muse alone presided ; but where, under the guise of national naivete, veiled in a rustic dialect, and set off by the most humorous gesticulations, truths were let drop with impunity, more perilous than those, for trans- lating which from the pages of Lncian a protege of the Grand Duke de’ Medici was at the same moment confined by the Inquisition. It was in these conversazioni that Salvator tried the point of the sarcasms against the church, the government, and the existing state of literature and the arts, which were after- wards given to the world in his published satires, and which still draw down on his memory the unfounded calumnies that embittered his life. The manner of the daring improwisatore, as left on record by his chroniclers, or handed down by tradition, was no less singular and attractive, than the matter which inspired him. The apartment in which he received his company, was af- fectedly simple. The walls, hung with faded tapestry, ex- hibited none of his beautiful pictures, which might well have attracted attention from the actor to his works. A few rows of forms included all the furniture ; and they were se- cured at an early hour by the impatience of an audience, select and exclusive ; either invited by himself or introduced by his friends. "When the company were assembled, and not before, Salvator appeared in the circle, but with the air of an host rather than that of an exhibitor, until the desire to hear him recite his poetry, or to improvisate, expressed by some individual, produced a general acclamation of en- treaty. It was a part of his coquetry to require much soli- citation : and when at last he consented, he rose with an air of timidity and confusion, and presented himself with his lute, or a roll of paper containing the heads of his subject. After some graceful hesitation, a few precluding chords, Or a slight hem ! to clear his full, deep voice, the scene changed : the elegant, the sublime Salvator disappeared, and was re- 124 LIFE AND TIMES placed by the gesticulating and grimacing Coviello, who, long before he spoke, excited such bursts of merriment, “con le piu ridicolose smorfie al suo modo Napolitano” (with the most laughable grimaces in the true Neapolitan style), that even the gravest of his audience were ready to burst. When the adroit improvviscitore had thus wound up his auditory to a certain pitch of exultation, and prepared them at least to receive with good-humour whatever he might hazard, he suddenly stepped forth and exclaimed with great energy, in the broad Neapolitan of the Largo di Gas- tello ; “ Siente chisso ve, auza gli uocci.” # He then began his recitation:. “Whatever were its faults of composition,” says one of his biographers, “it was impossible to detect them, as long as he recited. Nor could their charm be un- derstood by those who did not hear them recited by himself. When some of these productions were published after his death, it was supposed that they would lose much of their apparent merit, because his fervid and abundant genius, rich in its natural fertility, despised the trammels of art, as sub- mitting talent to mean and slavish rules. The contrary, however, was the fact ; for they excited universal admira- tion. ”f With a thirst for praise, which scarcely any applause could satisfy, Salvator united a quickness of perception that rendered him suspicious of pleasing, even at the moment he was most successful. A gaping mouth, a closing lid, a languid look, or an impatient hem ! threw him into utter confusion, and deprived him of all presence of mind, of all power of concealing his mortification. When he perceived that some witty sally had fallen lifeless, that some epigram- matic point had escaped the notice of his auditors, he was wont to exclaim to his particular friends, when the strangers were departed, “ What folly to lose my time and talent in reading before these beasts of burden, who feel nothing, and have no intellect beyond what is necessary to understand * A Neapolitan idiom, meaning “ Awaken and heed me,” but literally translated, “ Listen and open your eyes ! ” This and many other passages in the various and contradictory lives of Salvator, prove that his recitations contained the elements of his satires. Of these recitations it is said that there were taken down, “ Infinite copie a penna che subito sparsero per tutta T Italia” (many copies in MS. which were quickly spread through all Italy). Five editions of the Satires them- selves were published in Italy before 1770. OE SALVATOE EOSA. 125 the street ballads of the blind bandy* Such is the power which an insatiable love of glory may hold, even over the most elevated intellect. While the ambition of Salvator demanded a public and an audience to do the honours by his singular authorship, his warm heart and refined tastes had other wants, more difficult to satisfy. In the crowd which flocked to his con- versazioni to be amused, there were some who preferred the original and interesting discourse of the man, to the reci- tations of the enterprising improvvisatore ; and it was the singular felicity of Salvator Rosa to have surrounded him- self at this period, and to have retained through life, a little band of intimates, whose tastes and views and talents, coin- ciding with his own, formed that true and only basis of friendship, sympathy, and equality. At the head of this band stood Carlo Rossi, a Roman citizen, worthy of Rome’s best days, an Italian banker of the old Medicean stamp, a scholar of no ordinary learning, a judge if not a writer of poetry, and a distinguished patron of the arts. Abounding in wealth and. taste, he relieved the toil of the counting-house, in which, like old Cosmo de’ Medici, he himself daily presided, by recreations and pur- suits the most refined and elevated ; and he had cultivated music with such success, that, after his brother, the cele- brated musician and composer Luigi Rossi, he was esteemed the first harp-player in Italy, in an age too, when that beautiful and graceful instrument was more in fashion than it has been ever since. Carlo Rossi had become acquainted with Salvator through his professional merits ; having been induced to seek him out by his exquisite landscapes exhi- bited in the Pantheon. But he soon discovered in the man whom he had at first sought as an artist to enrich his noble gallery, all the principles, acquirements, and pursuits, which he desired in the friend of his intimate hours. The banker, and the painter, the man of business and the man of genius, became inseparable. The friendship of Carlo Rossi fre- * In his own Neapolitan, (to which he always had recourse when under strong emotion,) 46 Aggio io bene speso lo tiempo mio, in leggere le fatiche mie alii sornari, e a gente che nulla intienne, avvezza solamente a sientire non autro che la canzona dello cieco.” These u ciechi” still haunt the streets of Italy, to the delight of strangers. They are bands of itinerant musicians composed of the blind. 126 LIFE AND TIMES quently rushed between Salvator and the ruin prepared for him by his enemies. The counsels of Carlo Rossi were alone capable of soothing the perturbations of that haughty and fiery spirit, which perpetually plunged its victim into new and perilous difficulties. It was for Carlo Rossi that Salvator worked best and oftenest ; he was the comforter, whose intimacy so often rendered his life endurable, and the mourner whose tenderness conferred the last honours at his death. The little chapel to the left of the “ chiesa di Santa Maria di Monte Santo ” at Rome, is a monument of the respect and tenderness with which the first citizen of Italy, in the seventeenth century, honoured the memory of the first of her artists.* Of this band also, were the Count Ugo Maffei of Vol- terra, (whose historical name recalls that highly gifted family, which for two centuries illustrated by its taste and erudition the literature of Italy, f) and the learned Baptista Ricciardi of the university of Pisa, whose epistolary corre- spondence with Salvator Rosa has called forth such generous and noble sentiments, as are alone sufficient to rescue the maligned character of his illustrious friend from the ca- lumnies with which party spirit has blackened it. Among the intimates of Salvator were also the quaint, but excellent Passeri, more renowned for his piety than his pictures, though a disciple of Domenichino, — Prancesco Redi, one of the most celebrated literati of his age, — Pra * The Rossis were by descent Neapolitans, but were naturalized citizens of Rome. About the time here alluded to (1640), Luigi Rossi was in the enjoyment of great celebrity, for his canzonetti and his opera of “ Giuseppe figlio di Giacobbe,” which was still extant towards the conclusion of the last century. Some of his motets , to be found in the Christ-Church collec- tion, are esteemed equal to those of Capella. The words of the canzonette beginning, “ Or che la notte del silenzio arnica,” and of another called La Fortuna , are supposed to have been written by Salvator Rosa. Carlo Rossi was a merchant, as well as a banker, and one of the wealthiest and most respected in Italy. *f* Ugo Maffei was afterwards charge d’affaires de France at Rome, where he educated his celebrated nephew Paul Alexander Maffei, one of the most learned men of the age, and author of some ingenious works on virtu. The “Merope” of Scipio Maffei excited the jealousy of Voltaire, and was the only tragedy of distinguished celebrity for ninety years previous to the pro- ductions of Alfieri. OF SALYATOE EOSA. 127 Feginaldo Sgambatisti of tlie order of Predicatori, an elegant preacher and a good Latin poet, always named as “ 1’ amico intrinsico,” “ the intimate friend ” of Salvator, — the acute and clever Padre Oliva, general of the Jesuits, — Baldinueci the painter, and the biographer of painters, — and the elegant and all-accomplished Duke di Salviati, who conferred upon Kosa the title so well merited of “ Famoso pittore delle cose morale.” * Such are the men who formed the intimate society of one who is accused of having frequented the company, and participated in the orgies, of the low and the profligate ; and of whom it is said to this day in Pome, that he lived exclusively with the populaccio of the Trastevere. The musical talents of the composer of several of the best cantatas then in vogue, drew also around him the greatest masters of an age in which music was rapidly assuming an ascendancy over all the other arts. Cesti,f Legrenze, Ca- valli, Ferrari, Luigi Fossi, and Griacomo Carissimi, were not only the habitues of Rosa’s house, but were all emulous of setting his verses to music, and this too at the very moment when that satirist was lashing the profession, sometimes * The Salviati family was one of the most distinguished in Tuscany. Besides its celebrated Cardinal, who, as Grand Prior of Rome and Admiral of the Maltese order, rendered himself so formidable to the Ottoman Empire, it produced many other distinguished persons. Amongst these, the young Duke Salviati was so enamoured of a picture painted by Salvator for Signor Francesco Cordini of Florence, (Philosophy presenting a mirror to Nature,) that he made it the subject of an ode, which begins * ‘ Quel gelida pianeta Che di luce non sua vago resplende,” &e. + The Padre Marc- Antonio Cesti of Vol terra was a Minor Conventual, a pious ecclesiastic, and one of the most fashionable musical composers of the day. He gave his first opera, the “ Orontea,” to the Italian stage in 1649, and it remained a stock-piece for upwards of thirty years. In 1660 the Padre was still a first tenor singer in the Pope’s chapel. The only scena of his Orontea extant was found in a MS. music-book of S. Rosa, in 1777, by Dr. Burney. Passeri says of him, “ Cos! celebre per la sua abilita nel canto e nei componimenti,” &c. Cavalli and Ferrari were at this time composing operas for Venice and Bologna, and for the private theatricals of Rome : no public theatre being permitted there before the year 1671, when one was opened in the Torre della Nona. To these musicians of the seventeenth century may be added Monti Verde, Sacrati, and Tignali. 128 LIFE AND TIMES with the nervous conciseness of Juvenal, and sometimes with the Attic severity of Lucian. Observing the manners of an age in which he deemed it an indignity to have been horn, with the deep and philosophic view which distin- guished all he thought and produced, Salvator perceived that the Church was making the same monopoly of music as she had done of painting, and would in the end degrade one art (as she had already deteriorated the other) to the worst purposes. The finest singers were now shut up in the Homan monasteries ; and all Home was then resorting to the Spirito Santo, to hear the sister Veronica, a beautiful nun, who awakened emotions in her auditors that did not all belong to heaven.* It was in the palaces of the Porporati that the first musical dramas were given, which bore any resemblance to the modern opera, t by which they are now succeeded in the “ Argentina and the choir of the pontifical chapel (which gave the musical tone to all the churches of Christendom, while it engrossed all the patronage of the Government) was gradually abandoning those learned combinations, and that * Evelyn mentions this nun, whom it was the fashion to hear when he was at Rome. f The first attempt at a regular drama was made at Rome in one of these palaces as early as 1632, three years before Salvator’s first arrival there. It was called “ II Ritorno di Angelica nella India,” and was composed by the then fashionable secular composer Tignali. Public operas were at this time performing in Venice and Bologna. It may be curious to observe, that the instruments which were then found in the secular orchestras of Italy, were the organ, viol, viol de gamba, harp, lute, guitar, spinette, harpsichord, theorbo, and trumpet : while the court band of Louis XIII. and XIV. only consisted of the far-famed “ Four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row;” and even they were imported from Italy. The first and the most distin- guished was Baptiste Lulli, brought from Florence by Maria de’ Medici, at the age of fourteen. From a simple violonier , he became the founder of the French opera, and the model upon which Camfra, Destouches, and other French composers founded their braying monotonies. At the same period in England, the music of Lawes and Bird was laid aside as profane, and replaced by those pious discords, Such as from lab’ring lungs enthusiast blows. High sounds attempted through the vocal nose. Vicenzio Galileo (the father of the celebrated astronomer) remarks, however, in his Dialoga della Musica, that the best Italian lyres were made for the English market. OF SALVATOR EOS A. 129 solemn and affecting simplicity, which were calculated to answer the purposes of a passionate devotion, and to satisfy at the same moment the taste of the amateur and the enthusiasm of the devotee. While the music of the Church was gradually assuming an effeminate character, the palaces of the great were filled with the most worthless of the profession, of both sexes. # The ge- nius which went to the composition of the finest music, was then, as now, less prized and rewarded than the voice which executed it ; f and the profligacy of the public singers in Italy was no impediment to their reception into the first families of the country. Upon this shameless laxity of manners, and the visible degradation of ecclesiastical music, Salvator fell with a puritan’s severity, scarcely surpassed by the anathemas of Calvin, or the vituperations of Erasmus. He attacked the style of singing in the pontifical chapel. { * “ II principe in circar questa canaglia Scandolo della corte, e de* palazzi ! ” S. Rosa , Satira lma. + “ Chiama in Roma piil gente alia sua udienza L’ Arpa d’ una Licisca, cantatrice, Che la campana della sapienza.” — Ibid. What a vast difference was there between the remuneration of a Catalani and a Rossini ! t See the first Satire from “ Che scandolo e il sentir ” to “ e gighe e sarabande alia distesa,” of which the following is a very wra-poetical trans- lation : — Oh shameless ! thus to hear an hireling band, In holy temples raise a voice profane — Mount sacred rostrums with sol fa in hand, And hymn their God in bacchanalian strain — A mass or vespers bray, bark hallelujahs, And roar their pater-nosters and their glorias. Where sinful eyes should drop their penance tear. Where sinful hearts should woo returning grace. The dilettante penitent, all ear, Seeks faults in tenors, beauties in a bass ; While thrill’s or fall’s discordant shriek or howl Lulls or distracts the vacillating soul. Each sacred sanctuary now is seen, Like some rude temple of the god of wine, A Noah’s ark, where many a beast unclean Profanes the altar and defiles the shrine ; While in loose strain the Miserere ’s given, And wafts the soul upon a jig to Heaven. 0—3 In 130 LIFE AND TIMES He attacked the vices of a profession which now, beyond every other, received the special patronage of the lords of the Conclave ; and though his efforts at reformation were as yet confined to his recitations, and to the frank utterance of opinions over which he held no control, yet these philip- pics increased the number of his enemies, even more than an attack on religion itself would have done.* While, however, all the singers in Home, with their pa- trons and partisans, took the field against the satirist, the great composers, distinguished alike for their genius and their morals, rallied round him; and the musical album of Salvator, brought a century after his death into England, (the land which has always been true to his merits, and in sympathy with his genius,) is a record that he offended none but those whose enmity was distinction. f Among the other distinguished persons whom the poetical reputation of Salvator Rosa brought to the conversazioni of the Yia Babbuina was the venerable Conte Carpigna, a In the original the last lines stand — “ Can tar su la ciaccona il Miserere Et con stilo dla farza e da commedia E gighe e sarabande alia distesa.” * Salvator, however, was not the only censor of musical morals. In the “ Discorsi di Musica di Vincenzio Chiavelloni,” published in Rome in 1668, a severe attack was made on the morals of musicians, after the manner of Salvator. These diatribes were recited by the author in a musical academy, as Salvator recited his “ Musica “ and to say the truth,” says Zeno, “ their morals wanted as much correction as their music.” + “ Among the musical MSS. purchased at Rome in 1770, one that ranks the highest in my own favour was the music-book of Salvator Rosa, the painter, in which are contained not only the airs and cantatas set by Carissimi, Cesti, Luigi (Rossi), Cavalli, Legrenze, Capellino, Pasqualini, and Bandini, of which the words of several are by Salvator Rosa, but eight entire cantatas, written, set, and transcribed by this celebrated painter him- self. The book was purchased of his grand-daughter, who occupied the house in which her ancestor had lived and died. The hand-writing was ascertained hy collation ivith his letters and satires , of which the originals are preserved by his descendants. The historians of Italian poetry, though the} 7- often mention Salvator as a satirist, seem never to have heard of his lyrical productions; and as the book is not only curious for the music it contains, but for the poetry, I shall present my readers with a particular account of its contents, &c. — Other single airs by Luigi and Legrenze, the words by Salvator Rosa, fill up the volume, in which there is nothing so precious as the musical and poetical compositions of Rosa.” — Dr. Burney's History of Music . OP SALVATOR ROSA. 131 [Roman nobleman of bigb rank, and one of tbe most noted patrons of bis day. He was old and blind, and bad never seen any of Salvator’s pictures ; but be bad become so en- amoured of bis character, and of tbe talents which bis own remaining senses permitted him to appreciate, that be was desirous of bequeathing some work of tbe poet-painter to bis posterity; and on tbe verge of tbe tomb he bespoke a picture from him. This picture was ordered to be on a grand scale, and tbe subject was left to tbe artist. Tbe subject chosen was a battle ; and this battle-piece (one of the first great figure-pieces bespoken from Salvator) was the celebrated picture of which Borgognone was wont to say, “that there be bad acquired all bis principles of taste, judgment, and execution” in that arduous and particular style of painting, in which be himself afterwards so emi- nently excelled.* About tbe same period also Carlo [Rossi bespoke a figure- piece from Salvator, who stipulated for the choice of bis own subject, and produced his “ Sorceress.” [For this pic- ture, according to his own testimony, be only received fif- teen doubloons. [Rossi in tbe course of time was offered for it four hundred scudi ; and Salvator, in a letter to bis friend Ricciardi, says of it, “I have prophesied that when I am no more, it will bring a thousand.” Carlo Rossi was, no doubt, of tbe same opinion ; for, to distinguish this pic- ture from every other in bis gallery, (then one of tbe first in Italy,) a silken curtain was bung before it. Tbe curio- sity it excited was insatiable. f * Giacomo Cortese (called “ il Borgognone,'” from Burgundy, his birth- place) was a soldier of fortune, who became enamoured of painting during his Italian campaigns. The battle of Constantine in the Vatican is related to have first fixed his vocation. He exchanged his sword for the pencil, and studied in most of the principal cities of Italy; but an unfortunate love-affair finally drove him into the sanctuary of the Church, and he took the habit of the Jesuits at Rome, where he continued till the year 1676 to pray and paint, and “to fight all his battles o’er again ” with such life and energy that (says one of his biographers of his pictures) “ sembra di vedere il Coraggio che combatte per 1’ onore e per la vita ; e di udirve il suono dejle trombette, P anitrire de’ cavalli, e le strida di che cade ” — one seems to see Courage fighting for honour and for life, and to hear the sound of the trumpets, the neighing of the horses, and the screams of the wounded. “t Salvator, describing this picture in one of his letters, says, “ It is in length two braccia and a quarter, and one and a half in height. Its price was fif- teen doubloons, and it was done twenty years back.” 132 LIFE AND TIMES While occupied on a subject so congenial to bis wild and sombre imagination, it appears that Salvator painted as be thought, and wrote as be painted : for bis poetical “ incan- tation,” set to music by Cesti, may be assigned to this period.* This singular production is asserted to be “the happiest specimen of the strength and imagination of bis poetry.” It is a magical incantation of one distracted by love and by revenge. It bears a singular coincidence with the spells of Sbakspeare’s Hecate, f and intimately assimi- * Dr. Burney is of opinion, that this incantation furnished the idea of Purcell’s celebrated cantata, beginning “ By the croaking of the toad.” + This coincidence is so striking, that one might be tempted to suppose it was an imitation, but that Salvator’s acquaintance with Shakspeare’s works “ comes not within the prospect of belief.” In one who, like Audrey, has “ to thank the gods for not making her poetical,” to meddle with this incan- tation would be sacrilege. Its translation would have come best from him who has conjured up the mysterious agency of “ Manfred,” and imagined scenes which the pencil of Salvator could best have illustrated. Cantata di S. Rosa. All’ incanto, all’ incanto ! E chi non mosse il ciel mova Acheronte. Io vo magici modi Tentar profane note Erbe diverse, e nodi, Cio che arrestar pud le celeste rote, Mago circolo Onde gelide Pesci varij Acque chimiche Neri balsami Miste polveri Pietre mistiche Serpi e nottole Sangui putridi Molli viscere, Secche mummie Ossa e vermini. Suffumigij ch’ anneriscano, Voci orribili che spaventino, Linfe torbide ch’ avvelenino, Stille fetide che corrompino, Ch’ offuschino, Che gelino, Che guastino, OF SALVATOR ROSA. 133 lates the genius of one who was the Byron of painting, with his who was the Salvator of poetry. The character of Salvator’s genius was altogether northern ; so palpably northern, that the Italian ultras of modern times have pronounced his anathema, by placing him high in the school of j Romanticism, with those whom it is disloyalty to praise, Boccaccio and Ariosto. The superhuman agency which Salvator loved to employ both in his pictorial and poetical productions, was preferably selected from that sombre my- thology, which was the inspiration of Shakspeare and the charm of Ossian. In his powerful originality, he turned with disgust from the worn-out imagery both of the Chris- tian and heathen mythologies, from simpering seraphs and smirking cupids, from wrathful gods and tortured martyrs. When obliged by the tyranny of circumstances to select a subject from either, he chose by preference Saul and the Witch of Endor ! the fate of Prometheus, (the embodying of a deep philosophy,) and the rebellion of the giants, a dogma in all religions, as being illustrative of a physical fact salient to the eyes of all nations. Thus producing at the same moment a poem and a pic- ture, a recitation and a cantata, “Mandando fuori con T opere, spiritosi pensieri, e talora bizzarre invenzioni,” the Boman public beheld him with admiration. His “ Sorceress”* had scarcely taken its place in the gal- lery of Carlo Bossi, when he executed for the same liberal friend his “ Socrates swallowing Poison,” # and also for the gallery Sonnini his “ Prodigal Son.” He now gave full Ch’ ancidano, Che vincano 1’ onde Stigie. In quest’ atra caverna Ove non giunse mai raggio di sole. Dalle Tartaree scuole Trarro la turba. inferna Faro ch’ un nero spirto Arda un cipresso, un mirto, E mentre a poco, a poco Vi struggero 1’ imago sua di cera Faro che a ignoto foco Sua viva imago pera, E quand’ arde la finta, arda la vera. * David, the chief of the modern French School, has treated the same subject under the title of Les dernieres heures de Socrate. 134 LIFE AUD TIMES scope to Ms versatile genius, and painted with an almost equal success, in the most opposite styles, colossal figures and miniature landscapes, “ capricci” for the court of San Bartolomeo, and altar-pieces for the churches of Lombardy, where the court intrigues of the Vatican, and the envy of the academicians of St. Luke, could throw no obstacles in the way of his rising reputation. The Cardinal Omodei of Milan, struck by the pictures of Salvator during his visit to Lome, induced the fathers of the church and convent of San Griovanni Case-rotte, on his return, to bespeak from that painter their great altar-piece. The subject chosen by Salvator w'as Purgatory and the horrors of this proba- tionary hell were depicted with all the terrible fidelity of one to whom human suffering was familiar ; of one who had studied terror at its source, amidst volcanic explosions ; who had seen the living sea of flame he painted, pouring destruc- tion over suffering humanity, and burying in its merciless course man and his proudest monuments. The Purgatory of Salvator is composed of two subjects ; the suffering souls beneath raising their agonized looks and clenched hands in supplication to the Virgin, and that Virgin, seated above in glory, in her character of “Nostra Maria Virgine del soffragio.” The smiling benignity of her countenance, however, exhibits no sympathy deroga- tory to divine complacency ; she appears insensible to the cries of her suppliants, and an angel in waiting in vain points out to her particular notice some spirits (who had, it appears, a friend at court) . This picture, which the Milanese still assert to be the clief-d'' oeuvre of Salvator, has by some been deemed a satire. * This fine picture, which is now familiar to every English traveller, in the gallery of the Brera of Milan, where also may he seen a fine St. Jerome, by the same hand, was among the first seized by the French on their en- trance into that city. The admiration of the French for the works of Rosa is as singular as it is boundless, since, of all painters, he is the most foreign to the French School. This taste has in a great measure grown up since the Revolution, as the following eulogium oil Salvator by a French critic tends to prove : — “ Doue d’une imagination brillante et fougueuse l’habitude des grandes pensees, des conceptions vastes et 61 evees, en aurait fait un peintre digne d’eterniser par son male pinceau les glorieux evenemens d’une revolu- tion politique telle que la notre : mais il vecut trop tot, et trop loin des bords de la Seine .” — Galerie de Florence , Monge. OP SALVATOR ROSA. 135 By others it was taken tout de bon ; and it excited so muck admiration in the public, in spite of the attacks of all the painters in Lombardy,* that the Padri Olivetani bespoke another grand altar-piece for their church of Santa Vittoria al corpo.f The subject, the Assumption of the Virgin, was but little consonant to the genius of the painter; but yet (says a learned and impartial critic) it was “ Soggetto non solo egregio nella pittura, ma prestantissimo eziandio nella poesia” (one of great effect in pictures, and admirably adapted even for poetry) .{ The Padri Olivetani were so satisfied with their altar-piece, that they hung beside it one of Salvator’s great landscapes, which was pointed out to strangers by the Cicerone Monk as “ a most marvellous production.” § Earning much, accumulating little, but no longer ha- rassed by the pressure of daily exigence, the tyrant of free spirits, (“ la tiranna deglis piriti nobili,”) Salvator, in spite of every obstacle, had now advanced so far in per- sonal consideration and professional fame, that he was enabled not only to raise, but to fix his own prices. This was the point he had so long laboured to attain ; and from his estimate of the merits and value of his own works there was no longer any appeal. Unsusceptible of any sordid view, his firmness in this particular originated in an innate dignity of feeling, and a high sense of the respectability of the profession to which he did so much honour. || “ In this respect (says one of his biographers) the profession stands greatly his debtor ; for he rigidly sustained the ‘reputation of the art and his own, and by his firmness finally suc- * Passeri. I This church, though built so recently as 1624, no longer exists in Milan. + Le finezze de’ pennelli Italiani. § Ibid. |1 A Roman noble endeavouring one day to drive a hard bargain with him, he coolly interrupted him to say, that, till the picture was finished, he him- self did not know its value; observing, “ I never bargain, Sir, with my pen- cil; for it knows not the value of its own labour before the work is finished. When the picture is done, I will let you know what it costs, and you may then take it or not as you please.” — “ Signor, io non pattegio mai col mio pennello, perche non pud esso saper il valore del suo lavoro finche terminato noi 1’ abbiamo. Quando sara fatto, vi diro cio che costa ; e stara a voi il prendere.” — Pascoli. 136 LIFE ATfD TIMES ceeded in obtaining a just appreciation of bis glorious labours.”* Refusing all dictation on tbe subject of bis pictures, be was wont to say, “ Carpenters and joiners may work upon given plans, but genius never.” Tbe purchasers of bis works were always tbe gainers by this hardy independence.! Thus reserving tbe power of following tbe bent of bis own genius, of reproducing himself in all tbe modifications of bis masterly and extraordinary mind, and no less inde- pendent in his pecuniary than bis professional relations, be resolutely emancipated himself from tbe domination of patronage ; “ and Heaven help him (says Baldinucci) who attempted to baggie with him!” A Roman prince, more notorious for bis pretensions to virtu than for liberality to artists, sauntering one day in Salvator’s gallery in tbe Via Babbuina, paused before one of bis landscapes, and after a long contemplation of its merits exclaimed, “ Salvator mio ! I am strangely tempted to purchase this picture ; — tell me at once tbe lowest price.” “ Two hundred scudi,” replied Salvator, carelessly. “ Two hundred scudi ! ohime ! that is a price ! — but we ’ll talk of it another time.” Tbe Illustrissimo took bis leave ; but, bent upon having tbe picture, be shortly returned, and again enquired “ tbe lowest price.” “ Three hundred scudi !” was tbe sullen reply. “ Corpo di Bacco!” cried tbe astonished prince, “mi * Carlo Rossi, who frequently paid more for one of Salvator’s pictures than would have startled an Italian prince to think of, sometimes resisted the high prices which Rosa put on his works. On these occasions the painter would not abate a ducat; and Rossi withdrew without disputing the point, leaving a champ libre to more opulent chapmen. Rosa, having thus satisfied his self-esteem, and kept the picture for some time by him, most frequently sent it a present to Rossi, who durst not refuse it, lest he should lose a friend and a picture at the same time. + “ Jusqu’au choix de ses sujets (says a French critic) tout annonce l’originalite de son imagination. Ce sont to uj ours peu connus, et qui n’ont occupe le pinceau d’aucun de ses predecesseurs. Aussi accord oit-il tant de superiority aux peintres d’histoire, qu’il se fachoit et se croyoit humilie, lors- qu’on l’appeloit un admirable paysagiste.” Everything, even to the choice of his subjects, announces the originality of his imagination. These are always little known, and untouched by his predecessors. Accordingly he attached so great a superiority to historical painting as to be angry, and count himself humiliated, when called an “ admirable landscape-painter.” OP SALYATOR ROSA. 137 burla, vostra signoria, you are joking ! I see I must e’en wait upon your better humour ; and so addio , Signor Rosa.” The next day brought back the prince to the painter’s gallery : who on entering, saluted Salvator with a jocose air, and added, “ Well, Signor Amico, how goes the market to- day ? have prices risen or fallen ?” “ four hundred scudi is the price to-day!” replied Sal- vator, with affected calmness ; when, suddenly giving way to his natural impetuosity, and no longer stifling his indig- nation, he burst forth, — “ The fact is, your Excellency would not now obtain this picture from me at any price ; and yet so little value do I put upon its merits, that I deem it worthy of no better fate than this;” and snatching the panel on which it was painted from the wall, he flung it the ground, and with his foot broke it into an hundred pieces. “ His Excellency” made an unceremonious retreat, and returned no more to drive a hard bargain. The story, as usual, circulated through Rome, to the dis- advantage of the uncompromising artist ; and confirmed the character, which has still remained with him, of being “ un cervello indomito e feroce,” “ a hot-brained and desperate fellow.” The princes of the family of Grliigi had been among the first of the aristocratic virtuosi of Rome to acknowledge the merits of Salvator, as their ancestors had been to appre- ciate the genius of Raphael.* Between the Prince Don Mario Grhigi (whose brother Pabio was raised to the ponti- fical throne by the name of Alexander VII.) and Salvator, there seems to have existed much personal intimacy ; and the prince’s fondness for the painter’s conversation was such, that during a long illness he induced Salvator to bring his easel to his bedside, and to work in his chamber at some small piece he was then painting for the prince.f It hap- pened, that while Rosa was sketching and chatting by the prince’s couch, one of the most fashionable physicians in * When Raphael was engaged in painting the gallery of his friend Agos- tino Ghigi, he was so much in love with a beautiful Roman lady, that his passion interfered with his genius and his fame. Agostino persuaded the lady to pass her mornings in the gallery, and thus induced Raphael to con- tinue his work. f This is one of the very few instances recorded of Salvator’s having worked in the presence of a second person. 138 LIEE AND TIMES Rome entered the apartment. He appears to have been one of those professional coxcombs, whose pretension, founded on unmerited vogue, throws a ridicule upon the gravest calling. After some trite remarks upon the art, the doctor, either to flatter Salvator, or in imitation of the physician of the Cardinal Colonna, who asked for one of Raphael’s finest pictures as a fee for saving the Cardinal’s life,* requested Hon Mario to give him a picture of Salvator as a remunera- tion for his attendance. The prince willingly agreed to the proposal ; and the doctor, debating on the subject he should choose, turned to Salvator and begged “ that he would not lay pencil to canvas until he, the Signor Hottore, should find leisure to dictate to him ‘ il pensiero e concetto della sua pittura,’ ” the idea and conceit of his picture ! Salvator bowed a modest acquiescence, and went on with his sketch. The doctor, having gone the round of professional questions with his wonted pomposity, rose to write his prescription ; when, as he sat before the table with eyes upturned, and pen suspended over paper, Salvator on tiptoe approached him, and drawing the pen gently through his fingers, with one of his old Coviello gesticulations in his character of the mountebank, he said “ fermati, Hottor mio ! — stop, doctor, you must not lay pen to paper till I have leisure to dictate the idea and conceit of the prescription I may think proper for the malady of his Excellency.” “Diavolo!” cried the amazed physician, “you dictate a prescription! why, I am the prince’s physician, and not you ! ” “ And I, Caro,” said Salvator, “ am a painter, and not you. I leave it to the prince Avhether I could not prove myself a better physician than you a painter ; and write a better prescription than you paint a picture.” The prince, much amused, decided in favour of the painter ; Salvator coolly resumed his pencil, and the medi- cal cognoscente permitted the idea of the picture to die away, “ sul proprio letto.” This open warfare on arrogant pretension, waged with a * This is the famous St. John of the Tribune, in the gallery of Florence. The physician was Messire Giacopo da Carpi. The picture afterwards fell into the hands of Francesco Benincedi, a Florentine merchant, who sold it to the Medici. OP SALYATOR ROSA. 139 zeal more remarkable for its honesty and humour, than for its discretion, and that