Follower Of Salvator Rosa (naples, 1615 – Rome 1673), View With Bay

Follower of Salvator Rosa (Naples, 1615 – Rome 1673)
View with bay
Oil on canvas, 81 x 121 cm
With frame, 102 x 144 cm

The present coastal view, with a virtuously affected perspective cut, evokes the examples of the Italianizing landscape painting that developed in Rome during the seventeenth century and spread in particular by Salvator Rosa (1615-1673). The view takes up a painting by the Neapolitan artist, now preserved in the Gallerie Estensi in Modena: The View of a Bay, part of a series of three canvases painted by Salvator Rosa in Rome between 1639 and 1640 commissioned by Duke Francesco I d' Este, then placed in the Ducal Palace of Sassuolo and then transferred in 1786 to the Ducal Palace of Modena. In an inlet closed on the right by a ruined building on whose door the Este coat of arms is recognizable and limited on the left by a rocky peak, some men are busy repairing vessels; a suggestive light envelops the figures and the landscape, splendid in the view of the coast along which the boats are moored.
A pupil in his native land of Fracanzano and Aniello Falcone, a battler, Rosa moved to Rome in 1635 thanks to the protection of Cardinal Brancacci, where he became acquainted with the bamboccianti and the work of Peter van Laer and Cerquozzi who had an innovative attitude towards nature in opposition to the heavy and academic Roman Baroque. The years of the creation of the View with Bay (1639-1640) saw a change in the classicist sense of his style, under the influence of Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin and Pietro Testa, evident in the conception of the landscape, while maintaining the artist's own sensitivity for the rendering of the picturesque aspects of nature. He will soon deny that pictorial language of the Bamboccianti School, to enter the workshop of the painter Jusepe de Ribera, known as Spagnoletto, a faithful continuer of Caravaggio's luminism, creator of a dramatic and dark painting, rich in showy chiaroscuro effects.

The present view organizes a carefully studied composition thanks to the control of light and the effects of nuance in the haze of the sky, the description of the port with the perfect representation of the vessels and the looming nature, with the large trees on the right. Of particular quality is the cut with which the image is conceived and the chromatic shades with which the coastline and boats are outlined, meticulously described. The scenic construction is well conceived from a perspective point of view and the figures in the foreground who measure themselves in the landscape with notable harmony are thoughtful.
Rosa's works masterfully convey the tension between creation and the human element, of which the material smallness and impotence towards nature are highlighted, elements that also emerge in the analyzed canvas, where the human figure becomes minute in the face of majesty of the evocative landscape.