(Naples 1615–1673 Rome)
A coastal landscape with shipwrecks and ruins,
oil on unlined canvas, 73.8 x 163.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Gasparrini, Rome;
Private collection, Rome

Exhibited:
Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Civiltà del Seicento a Napoli, 24 October 1984 - 14 April 1985, no. 2.210

Literature:
L. Salerno, Salvator Rosa, Milan 1963, p. 146;
L. Salerno, L’opera completa di Salvator Rosa, Milan 1975, p. 88, no. 48, ill.;
L. Salerno in: Civiltà del Seicento a Napoli, ed. by R. Causa/G. Galasso, exhibition catalogue, Naples 1984, p. 423, no. 2.210, ill.;
C. Volpi, Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) “pittore famoso”, Rome 2014, p. 198, no. 40, ill.

The present painting has been dated to the late 1630s and Caterina Volpi considers it to be an early work by Salvator Rosa (see literature) when the artist was in Naples, after his Roman sojourn and before his move to Florence. Luigi Salerno considered it a work of the artist’s first Florentine period of the early 1640s (see literature).

This work constitutes an important example of the naturalist training Rosa received in Naples, where he dedicated himself to the production of marine views, persistently exploring and studying the Neapolitan coast from life. His first apprenticeship was in the studio of Aniello Falcone where he experimented with various genres of painting, including landscapes and battle scenes. Following the important commission, he received from King Philip IV of Spain for a work to decorate the Palace of Buen Retiro, Rosa sojourned in Rome in 1635, where he acquired the stylistic grandeur of Roman art. Here, he came into contact with the work of Filippo Napoletano and Agostino Tassi who had initiated marine painting as a genre, which Rosa would subsequently bring to its apogee. These influences can be seen in the present painting which contains the compositional qualities that would later be expressed on a large scale in the Marine view with the Gulf of Salerno, executed in 1639 for the Palace of Buen Retiro.

Furthermore, in the present marine painting which is of great pictorial force, the influence of the so-called Bamboccianti is evident: the artist depicts various figures who are undertaking various tasks that animate the scene. On the left, at the foot of a ruined building some men are shown at work on some dry-docked ships while opening out on the right is a broad costal view of cliffs.

The present painting must have gained immediate acclaim among the collectors of the era as numerous seventeenth-century copies of the present work are known (see Salerno 1984 in literature).