Self-portrait (1650).
Weeds and briers reigned, and furtive wild things rustled in the undergrowth. Upon everything was a haze of restlessness and oppression; a touch of the unreal and the grotesque, as if some vital element of perspective or chiaroscuro were awry. I did not wonder that the foreigners would not stay, for this was no region to sleep in. It was too much like a landscape of Salvator Rosa; too much like some forbidden woodcut in a tale of terror.
HP Lovecraft, from The Colour Out of Space
My recent reading has included some of ETA Hoffmann’s stories, ostensibly his weird tales although there hasn’t been anything especially weird about the ones I’ve read so far. One of these, Signor Formica, is a novella-length piece with Italian artist Salvator Rosa (1615–1673) as the main character, a story that adds a layer of fiction to the rumours and apocrypha the artist accumulated like so many coats of varnish. Hoffmann has Rosa arriving in Rome where he spends little time painting and much more time operating as a highly proficient agent of vengeance for a younger artist. The real Rosa was proficient enough without anyone having to exaggerate his accomplishments. In his early life he trained as a musician; in the years when he was struggling to sell his paintings he worked as an actor, and had some success as a writer of satirical plays. The theatrical side of Rosa’s career is one that Hoffmann exploits in his story.
The Witches’ Sabbath (c.1635/1654).
Hoffmann says surprisingly little about Rosa’s paintings—a familiarity on the part of his readership seems to be taken for granted—but Signor Formica had me looking them up again, especially the more grotesque examples of which there are many to choose from. Rosa was somewhat ahead of his time in both his subject matter and its handling, providing an artistic link between the late Mannerists and the Romantics of the 1800s who would find much to admire in his dark and violent depictions of witches and the bandits of Southern Italy. The bandit pictures were especially popular in the 1800s but since we’re now in the Season of the Witch it seems fitting to look at Rosa’s witches, or those that are visible in the murk of his shadowy canvases. Rosa’s streghe are a fearsome lot, as are the nameless creatures who attend their ceremonies. The monsters you find in older paintings can often seem more comical than frightening but there’s little that’s comical about these snapping assemblages of slaughterhouse remains.
Scenes of Witchcraft: Morning (c.1645–49).
Scenes of Witchcraft: Day (c.1645–49).
Scenes of Witchcraft: Evening (c.1645–49).
Scenes of Witchcraft: Night (c.1645–49).