Salvator Rosa
Figurine
1653-58

Artist: Salvator Rosa (1615-1673)
Title: Figurine from the Figurine suite
Date: circa 1653-58
School: Italian, Italian XVIIth-century (later impression?)
Medium: etching
Dimensions: 147 x 95mm (plate), 248 x 176mm (support)
Watermark: none
Inscriptions/marks: signed with the artist’s monogram in the image at the bottom of the stone tablet <<SR>>; <<72>> in pencil on the support bottom right
Condition: good condition, printed on laid paper with generous margins from the Italian issue of the Figurine suite of about 60 images dedicated to Carlo de’ Rossi.
Description: a young man standing in profile facing right, supporting a large rectangular stone tablet with a representation of a herm of Diana of Ephesus
Reference: Richard W. Wallace, The Etchings of Salvator Rosa, Princeton University Press, 1979, cat. no. 71 and the British Museum’s impression See also the articles by Antony Griffiths and Craig Hartley on the ordering of Rosa’s etchings collected and mounted into albums in Print Quarterly,  vol. 9, no. 3, 1992, pp. 251-67. The Figurine suite, as it is now known, did not have a published title. Rosa was the suite’s original publisher and retained ownership of the plates. The frontispiece to the suite has a dedication to Carlo de’ Rossi who owned Rosa’s painting Allegory of Fortune in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The painting is a satire on Pope Alexander VII’s nepotism and nearly landed the painter in prison. The dedication reads <<Has Ludentis otii/Carolo Rubeo/Singularis Amicitia pignus>> which translates roughly as “These playful leisures, a pledge of singular friendship to Carlo de’ Rossi”
Provenance: Dunbar Sloane, Wellington, 2023