(Naples 1615–1673 Rome)
The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist,
monogrammed lower centre: SR (ligated),
oil on canvas, 115.5 x 150.3 cm, framed

Provenance:
(possibly) Bartolomeo de Fusco collection, Ravello, 1682;
Mrs C. E. Hemar collection;
her sale, Christie’s, London, 8 July 1983, lot 25 (as Salvator Rosa);
sale, Sotheby’s, London, 6 December 1989, lot 42 (as Salvator Rosa);
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
C. Volpi, Salvator Rosa: note in margine alla formazione a Napoli, in: Salvator Rosa e il suo tempo (1615–1673), ed. by E. Ebert-Schifferer, Rome 2010, p. 23, illustrated p. 24, fig. 7 (as Salvator Rosa);
C. Volpi, Salvator Rosa (1615-1673): pittore famoso, Rome 2014, p. 383, cat. no. 13 (as Salvator Rosa)

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 47123 (as Salvator Rosa).

We are grateful to Caterina Volpi for confirming the attribution after examining the present painting in the original and for her help in cataloguing. She dates the painting to 1636–1638.

The present painting was published in 2010 and 2014 by Caterina Volpi (see literature), and at the time, on the basis of a black and white photograph, she dated it to around 1632–1634. However, having recently examined the work in the original, Volpi has dated this painting slightly later. She believes this work to be among the finest and most complex productions by the young Rosa, in which it is already possible to obliquely discern his ambition to become a history painter.

The fresh immediacy in the rendering of the landscape and figures signals a moment of maturity within the scope of Rosa’s Neapolitan period whilst still incorporating themes and compositional devices derived from his master Aniello Falcone, as well as Domenico Gargiulo.

Saint John the Baptist’s lucidly described features in the present painting may be a self-portrait, of the artist. The crowd includes individual figures which appear in slightly differing poses in other early works by Rosa, for example the group of children on the lower right and the soldier on horseback on the left in the present painting, both appear in the Soldier and Mendicant in a private collection in Naples (see C. Volpi, Ibid., 2014, cat. no. 25). The painting closest to the present work is Saint John the Baptist Preaching in a private collection, which is of similar size, with the same foreground figure of a cavalier wearing a mantle and a plumed hat (see C. Volpi, Ibid., 2014, cat. no. 26).

During this period Salvator Rosa made numerous preparatory study drawings of people, either engaged in activity or at rest, or intent on listening, or at work to serve as a repertoire for his paintings. Although they are no precise matches to the drawings, certain details in the present painting bear close resemblance to many of these studies, for instance the figure seated on a rock seen from the back with his feet in the centre foreground, or the pair of young women with the old man in a yellow mantle, or likewise beside them, the more elegantly dressed couple with a plumed hat and yellow dress (see M. Mahoney, The Drawings of Salvator Rosa, New York-London 1977, cat. nos. 2.1, 3.7, 3.9, 3.11, 3.14, 3.16 and 20.21).

Like his colleagues, Aniello Falcone and Domenico Gargiulo, Salvator Rosa began as a figure painter. His early works are crowded with workaday people, soldiers and shepherds, all studied with an unusual degree of attention. Subsequently, between 1636 and 1639, following his departure from Rome, the landscapes in his works appear to gain increasing importance, as in the Saint John the Baptist Preaching in a private collection (see C. Volpi, Ibid., 2014, cat. no. 26), or the Landscape with Travellers, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (inv. no. 1987.10) which, like the painting under discussion, are dateable to between 1636 and 1639, and anticipate of the extraordinary work of his Florentine period.

The present canvas may correspond to the Saint John the Baptist Preaching of four palmi by five, mentioned in the postmortem inventory of Bartolomeo de Fusco, a nobleman from Ravello, dated 3 November 1682 (see C. Volpi, Ibid., 2014, p. 616).