Salvator Rosa

Salvator Rosa (Arenella, Naples, 1615 – Rome, 1673) was an Italian painter and poet. His importance to music rests chiefly on his first satire, La musica (1641), which sharply criticises the excesses of Roman musical life, especially the disproportionate attention lavished on singers.

He moved to Rome in 1635 and, between 1640 and 1649, lived in Florence and Volterra. In the latter town he founded the Accademia dei Percossi, whose members included the poet and librettist Giovanni Apolloni, the playwright G.B. Ricciardi and, probably, the composer Antonio Cesti, although this last membership is a supposition. He wrote texts for at least four of Cesti's cantatas, but declined the composer's request for an opera libretto. In 1649 he returned to Rome, where he remained until his death.

As a painter, he was one of the first to reject the patronage system and to champion artistic freedom. His satires and his wild landscapes were greatly admired in the eighteenth century, although Mattheson attacked La musica in his Mithridat. Over time he became a Romantic hero around whom numerous myths grew up; his life inspired nineteenth-century opera libretti, and Liszt dedicated a movement of Années de pèlerinage to his name.