Autographed letter
Artist
Salvator Rosa
(Italian, 1615 - 1673)
Date1663
MediumInk on paper
Dimensions10 1/2 x 15 1/2 in. (26.7 x 39.4 cm)
ClassificationsPrints
Credit LineMuseum purchase with funds provided by Anne Bladstrom, 2000
Object numberSN11039
Salvator Rosa Autograph letter, signed, dated Roma 24 guigno 1663, to his friend G. B. Ricciardi in Pisa (two sides of a folded folio sheet, with watermark). The scholar and poet G. B. Ricciardi (Pisa 1623-1677) was Rosa's closest friend for most of his adult life, and his constant correspondent; some 250 letters from Rosa to Ricciardi are known today, in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples (there there are 200) and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (where there are 48, Bequest of Charles Fairfax Murray). The Naples correspondence was published in 1939 by Arnaldo de Rinaldis, together with the text of six additional letters of which the originals have been lost; fundamental to an understanding of Rosa's personality, it is the single most important biographical data on the artist, a and a critical basis for documentary studies of his work. "E Salvatore che riempe queste pagine: la sua personalita... trabocca incontentibile da ogni frase, da ogni particolare, perfino della capricciosa e spedita... spesso splendida e armoniosa... ma calligrafia veramente d'artista " (U. Limentani). This is an unpublished letter that was written during a moment of crisis in the two men's friendship and convey's the artists sorrow at Riccairdi's refusal to write him.
Letter written as follows:
Confesso e giur d'haver straccato l'immagineazione...a cotesto vostro cosi rigoroso silenzio...nell'altro mondo Dio mi dia le quite, se nel nostro che domini di bestialita e la nostra a lasciarmi digiuno di nostre lettere tanti mesi... Ricordatevi che incomincia appizzicar che poco Armore il vostro tacere... Amico Vero S. Rosa.
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