45. Salvator Rosa
(1615-1673)
Woman Walking to the Left

(click on image to print)
Rosa, Woman Walking to the Left

Woman Walking to the Left

Etching, ca. 1656-57, from Figurina, 142 x 90 mm., Bartsch 84, Wallace 84 only state. A very good, as usual eighteenth-century, impression on laid paper trimmed on or just within the platemark. Rosa was an exciting painter, a romantic before Romanticism, as well as a musician, poet, playwright, satirist and actor, in all, a major figure in the artistic milieu of his time. He was also a serious etcher, and his Figurina, though obviously less exciting than his painted landscapes and scenes of brigands, were immensely popular among print collectors for centuries. But one rarely today sees a lifetime impression, more usually the still good eighteenth-century reissues and the less good nineteenth-century ones or copies. This one is still good.