the mountain drawing of Salvator in the pictures . . .

Of the sixteen pictures by Salvator Rosa in the Palatine Gallery of the Pitti Palace in Florence, Ruskin refers by name to:

• No 4 Harbour at Sunrise and Number 15 Marine view - still facing each other across the Sala di Venere as they are described by Ruskin at MP I:340;
• Peace burning the arms of War at MP I:385;
• the picture which Ruskin calls 'Diogenes', La Selva dei Filosofi ('the Philosophers' Grove', with Diogenes at the centre) cited in Modern Painters II ( Works, 4.243) as an example of Salvator Rosa 's 'coarseness of feeling and habitual non-reference to nature'. Cook and Wedderburn point out, however, that in his 1845 Notebook Ruskin refers to this painting having 'colour glowing and trees well studied'( Works, 4.244n). Langdon, 'Paintings', p. 23, suggests that this picture is influenced by Venetian landscape in colouring and mood particularly reminiscent of Giovanni Bellini / Titian Feast of the Gods, and by the soft-lighting and the richness and complexity of natural detail to be found in Claude;
• the Temptation of St. Antony (on which see Works, 4.86 and Works, 7.309);
• Battle, number 88 in Salerno, Salvator Rosa: L'opera completa, quoted in Works, 4.201 as an example of 'brutal ferocity and butchered agony';
• Catiline's Conspiracy ( Works, 7.371) - though this does not contain mountains or rocks;

At MP I:305 Ruskin refers to the 'fidelity of rock drawing on which Salvator's reputation has been built'; and it was certainly an important element in Rosa's reputation and in the views expressed by Reynolds on Rosa. Rosa's rocks and mountains are therefore an important aspect of Ruskin's depreciation of Rosa. Ruskin's disappointment at the pictures in the Pitti Palace is expressed in a letter to his father of 8 June 1845.

IB