Landscape c. mid 1660s

Salvator Rosa made this pen and brown ink drawing, called "Landscape," sometime in the mid-17th century. Rosa was Neapolitan, and this landscape evokes the Italian countryside favored by bandits. In Rosa's time, the bandit was a figure of both fear and fascination. Many were driven to brigandage by poverty, but some were nobles rebelling against the authorities. Rosa, who was politically rebellious himself, certainly would have known that in supporting the bandit, he was challenging existing social norms. The landscape is wild and untamed, and its inhabitants are rough and lawless. The drawing seems to ask, what is the relationship between humanity and nature? Is civilization a blessing or a curse? To fully understand this drawing, we can look at Rosa's biography and correspondence, and also at the political history of Naples in the 17th century. The meaning of art is always contingent on social and institutional context.