Ruins in a Rocky Landscape c. 1640

Salvator Rosa painted this evocative scene of ‘Ruins in a Rocky Landscape’ in Italy sometime in the mid-seventeenth century. It presents a set of painterly and cultural conventions that Rosa inherited and reworked. For centuries, the ruin was a central artistic motif, a picturesque reminder of the transience of human endeavor and the triumph of nature. It was associated with classical architecture, such as the temple we see here, and with the rise and fall of empires. The ruin also appealed to collectors as a ready-made fragment, an instant marker of the owner's sophistication and historical depth. In Rosa’s Italy, where wealthy landowners vied to acquire antiquities for their gardens, painting ruins allowed artists to manufacture these trophies on demand. To understand this work more fully, we might turn to architectural history, the study of antiquarianism, or the social history of collecting. Each informs our sense of the cultural work being done by this image.