3-075-301 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Self-Portrait, 1650s. Known for his rebellious, fiercely independent personality Salvator Rosa trained as a painter in Naples and worked for extended periods of time in Florence at the Medici court. Rosa was fascinated by the darker impulses of human nature, and he captured his own gaunt features and intense demeanor in a series of striking self-portraits. In this likeness painted in the 1650s when Rosa was living in Rome the artist stares down the viewer with a smoldering, almost angry expression that fully lives up to his tempestuous reputation.