The Senses as a Subject When Gregorio and Mattia Preti painted their first Allegory of the Five Senses in Rome during the 1630s, they were taking up a subject with a long history. Sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch had been represented individually and in cycles since the Middle Ages, and by the sixteenth centuryContinue reading “Mattia and Gregorio Preti: Two Allegories of the Senses”
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Salvator Rosa: Portraits, Self-Portraits and the Construction of Artistic Identity
Portraiture occupies an unusual place within the work of Salvator Rosa (1615–1673). Although celebrated by his contemporaries for landscapes, battle scenes and increasingly ambitious history paintings, he repeatedly returned to images of the individual figure, producing portraits of remarkable variety and psychological intensity. Some are straightforward likenesses, others adopt theatrical or philosophical roles, while stillContinue reading “Salvator Rosa: Portraits, Self-Portraits and the Construction of Artistic Identity”
