An esoteric masterpiece by Salvator Rosa lands in the Uffizi: purchased the Witch

An extraordinary work, charged with mystery and disquiet, becomes part of the Uffizi’s holdings. The Witch by Salvator Rosa (Naples, 1615 - Rome, 1673) purchased by the museum for 450,000 euros, represents one of the highest and boldest examples of 17th-century esoteric art. Before being exhibited in the rooms dedicated to seventeenth-century painting, the painting will have a dedicated space in the prestigious Sala Bianca of the Pitti Palace, where it will be admired as early as immediately after the Christmas holidays.

“The valuable addition to the collection of Salvator Rosa’s Witch,” says Uffizi director Simone Verde, "allows us to qualitatively increase the museum’s core collection of seventeenth-century painting with an author who, Neapolitan by birth and training, moved between Rome and Florence, characterizing Italian and European art of the middle of the century in a highly original way. The Uffizi Galleries count a conspicuous number of Rosa’s paintings, mainly landscapes and genre scenes, but, apart from the Temptations of St. Anthony, the magical and witchcraft theme, which is developed by the painter precisely in Florence, has been absent until now; now, thanks to the arrival of The Witch, we can say that we have more than satisfactorily filled that gap. With this masterpiece, an authentic theoretical manifesto of Baroque painting, the Uffizi thus endows itself with another powerful icon, returning to Italy a masterpiece otherwise destined for exile."

Indeed, the purchase of the Strega represents a major coup for the Uffizi, which has succeeded in bringing back to Italy a work coveted by several international museums. After years abroad, the painting was in danger of never returning to the country.

The Witch: a masterpiece laden with darkness

Salvator Rosa, a disruptive and tormented figure in Baroque painting, is famous for his aversion to the powerful of his time and his choice of subjects far from traditional canons. Among the first to embody the myth of the “cursed artist,” Rosa rejected patrons and antagonized influential figures such as Bernini. In Florence, under the protection of Cardinal Giovan Carlo de’ Medici, Rosa immersed himself in hermetic and philosophical studies that profoundly influenced his artistic production, particularly that with witch-like subjects: portraits of witches, sabbaths, and demons began to enter his production copiously.

The Witch represents a summation of Salvator Rosa’s dark imagery. At the center of the composition, the sorceress appears kneeling, her body decaying and deformed. Her rage-filled eyes and distraught face accentuate her evil nature, while objects scattered on the ground-a skull, pieces of bone, a pitcher, and a sheet with esoteric symbols-amplify the painting’s sinister atmosphere. The most chilling detail is the presence of a dead child, wrapped in a cloth behind the witch’s back, a reference to ancient legends about infant blood used for magical rites. In the foreground, contrasting with the dark background, appears a white sheet bearing esoteric symbols with the artist’s signature SR monogram.

The work, which can be dated to the years of Rosa’s Florentine sojourn (1640-1648, a time when the artist was salaried by Cardinal Giovan Carlo de’ Medici), is part of a series of paintings dedicated to the theme of magic, such as The Witches and Spells (National Gallery, London) and The Witch in the Capitoline Museums. The canvas suffers the suggestion of the environment of the Florentine academy at the time very interested in esoteric, philosophical, and hermetic themes and applied to the study of the texts of ancient philosophers (such as the Corpus Hermeticum that arrived in Florence since the second half of the 15th century, translated by Marsilio Ficino and published in a first edition in 1470), and recalls the influence of Nordic masters such as Dürer and Baldung Grien to Jacques de Gheyn, known for their fascination with the macabre and esoteric.

Salvator Rosa’s Legacy

In addition to painting, Rosa expressed his interest in the theme of magic through literary compositions, including the ode La Strega (1646), which we quote below and which shares many elements with the painting we have just acquired. The work represents not only a tribute to the artist’s visionary talent, but also a symbol of the intellectual fervor of Baroque Florence, where art and philosophy were intertwined in a continuous dialogue.

With the addition of The Witch to the Uffizi collection, the museum confirms its commitment to enhancing the value of unique masterpieces and enriching the national art scene with works with a strong historical and emotional impact.

Biographical notes on Salvator Rosa

Salvator Rosa stands out as one of the most extraordinary protagonists of the seventeenth century. Known for his impetuous character and contempt for patrons, he embodied one of the earliest models of the “troubled artist.” During his lifetime he achieved a fame of international scope, which persisted into the nineteenth century, especially among English aristocratic collectors. Rosa is mainly renowned for his rugged and wild landscapes, characterized by broken trees and rocky gorges often enlivened by brigand figures, works that inspired painters of the sublime in the 18th and 19th centuries.

His romantic image was reinforced by Lady Morgan’s fictionalized biography The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa (1824). However, it was Rosa himself who contributed to the construction of his myth, declaring, "I do not paint to enrich myself, but solely for personal satisfaction; it is necessary that I let myself be carried away by the impulses of enthusiasm and use the brushes only when I feel the irresistible impulse."

Born in Naples in 1615, he moved to Rome in 1635, where he gained notoriety as a painter of landscapes and battle scenes. However, his provocative attitude alienated many of his contemporaries, including the famous sculptor Bernini. This tension may have led him, in 1640, to accept Giovanni Carlo de’ Medici’s invitation to settle in Florence. Here Rosa prospered as a painter, poet and thinker within the intellectual circle curated by the cardinal. His home became a meeting place for the intellectuals of the Accademia dei Percossi.

While in Florence, he produced a series of individual works of extraordinary poetic intensity, now considered among his most admired masterpieces: Philosophy (London, The National Gallery), Poetry (Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art), Self-Portrait (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Self-Portrait as Pascariello (private collection). In these canvases we capture the unique fusion of painting and poetry that characterized his artistic vision.

In 1649 he left Florence to return to Rome, where he maintained his reputation as a turbulent and controversial figure. Among his most emblematic works is Democritus in Meditation (Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst), painted in 1651, which reflects his reflection on the vanity of human ambitions. He adopted a more classicist style, which earned him an invitation to work for Louis XIV, an offer he declined. He remained in Rome until his death in 1673. Shortly before he expired, he married Lucrezia Paolini, who had been his companion and muse for 30 years.

The Witch, poem by Salvator Rosa

It was the night, and the footsteps

To love’s quiet prey moveda
Citherea’s turba,
turba that never sleeps,
For in the brown air
Twinkling she saw not
Under poor heaven moonlight of the moon.
Infra this friendly shadow
Moved Filli the plants,
implacable enemy
Of unconcerned amator,
And resembled to motion, to speech,
Waving her face
Of a tenacious disdain,
Of love’s Inferno new fury.
For love is not worth,
said she filled with rage,
To merit of a traitor the faith,
I will turn this foot,
I will open these lips,
I will burst from within
Of forbidden averts fatal art,
Mighty to summon deity of Avernus.
Nume that avenges
The wrath of him,
deity that will agitate it
In the dark realms,
A deity that lightens
The wicked ill-born, whence I betrayed was:
For the cruel does not hear me,
For he prizes not the weeping,
To fraud, to fraud,
To the shame, to the shame,
To the enchantment, to the enchantment,
And he who moveth not the heavens, moveth Acheron
5I will magic ways
Tempt, profane notes,
Herbs diverse, and knots,
That which can arrest the celestial wheels,
magic circle,
icy waves,
fishes varij,
chemical waters,
black balms,
mixed powders,
mystic stones,
serpents, and noctules,
putrid bloods,
soft viscera,
dry mummies,
bones, and worms,
suffumigij,
that they blacken,
horrid voices,
that frighten,
murky saps,
that they poison,
fetid stille,
that corrupt,
that they tarnish,
that they frost,
that spoil,
ch’ancidano,
that they win
The stygian waves.
In this atra cavern,
Where no sunbeam ever came,
From the tarteous schools
I will draw the infernal turba,
I will make a black spirit
Shall burn a cypress, a myrtle,
And while little by little
I’ll purge therein its imago of wax,
I will cause to unknown fire
His living imago perish,
And when the pretended burns the true.
Perhaps thus this mocked beauty
With magical mightiness
Will extinguish for me the impious that has life,
Will revive for me dead hope.
For the cruel does not hear me,
For he does not price the weeping,
To fraud, to fraud,
To the shame, to the shame,
To enchantment, to enchantment,
And he who moveth not heaven, moveth Acheron.

An esoteric masterpiece by Salvator Rosa lands in the Uffizi: purchased the Witch

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