Members' Research Report Archive

This year my research on the Neapolitan painter Salvator Rosa (1615–1673) has consisted of continued analysis of his letters to friends, including the poet and playwright Giovanni Battista Ricciardi (1624–1686), to whom Rosa gave an allegorical self-portrait. My project, which will result in a critical edition and translation of the collected letters, profited from the opportunity to conduct archival research in Cambridge, Naples, and Rome. In addition to presenting on this and related topics at the annual conferences of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and the Renaissance Society of America, I worked toward completing an article on Rosa’s self-referential painting Philosophy (c. 1641), in which I interpret the figure as a painter-orator.