Il libro pubblica e analizza un dipinto inedito di Salvator Rosa (1615 - 1673) raffigurante Ero e Leandro, e lo colloca nel contesto della produzione dell'artista.

Nel volume si rende noto un nucleo di lettere davvero ingente ed uniforme, indirizzate da alcuni letterati, amatori d'arte, musicisti e artisti amici di Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) a Giovan Battista Ricciardi (1623-1686), conservate presso la Biblioteca Estense di Modena. Grazie al ritrovamento di questi carteggi inediti siamo ora in grado di recare nuova luce su un ambiente di amici estremamente coeso facente capo alla figura dell'erudito pisano, fraterno amico di Salvator Rosa nel corso di tutta la vita. Le missive provengono dall'immensa raccolta di lettere che conta circa centomila pezzi denominata 'Autografoteca Campori' che il bibliofilo e cultore di arte e letteratura modenese Giuseppe Campori (1817-1887) raccolse nel corso della sua vita. Esse si presentano in forma disomogenea, notevoli sono le lacune cronologiche poiché comprate e acquisite in maniera sparsa dallo studioso sul mercato antiquario, provenienti da nuclei dismessi e smembrati di archivi privati di famiglia dove si conservavano in origine. Le lettere rinvenute, qui pubblicate in forma integrale, sono ordinate secondo il nome del mittente e grazie a questa indicazione è stato possibile rintracciare più di cinquanta lettere che coprono un arco cronologico compreso tra il 1640 e il 1675, dalle quali si ottiene un quadro più nitido delle relazioni intessute dal Rosa con Pisa e la Toscana, nell'arco della sua vita e al contempo ha permesso l'acquisizione di nuovi dati circa la biografia e la produzione pittorica.

Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) was one of the boldest and most powerfully inventive artists and personalities of the Italian seventeenth century. He is still best known as `savage Rosa', the creator of wild landscapes, where bandits and hermits lurk amongst shattered trees and rocks. But his range was wide, and he also painted novel allegorical pictures, distinguished by a melancholy poetry; fanciful portraits of romantic figures; macabre witchcraft scenes, which remain amongst the most bizarre images in all seventeenth-century art; rare scenes from ancient history and from the lives of the ancient philosophers, which brought into painting some of the major ethical and scientific concerns of his age.

Rosa was not only a painter. He was also an actor and major satirical poet, who shone in the world of the literary academies, and he took pleasure in the company of scholars and literary men. His impatience with the conventional system of patronage and advancement led him to create a new persona for the artist, characterized by extravagant claims to freedom, and he used both the public exhibitions in Rome and the ready support of his literary admirers to spread his fame. He has always had a dual importance for the history of art, as painter and as personality, and in the Romantic period new myths were spun around him. Identified with one of his own banditti, he became a cult figure, celebrated as a free and fiery artist who soared above all rules.

This catalogue draws on recent scholarship and adopts a thematic approach that will deepen our understanding of the different genres of painting to which Rosa made so fundamental a contribution. It aims to reveal afresh both the variety and quality of his art, and to set it within a seventeenth-century context. The detailed catalogue entries, and introductions to each theme, are preceded by a critical biography of Salvator Rosa (Helen Langdon), a discussion of the way Rosa saw the potential of seventeenth-century art exhibitions and used them to promote his art (Xavier F. Salomon) and an exploration of the relationship of his paintings to the world of theatre and music and to the literary culture of the academics (Caterina Volpi)