The Serapion Brethren II by E. T. A. Hoffmann

Author:E. T. A. Hoffmann [Hoffmann, E. T. A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

SIGNOR FORMICA.

A NOVELLA.

The renowned painter, Salvator Rosa, comes to Rome, and is attacked by a dangerous malady.--What happened to him during this malady.

People of renown generally have much evil spoken of them, whether truthfully or otherwise, and this was the case with the doughty painter Salvator Rosa, whose vivid, living pictures you, dear reader, have certainly never looked upon without a most special and heartfelt enjoyment.

When his fame had pervaded and resounded through Rome, Naples, Tuscany, nay, all Italy; when other painters, if they would please, were obliged to imitate his peculiar style--just then, malignant men, envious of him, invented all sorts of wicked reports concerning him, with the view of casting foul spots of shadow upon the shining auriole of his artistic fame. Salvator, they said, had, at an earlier time of his life, belonged to a band of robbers, and it was to his experiences at that time that he was indebted for all the wild, gloomy, strangely-attired figures which he introduced into his pictures, just as he copied into his landscape those darksome deserts, compounded of lonesomeness, mystery, and terror--the Selve Selvagge of Dante--where he had been driven to lurk. The worst accusation brought against him was that he had been involved in that terrible, bloody conspiracy which "Mas' Aniello" of evil fame had set afoot in Naples. People told all about that, with the minutest details.

Aniello Falcone, the battle-painter (as he was called), blazed up in fury and bloodthirsty revenge when the Spanish soldiers killed one of his relations in a skirmish. On the spot he collected together a crowd of desperate and foolhardy young men, principally painters, provided them with arms, and styled them "the death-company"; and, in verity, this band spread abroad a full measure of the terror and alarm which its name indicated. Those young men pervaded Naples, in troop form, all day long, killing every Spaniard they came across. More than this, they stormed their way into all the sacred places of sanctuary, and there, without compunction, murdered their wretched enemies who had taken refuge there, driven by fear of death. At night they betook themselves to their chief, the mad, bloodthirsty Mas' Aniello, and they painted pictures of him by torchlight, so that in a short time hundreds of those pictures of him were spread about Naples and the surrounding neighbourhood.

Now it was said that Salvator Rosa had been a member of this band, robbing and murdering all day, but painting with equal assiduity all night. What a celebrated art-critic--Taillasson, I think--said of our master is true: "His works bear the impress of a wild haughtiness and arrogance, of a bizarre energy, of the ideas and of their execution. Nature displays herself to him not in the lovely peacefulness of green meadows, flowery fields, perfumed groves, murmuring streams, but in the awfulness of mighty up-towering cliffs, or sea-coasts, and wild, inhospitable forests; the voice to which he listens is not the whispering of the evening breeze, or the rustling of the leaves, but the roar of the hurricane, the thunder of the cataract.

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