After Salvator Rosa's return to Rome from Florence, he demanded
exorbitant prices for his works, and though his greatest talent lay in
landscape painting, he affected to despise that branch, being ambitious
of shining as an historical painter. He painted some altar-pieces and
other subjects for the churches, the chief of which are four pictures in
S. Maria di Monte Santo, representing Daniel in the Lions' Den, Tobit
and the Angel, the Resurrection of Christ, and the Raising of Lazarus;
the Martyrdom of St. Cosimo and St. Damiano, in the church of S.
Giovanni.
The brightest era of landscape painting is said with truth to have been
in the time of Pope Urban VIII., when flourished Claude Lorraine, Gaspar
Poussin, and Salvator Rosa. Of these, Salvator was the most
distinguished, though certainly not the best; each was the head of a
perfectly original school, which had many followers, and each observed
nature on the side in which he felt impelled to imitate her. The first
admired and represented nature in her sweetest appearance; the second,
in her most gorgeous array; and the third in her most convulsed and
terrific aspects.