There is an etching by Salvator Rosa, which seems so plainly to tell the
story of the wandering artist's captivity, that it merits a particular
description. In the midst of wild, rocky scenery, appears a group of
banditti, armed at all points, and with all sorts of arms; they are
lying in careless attitudes, but with fierce countenances, around a
youthful prisoner, who forms the foreground figure, and is seated on a
rock, with his languid limbs hanging over the precipice, which may be
supposed to yawn beneath. It is impossible to describe the despair
depicted in this figure: it is marked in his position, in the drooping
of his head, which his nerveless arms seem with difficulty to support,
and the little that may be seen of his face, over which, from his
recumbent attitude, his hair falls in luxuriant profusion. All is alike
destitute of energy and of hope, which the beings grouped around the
captive seem to have banished forever by some sentence recently
pronounced; yet there is one who watches over the fate of the young
victim: a woman stands immediately behind him, with her hand stretched
out, while her fore finger, resting on his head, marks him as the
subject of discourse which she addresses to the listening bandits. Her
figure, which is erect is composed of those bold, straight lines, which
in art and nature, constitute the grand. Even the fantastic cap or
turban, from which her long dishevelled hair has escaped, has no curve
of grace; and her drapery partakes of the same rigid forms. Her
countenance is full of stern melancholy--the natural character of one
whose feelings and habits are at variance; whose strong passions may
have flung her out of the pale of society, but whose womanly sympathies
still remain unchanged. She is artfully pleading for the life of the
youth, by contemptuously noting his insignificance; but she commands
while she soothes. She is evidently the mistress or the wife of the
chief, in whoso absence an act of vulgar violence may be meditated. The
youth's life is saved: for that cause rarely fails, to which a woman
brings the omnipotence of her feelings.