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Updated: June 27, 2025
Friend Ottmar told me a day or two ago that he had written a story in which the celebrated poet-painter Salvator Rosa played a leading part. I hope he will read it to us now." "I am a little afraid," said Ottmar, as he took the manuscript from his pocket, "that you won't think my story Serapiontic.
He'll bust away as if he's out to make Salvator look like a truck-hoss, but he'll lay down 'n' holler fur some one to come 'n' carry him when he hits the stretch. One's a hop-head 'n' I has to shoot enough dope into him to make him think he's Napoleon Bonyparte 'fore he'll switch a fly off hisself.
At length Salvator sent Dame Caterina away, to fetch some ice-cold water that Antonio wanted. Salvator and Antonio satisfied themselves that the fellow who had been sent to Pitichinaccio's house had done his duty well. Notwithstanding the apparently terrible fall, Capuzzi had not received the slightest damage beyond a slight bruise or two.
Salvator Rosa painted history, landscape, battle-pieces, and sea-ports; and of these he was most eminent in landscape. The scholar of Spagnoletto, he attached himself to the strong natural style and dark coloring of that master, which well accords with his subjects.
Presently Salvator halted before him, and cried, laughing: "Antonio, there is nothing that I can accomplish as against your powerful enemies; but there is one who can, and will, help you; and that is Signor Formica." "Alas!" cried Antonio; "do not jest with an unfortunate, for whom there is no further salvation."
"After wrighting this imperfect description I again viewed the falls and was so much disgusted with the imperfect idea which it conveyed of the scene that I determined to draw my pen across it and begin agin, but then reflected that I could not perhaps succeed better than penning the first impressions of the mind; I wished for the pencil of a Salvator Rosa, or the pen of a Thompson, that I might be enabled to give to the enlightened world some just idea of this truly magnificent and sublimely grand object, which has from the commencement of time been concealed from the view of civilized man; but this was fruitless and vain.
Salvator and Antonio lifted him out of bed and wrapped him in a wide mantle which had belonged to Dame Caterina's husband, and which she lent them for this purpose. The old gentleman implored them by all the saints to take off the villainous cold bandages in which his bald head was swathed, and to give him his wig and plumed hat.
I intend now to devote myself to it altogether, and throw the hateful handicraft entirely to the winds." "Ho, ho, Antonio!" said Salvator, "bethink you what you are going to do. You are a clever surgeon, and perhaps will never be more than a bungler at painting. Young as you are in years, you are too old to begin with the crayon.
"Diavalo!" cried the amazed physician, "you dictate a prescription! why, I am the prince's physician, and not you!" "And I, Caro," said Salvator, "am a painter, and not you. I leave it to the prince whether I could not prove myself a better physician than you a painter; and write a better prescription than you paint a picture."
"Ah, Salvator," he cried, "what does it avail me that you have set me up on a pinnacle, where I could never have dreamt of being, that I am overwhelmed with praise and honour, that the prospect of the most delightful and glorious artistic career opens before me, when I am inexpressibly unhappy, when the very picture, to which, next to yourself, dear master, I am indebted for my victory, is the express cause of irremediable misfortune to me?"
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