(1615–1673)
After the battle, pen and brown ink, on fine laid paper, fixed to an old laid paper, 17,2 x 28 cm, browned, stained, minor losses, mounted, unframed, (Sch)

Provenance:
Collection Giancarlo Sestieri, Rome.

The scene’s composition with figures next to the picture’s frontal edge can be compared with early battle paintings which Salvator Rosa created during his sojourn in Naples between 1630 and 1639. The earliest paintings were executed by Rosa in 1630, when the artist was still a pupil in the workshop of Aniello Falcone (Compare C. Volpi, Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) - “pittore famoso”, Rome 2014, Cats. 6-9, figs. 21-24). In most cases his early compositions concentrate on a dense group of men fighting each other in the foreground as opposed to later works where a more precise description of the background and an architectural setting structuring a staggered space will become significant compositional elements. Rosa maintained the compositional solution even in the following years between 1635 and 1638 (Volpi op. cit., Kat. 34, 36, 39); a battle scene of this type which he made in 1639 is kept in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Corsini, Rome (Inv. 385; Volpi op. cit, Kat. 45). During his Florentine period between 1641 and 1649 Rosa executed several battle paintings, whose compositions he extended with architectural elements in the background. Among them are “The Battle between Christian and Turcs” (1642) in the Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence (Inv. 133; Volpi op. cit. Kat. 769) and the „Large Cavalry Battle“ (1645) in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Inv. 1641; Volpi op. cit., Cat. 139), whose compositions point to the heroic battle scenes of his Roman period. Michael Mahoney mentions several comparable studies and detail sketches for battle scenes, of which the two earliest date to the mid-1640s (M. Mahoney, The drawings of Salvator Rosa, 2 Vols., New York 1977, pp. 163-164). Other stylistically comparable drawings are preserved in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt (Inv. 13365) and in the Dahlem Museum, Berlin (Inv. 23087 and 22989). Two studies for the battle painting in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which recall the sketchy character and the figure types of the present drawing, are kept in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (Inv. E 25) and in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Inv. D 1062-1900). Due to its compositional arrangement the present sketch may be a study for one of his battle paintings of the early 1630s to 1640s.