Pythagoras Emerging from the Underworld

Born and educated in Naples, Rosa lived for more than eight years in Florence before settling in Rome in 1649. He was impressed by both the naturalism of Ribera and the classicism of Poussin, but, being extremely independent of spirit and confident of his own genius, he allied himself with no one. Although his fame rested mostly on his work as a landscapist, Rosa preferred to be regarded as a history painter. He also chose subjects of an esoteric and philosophic nature, which he often introduced into his landscapes. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Rosa’s works were immensely popular and influential, especially among landscape painters, leading Sir Joshua Reynolds to attribute to them “the power of inspiring sentiments of grandeur and sublimity.”

According to ancient sources, the philosopher Pythagoras (sixth century B.C.) convinced his followers that he had descended to Hades and seen the tortured souls of poets (among them Homer and Hesiod) tormented for betraying the secrets of the gods. Shortly after 1662, when Rosa exhibited this painting with its pendant (now in Berlin), the pair was bought by Antonio Ruffo of Messina, who, several years before, had purchased Rembrandt’s Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).