Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) was a colorful and controversial Italian painter, talented musician, a notable comic actor, a prolific correspondent, and a successful satirist and poet. His paintings, especially his rugged landscapes and their evocation of the sublime, appealed to Romantic writers, and his work was highly influential on several generations of European writers.

James S. Patty analyzes Rosa’s tremendous influence on French writers, chiefly those of the nineteenth century, such as Stendhal, Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, George Sand, and Théophile Gautier. Arranged in chronological order, with numerous quotations from French fiction, poetry, drama, art criticism, art history, literary history, and reference works, Salvator Rosa in French Literature forms a narrative account of the reception of Rosa's life and work in the world of French letters.

James S. Patty, professor emeritus of French at Vanderbilt University, is the author of Dürer in French Letters. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Reviews:

"There can be no doubt that Patty . . . has written the definitive study of Salvator Rosa in French literature."--Modern Language Review

"An exhaustive and meticulous . . . survey of French references to 17th-century Italian artist/poet Salvator Rosa. . . .Recommended."--Choice

"Impeccable scholarship . . . this will be the definitive study of Rosa in France. Patty is one of the most knowledgeable specialists of romanticism in the country, and has written an excellent and important book."--Allan Pasco, University of Kansas

"Patty offers a thorough and orderly overview of Rosa and comprehensively demonstrates the extent to which the work of this seventeenth-century Italian painter has been variously appreciated and evoked in French literature and art criticism."--Carrol Coates, Binghamton University, State University of New York