His anxiety to finish this picture in time for a certain festival, kept him, he adds, ‘secluded from all commerce of the pen, and from every other in the world; and I can truly say, that I have forgotten myself, even to neglecting to eat; and so arduous is my application, that when I had nearly finished, I was obliged to keep my bed for two days; and had not my recovery been assisted by emetics, certain it is it would have been all over with me in consequence of some obstruction in the stomach. Pity me then, dear friend, if for the glory of my pencil, I have neglected to devote my pen to the service of friendship.’—Letter to the Abate Ricciardi.
Passeri has left the following particulars recorded of him on the day when this picture (the Martyrdom of Saint Damian and Saint Cosmus) was first exhibited.
‘He (Salvator) had at last exposed his picture in the San Giovanni de’ Fiorentini; and I, to recreate myself, ascended on that evening to the heights of Monte della Trinità, where I found Salvator walking arm in arm with Signor Giovanni Carlo dei Rossi, so celebrated for his performance on the harp of three strings, and brother to that Luigi Rossi, who is so eminent all over the world for his perfection in musical composition. And when Salvator (who was my intimate friend) perceived me, he came forward laughingly, and said to me these precise words:—“Well, what say the malignants now? Are they at last convinced that I can paint on the great scale? Why, if not, then e’en let Michael Angelo come down, and do something better. Now at least I have stopped their mouths, and shown the world what I am worth.” I shrugged my shoulders. I and the Signor Rossi changed the subject to one which lasted us till nightfall; and from this (continues Passeri in his rambling way[[29]]) it may be gathered how gagliardo he (Salvator) was in his own opinion. Yet it may not be denied but that he had all the endowments of a marvellous great painter! one of great resources and high perfection; and had he no other merit, he had at least that of being the originator of his own style. He spoke, this evening, of Paul Veronese more than of any other painter, and praised the Venetian school greatly. To Raphael he had no great leaning, for it was the fashion of the Neapolitan School to call him hard, di pietra, dry,’ &c. p. 172.
Our artist’s constitution now began to break, worn out perhaps by the efforts of his art, and still more by the irritation of his mind. In a letter dated in 1666, he complains,
‘I have suffered two months of agony, even with the abstemious regimen of chicken broth! My feet are two lumps of ice, in spite of the woollen hose I have imported from Venice. I never permit the fire to be quenched in my own room, and am more solicitous than even the Cavalier Cigoli,’ (who died of a cold caught in painting a fresco in the Vatican). ‘There is not a fissure in the house that I am not daily employed in diligently stopping up, and yet with all this I cannot get warm; nor do I think the torch of love, or the caresses of Phryne herself, would kindle me into a glow. For the rest, I can talk of any thing but my pencil: my canvass lies turned to the wall; my colours are dried up now, and for ever; nor can I give my thoughts to any subject whatever, but chimney-corners, brasiers, warming-pans, woollen gloves, woollen caps, and such sort of gear. In short, dear friend, I am perfectly aware that I have lost much of my original ardour, and am absolutely reduced to pass entire days without speaking a word. Those fires, once mine and so brilliant, are now all spent, or evaporating in smoke. Woe unto me, should I ever be reduced to exercise my pencil for bread!’
Yet after this, he at intervals produced some of his best pictures. The scene, however, was now hastening to a close; and the account here given of his last days, though containing nothing perhaps very memorable, will yet, we think, be perused with a melancholy interest.
‘A change in his complexion was thought to indicate some derangement of the liver, and he continued in a state of great languor and depression during the autumn of 1672; but in the winter of 1673, the total loss of appetite, and of all power of digestion, reduced him almost to the last extremity; and he consented, at the earnest request of Lucrezia and his numerous friends, to take more medical advice. He now passed through the hands of various physicians, whose ignorance and technical pedantry come out with characteristic effect in the simple and matter-of-fact details which the good Padre Baldovini has left of the last days of his eminent friend. Various cures were suggested by the Roman faculty for a disease which none had yet ventured to name. Meantime the malady increased, and showed itself in all the life-wearing symptoms of sleeplessness, loss of appetite, intermitting fever, and burning thirst. A French quack was called in to the sufferer; and his prescription was, that he should drink water abundantly, and nothing but water. While, however, under the care of this Gallic Sangrado, a confirmed dropsy unequivocally declared itself; and Salvator, now acquainted with the nature of his disease, once more submitted to the entreaties of his friends; and, at the special persuasion of the Padre Francesco Baldovini, placed himself under the care of a celebrated Italian empiric, then in great repute in Rome, called Dr. Penna.
‘Salvator had but little confidence in medicine. He had already, during this melancholy winter, discarded all his physicians, and literally thrown physic to the dogs. But hope, and spring, and love of life, revived together; and, towards the latter end of February he consented to receive the visits of Penna, who had cured Baldovini (on the good father’s own word) of a confirmed dropsy the year before. When the doctor was introduced, Salvator, with his wonted manliness, called on him to answer the question he was about to propose with honesty and frankness, viz. Was his disorder curable? Penna, after going through certain professional forms, answered, “that his disorder was a simple, and not a complicated dropsy, and that therefore it was curable.”
‘Salvator instantly and cheerfully placed himself in the doctor’s hands, and consented to submit to whatever he should subscribe. “The remedy of Penna,” says Baldovini, “lay in seven little vials, of which the contents were to be swallowed every day.” But it was obvious to all, that as the seven vials were emptied, the disorder of Rosa increased; and on the seventh day of his attendance, the doctor declared to his friend Baldovini, that the malady of his patient was beyond his reach and skill.
‘The friends of Salvator now suggested to him their belief that his disease was brought on and kept up by his rigid confinement to the house, so opposed to his former active habits of life; but when they urged him to take air and exercise, he replied significantly to their importunities, “I take exercise! I go out! if this is your counsel, how are you deceived!” At the earnest request, however, of Penna, he consented to see him once more; but the moment he entered his room he demanded of him, “if he now thought that he was curable?” Penna, in some emotion, prefaced his verdict by declaring solemnly, “that he should conceive it no less glory to restore so illustrious a genius to health, and to the society he was so calculated to adorn, than to save the life of the Sovereign Pontiff himself; but that, as far as his science went, the case was now beyond the reach of human remedy.” While Penna spoke, Salvator, who was surrounded by his family and many friends, fixed his penetrating eyes on the physician’s face, with the intense look of one who sought to read his sentence in the countenance of his judge ere it was verbally pronounced;—but that sentence was now passed! and Salvator, who seemed more struck by surprise than by apprehension, remained silent and in a fixed attitude! His friends, shocked and grieved, or awed by the expression of his countenance, which was marked by a stern and hopeless melancholy, arose and departed silently one by one. After a long and deep reverie, Rosa suddenly left the room, and shut himself up alone in his study. There in silence, and in unbroken solitude, he remained for two days, holding no communication with his wife, his son or his most intimate friends; and when at last their tears and lamentations drew him forth, he was no longer recognisable. Shrunk, feeble, attenuated, almost speechless, he sunk on his couch, to rise no more!