Diogenes Casting Away His Bowl
1661–1662
Medium
Etching and drypoint on dark cream laid paper
Dimensions
Plate: 46 × 27.6 cm (18 1/8 × 10 7/8 in.); Sheet, max: 46.8 × 28.7 cm (18 7/16 × 11 5/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
140637
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Diogenes di Sinope (413-323 B.C.), an ascetic philosopher of Athens and Corinth, is said to have eschewed worldly goods to such an extent that he threw away his drinking bowl upon seeing a youth drinking water from cupped hands. This famous etching by Salvator Rosa reproduces (in reverse) the artist’s painting of the same subject in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (1651/52).
About the Artist
Salvator Rosa · 1615–1673
Salvator Rosa was born in 1615 in Arenella, on the outskirts of Naples, into a world of artistic ambition and turbulent talent. His early training came through his maternal uncle, the painter Paolo Greco, and his brother-in-law Francesco Fracanzano, himself a pupil of the great Spanish-born Neapolitan master Jusepe de Ribera. Rosa showed a fierce independence from the start, resisting his father's...