Salvator Rosa's 'Strega' returns to Florence after decades abroad

Salvator Rosa's painting 'La Strega' (The Witch), created between 1647 and 1650, has been acquired by the Uffizi Galleries for €450,000 and returned to Italy after many years abroad. The work, which was no longer subject to export restrictions, will be displayed in the Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti until March before moving to a permanent location in the Uffizi's 17th-century painting galleries, alongside Caravaggio's 'Medusa' (c. 1598) and Artemisia Gentileschi's 'Judith and Holofernes' (c. 1620). The painting depicts an elderly kneeling woman with grotesque features, holding a flaming branch and a spherical container from which a diabolical figure emerges, surrounded by esoteric objects including a glass jug, coins, a mirror, bones, a skull, and a sheet with the monogram 'SR'. In the background lies the body of a dead child wrapped in cloth. Rosa created the work during his Florentine period (1640-1648) while in the service of Cardinal Giovan Carlo de' Medici, influenced by the esoteric and hermetic interests of Florentine academies. The painting challenges classical ideals of beauty and draws on Neapolitan artistic traditions of using symbols like skeletons, fires, and monsters.