Cattle and dog by Philipp Peter Roos

[For a brief biography of the painter, please refer to the other entry devoted to Roos.]

Philipp Peter Roos, known as "Rosa of Tivoli", was a German painter and engraver of the Baroque period, who studied in Rome with Giacinto Brandi and in 1661 married his daughter, Maria Isabella, after embracing the Catholic faith.

The artist was the eldest son and pupil of one of the best-known German landscape and animal painters of the second half of the 17th century, Johann Heinrich Roos. The fame of his son, Philipp Peter, was even more spectacular: most of the European courts, particularly those of Russia, England and Sweden, owned works by "Rosa da Tivoli", which are now often preserved in museums. Italy in particular is rich in paintings by this master. The Louvre has a Sheep Devoured by a Wolf and the Vienna Museum has a View of the Tivoli Waterfalls.

His father, however, was already celebrated in his own country as the "Raphael of livestock painters", giving him an important place among Dutch artists, even though the theme remained popular. At the beginning of the 19th century, Goethe still praised the Roos' talent for depicting animals. The change in taste would prove fatal for all painters of the pastoral genre, as their idyllic works were deemed decorative and insignificant.

Hermann Jedding, who published two fundamental books on this family of artists in 1955 and 1998, deserves particular credit for the rehabilitation of the Ross family in art history. Philipp Peter Roos belonged to a large family of painters who specialised in depicting rural scenes with peasants, horses, cows, sheep and goats. There are at least eight painters from this family, active mainly in Germany, Holland and Italy between 1650 and 1800. In Italy, two of Philipp Peter Roos's seven children became animal and landscape painters: Cajetan, known as "Gaetano de Rosa", and Jacob, known as "Rosa da Napoli".