I recently bought a painting by Josh Meador from a Nevada art dealer. It arrived today and got me thinking about how history and art are intertwined.
I’ve written before about Meador, the Oscar-winning head of animation effects for Disney Studio. In hanging Meador’s painting I moved an engraving by Salvator Rosa.
I first became interested in Rosa (Italian, 1615-73) in college after finding a painting by him for sale at Stevens Antiques in Macon. I was fascinated by the painting and my father bought it for me at Christmas that year. I started researching Rosa, who is credited with helping popularize the genre of scenes of a “dark and stormy night.”
Rosa, according to the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, Italy, was “indisputably a leader in that tendency towards the romantic and picturesque, called a proto-romantic.” In his art, Rosa painted unconventional landscapes, in which he often depicted bandits in rocky scenes with storm-tossed trees. He also engraved romantic figures of soldiers and mythological scenes. He was a poet, a satirist and is considered the inspiration of the 18th century picturesque movement in England.
Now what does all this have to do with local history? It was several years before I discovered his link to the early exploration of the Tombigbee River Valley. One of the fun things about researching history is stumbling onto unexpected connections.
In addition to his unconventional art and literature, Rosa acquired a reputation for having a very rebellious nature. During the Spanish revolt of Masaniello (a late 1640s uprising of the people of Naples against the Spanish viceroy), Rosa was associated in the insurrection with Lorenzo Tonti, who had developed the Tontine life insurance plan (which is still in use).
As a result of that uprising and association with Rosa, Tonti was forced to flee to France. Lorenzo’s son, Henri de Tonti, though born in Italy, was raised a Frenchman and devoted his life to the French exploration of North America. His travels included the Upper Tombigbee River Valley. He is one of the most fascinating characters to ever pass through what is now the Golden Triangle.
Henri de Tonti (1649-1704), was known as the “Iron Hand” because of his replacement of a severed hand, lost during a Sicilian War battle, with a crude iron hand or hook over which he wore a glove. He became noted as a close associate of La Salle and accompanied La Salle on his 1682 voyage down the Mississippi River. Tonti became engaged in the French fur trade and moved to French Mobile in 1700.
In 1702, Tonti was sent north from Mobile to establish peaceful relations with the Chickasaw Indians. He met with the Chickasaws in March 1702 at a village located somewhere north of present-day West Point. At the village, he described finding “an Englishman” wearing “a rather dirty blue shirt, no pants, stockings, or shoes, a scarlet wool blanket and some discs at his neck like a savage.” (maybe a Scotsman wearing a Kilt?)
In an attempt to bring permanence to the Mobile settlement, the French vessel Pelican sailed from France in 1704 with wives for the men at the French colony. As one of the most eligible bachelors in Mobile, Tonti was allowed to make one of the first selections and quickly became engaged to one of the Pelican girls. Unfortunately, the Pelican also brought Yellow Fever which Tonti contracted and from which he died.
History’s links and connections are always amazing and can take strange twists. So, the association of the Italian artist Salvator Rosa with Lorenzo Tonti during a 1640s insurrection in Naples resulted in Lorenzo fleeing Italy for France, his son Henri then being raised a Frenchman and in 1700 stepping into Tombigbee Valley history as a French explorer.
Rufus Ward is a local historian. Email your questions about local history to him at [email protected].
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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