Enrico Salfi

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Enrico Salfi (November 28, 1857 – January 14, 1935) was an Italian painter from Cosenza. He mainly painted biblical and ancient Roman scenes and also excelled in oil portraits. He began his studies in 1876 at the Tarantino Lyceum, working with Vincenzo Marinelli and others, and he, like artists such as Morelli, Sciuti and Maccari, favored Pompeian or Neo-Pompeian subjects.

Salfi lived in Palermo until 1918, then moved to Petrosino. In Rome in 1883 he created two Pompeian scenes, The Amphora Salesman and Licet? (Is it Allowed?), the latter of which was bought by the Provincial Council of Naples. He showed Golgotha in 1885, and in 1887 in Rome he presented Utopia of Lace along with a Madonna and a Face of Jesus. In 1898 he exhibited Le Maghe (Sorceresses) at the General Exposition in Turin. He also painted religious works, including an altarpiece of Saint Francis of Paola in Ecstasy for a church in Basilicata, and an “Effect of Lights” for the Exposizione Permanente on Capri. In Cosenza he painted an Allegory of the Arts on the ceiling of the Teatro Massimo (1905), later destroyed in World War II, and The Sons of Brutus for the city council.

Salfi published a small poetry book, Lirica Pompeiana, and served as Inspector of Monuments and Excavations from 1897 to 1903. He worked for churches across Calabria, including Cerisano, Parenti, Rogliano, and the original San Nicola di Bari in Cosenza (demolished in 1961). Other notable works are Satan Vanquished (shown in Genoa, 1904), Judas (Rome, 1911), Waiting for the Wife (1922), Song of Songs (1926), and in 1931 the anti-Semitic image L’ebreo errante at Reggio Calabria’s Art and Artistry show.