and lifelong companions. Their first son Rosalvo was born in August 1641, probably in Volterra, and another son Augusto was born in 1657. Records show at least four more children were born and placed with foundling hospitals between 1641 and 1657, giving some indication of their struggling financial conditions in those years. The custom of unmarried couples living together was not too uncommon in the early years of the 17th century, but as the decades passed the church grew less and less tolerant of the practice. At times Rosa's prominent reputation and relationships to powerful patrons helped to shield him from the Inquisition. At other times, the situation left him vulnerable to the many rivals and enemies he made through his satires and ostentatious character. In 1656, feeling pressure in Rome from the poet Agostino Favoriti and his close ally Fabio Chigi, recently elected Pope Alexander VII, Rosa sent Lucrezia and their son Rosalvo to stay in Naples with his family. Soon after she arrived, a severe outbreak of the plague hit Naples, and Rosalvo, Salvator's brother, sister, brother-in-law and their children all died in the epidemic. Lucrezia survived however and returned to Rome alone. The following year their son Augusto was born. Near the end of his life, declining in health and anticipating death, Rosa married Lucrezia on March 4, 1673. On March 17 he died. An inventory of Rosa's house taken in 1673 shortly after his death, indicated the Portrait of Lucrezia Paolini was hanging in a prominent location in the home, and one of the few paintings in his possession when he died. Career While Rosa had a facile genius at painting, he pursued a wide variety of arts: music, poetry, writing, etching, and acting. In Rome, he befriended Pietro Testa and Claude Lorrain. During a Roman carnival play he wrote and acted in a masque, in which his character bustled about Rome distributing satirical prescriptions for diseases of the body and more particularly, of the mind. In costume, he inveighed against the farcical comedies acted in the Trastevere under the direction of Bernini. While his plays were successful, this activity also gained him powerful enemies among patrons and artists, including Bernini himself, in Rome. Around 1640, he accepted an invitation from Giovanni Carlo de' Medici to relocate to Florence, where he stayed until 1649. Once there, Rosa sponsored a combination of studio and salon of poets,