Philipp Peter Roos

Philipp Peter Roos (1655, Frankfurt am Main -1706), also called Rosa di Tivoli, was a German Baroque painter. He was a son of Johann Heinrich Roos, who taught him to paint, and a brother of the painter Johann Melchior Roos. As a young man he was influenced by his father. He was commissioned by Charles I, landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, to paint for him. In 1677 he travelled to Italy and was active as a painter in and nearby Rome. He worked in the studio of Giacinto Brandi. In 1681 he fell in love with Brandi’s daughter and after converting to catholicism he married her. In 1683 he entered a papal guild of painters, the Virtuosi al Pantheon. In 1684 he moved to Tivoli, where he stayed in a large house with a menagerie (‘Noah’s Ark’) of all kinds of animals, study material for his drawings. Roos painted life-size figures and animals in his Italian style. In 1691, he returned to Rome, where he was one of the Bentvueghels painters in the Schildersbent, a group of painters from the Low Countries. This was a period of hardship for him, because the Schildersbent were often denied official commissions. Roos died in poverty.