Ettore Pinelli, the Violinist

Painted in 1869 and in the Museo del Prado, this portrait of Ettore Pinelli — identified as a violinist — depicts one of the Italian musicians with whom Rosales apparently formed friendships during his long Roman sojourn. The Pinelli family was associated with Roman cultural life, and a musician of that name active in the late 1860s would have moved in the same circles as the expatriate Spanish artists clustered around the Real Academia de España en Roma. Rosales painted relatively few portrait subjects outside the Spanish social network he inhabited, making this Italian musician portrait unusual in his output. The identification as a violinist adds a specific professional identity that connects the work to the tradition of musician portraits running from Rembrandt through Ingres, in which the instrument (or its implied presence) defines the sitter's relationship to their calling.

The portrait of a musician follows different conventions from Rosales's society commissions: the sitter's identity is defined by calling rather than social rank, and the portrait can afford more informality. Rosales handles the face with his mature directness and places the figure in a setting that may imply the musician's professional context — a studio, a rehearsal space. The handling is confident and relatively free, consistent with his late 1860s manner.