Phillip Peter

American

Phillip Peter Roos was born in 1657 in Frankfort, Germany. He belonged to a family of painters: his brother was Johann Melchior Roos, his father Johann Heinrich Roos, his uncle Theodor Roos, his son Cajetan Roos and his grandson Joseph Roos. Roos traveled to Italy in 1677 on a scholarship from the Landgrave of Hesse.  In Rome he studied under Giacinto Brandi, whose daughter, Maria Isabella, he married in 1681, after converting to the Catholic faith.  In c.1684, he bought a house near Tivoli, hence his nickname Rosa da Tivoli.  From 1691 onward he seems to have lived mainly in Rome.

Roos was a member of the Schildersbent, which gave him the nickname Mercurius because of the speed in which he painted.  He painted almost exclusively domestic animals with their herdsmen in the Roman Campagna.  Roos applied his paint in impastos, rendering the coats, the stance and the movements of each species in a lifelike manner.