The Italian artist Salvator Rosa made the engraving The Death of Marcus Atilius Regulus on the basis of his own original painting that is kept in Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the USA.

The engraving shows the death of Marcus Atilius Regulus, a military and political leader of the Roman Republic. In 256 B.C., Regulus was for the second time appointed a Roman Consul and was sent to Africa together with Lucius Libo. Having defeated the Carthaginian feet, having captured 40 thousand of prisoners of war and having seized a small town, they have gained a foothold on the seashore. The Carthaginians started panicking, while the Romans began to plunder the location. The engraving shows the death of Marcus Atilius Regulus, a military and political leader of the Roman Republic. In 256 B.C., Regulus was for the second time appointed a Roman Consul and was sent to Africa together with Lucius Libo. Having defeated the Carthaginian feet, having captured 40 thousand of prisoners of war and having seized a small town, they have gained a foothold on the seashore. The Carthaginians started panicking, while the Romans began to plunder the location.   

The subject of the heroic deed and awful death of the Roman general was popular in the Middle Ages, but really flourished during the period of Renaissance. Salvator Rosa had his own vision of that episode. The composition of his engraving is symmetric and balanced. The main character, Romulus, is practically invisible, having already been placed in the barrel, however, emotional and dramatic tension is represented through figures, movements and postures of his torturers.

Rosa painted his original painting of The Death of Marcus Atilius Regulus in 1650-1652; in 1651 he created the chiaroscuro, i.e. the color lithograph, while the etching, that he dedicated to his friend Giovanni Battista Riccardi, was made around 1662.