Stefano Della Bella
Italian, 1610 - 1664
Italian etcher and draughtsman, active also in France. He was a prolific artist: 1052 prints are described in the catalogue raisonné (de Vesme; rev. Massar, 1971) and thousands of his drawings are in public and private collections. He was one of the greatest Italian etchers, whose prints of battles and sieges, harbours, festivals, plays and operas are filled with tiny figures and vividly suggest many features of 17th-century urban and rural life. Della Bella’s landscape etchings were an important influence on the prints of the Lorraine artists François Collignon and Israël Silvestre (i). His work was overlooked in the 19th century but in the 1960s and 1970s became well known through exhibitions and scholarly publications, distinguishing his work from that of Jacques Callot.
1. Life and work.
On the premature death of his father, Francesco della Bella (d 1612), a sculptor who had worked with Giambologna, and following his older brothers, also artists, della Bella was apprenticed at an early age to the goldsmith Orazio Vanni ( fl c. 1590–1620), who taught him miniaturist techniques on metal. Stefano also studied painting with Cesare Dandini and Giovanni Battista Vanni (1590–1660), though his formal study was brief: he largely taught himself by drawing, and in 1630 he made a copy (Florence, Bib. Riccardiana) of Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscript Trattato della pittura. He learnt etching from Remigio Cantagallina, as had Jacques Callot, whose prints he copied.
(i) Florence and Rome, 1626–39.
Della Bella’s earliest prints, showing a Joust in the Piazza Santa Croce (probably 1626; see de Vesme–Massar, no. 65), the Banquet of the Piacevoli (1627; de v–m 43) and illustrations for the Descrizione delle feste di S Andrea Corsini (probably 1629; de v–m 884–904), are very similar to, though distinguishable from, prints by Callot, particularly in the deeply bitten parallel strokes used for shading and in the figure style. A more personal style is evident in della Bella’s prints from the early 1630s, particularly frontispieces (de v–m 905, 907–8), where figure styles derived from Florentine painters such as Francesco Furini (1600/04–46) have superseded the style of Callot, and the shading creates softly rounded forms.
The print of the Banquet of the Piacevoli was dedicated to Prince Giovanni Carlo de’ Medici, della Bella hoping thereby to win a court stipend. Successful in this, he pleaded the need for further study and used the money to go to Rome (1633), where he remained, with occasional visits to Florence, until 1639. These six years were of supreme importance for him. He made a vast number of drawings, as evidenced in sketchbooks and on separate sheets (Vienna, Albertina; Paris, Louvre; Florence, Uffizi; London, BM; Windsor Castle, Berks, Royal Col.); he worked mainly in the open air, recording antique monuments and ruins, contemporary buildings, the countryside and the activities of the people. It was said that he never missed a public event, and he recorded these also. The sketchbooks later provided the source for many of his series of prints. The fresh naturalism of his unstylized figures, lifelike animals, rapid but accurate views of buildings, trees and distant vistas filled with light and air represent the beginning of his artistic individuality. His experience of the intense creative activity in High Baroque Rome and of the naturalism of Dutch landscape painters and printmakers decisively freed his style from the artificiality of Mannerism, allowing his work to assume the flowing freedom of the Baroque. Della Bella’s encounters in Rome with the French etcher François Collignon and the Parisian print publishers Israël Henriet and François Langlois were also decisive for his later career.
Della Bella’s prints from this period, probably made during his trips to Florence, include the large portrait of the court fool, Bernardino Ricci on Horseback (de v–m 39); the series of six prints, together forming a panel 2.5 m long, of the Polish Ambassador’s Ceremonial Entry into Rome in 1633 (c. 1636; de v–m 44–9); two fans in rebus form (de v–m 688 and 689); and the fine set of prints illustrating the melodrama Le nozze degli dei that was presented in the courtyard of the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, in 1637 (de v–m 918–25). All of these demonstrate his new Baroque style.
(ii) Paris, 1639–50.
In 1639 della Bella travelled to Paris in the entourage of the Florentine ambassador, Baron Alessandro del Nero, probably encouraged by Henriet and Langlois, who needed a replacement for Callot who had died in 1635. The work that della Bella did for the two publishers and for Pierre Mariette (i), and court commissions obtained through Cardinal Armand de Richelieu and Cardinal Jules Mazarin, kept him fruitfully busy for a decade. While in Paris, he also collected prints by other artists, including Rembrandt, whom he may have met when he travelled to the Netherlands and whose influence can be seen in his work. Stefano continued to draw, sketching views of Paris and the countryside and the battles and military campaigns he was required to record in prints (e.g. sketchbook, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam; individual sheets, Paris, Louvre). Della Bella also played a part in the literary life of Paris and contributed a frontispiece, showing a seated figure of Fame, for the Oeuvres poétiques of Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin (1641; de v–m 942) and the frontispiece and illustrations for the same author’s play Mirame (1641; de v–m 936–41). In the Mirame prints the sophistication and elegance of French theatre and costume design can be seen.
Most of della Bella’s prints date from his period in Paris. They are inventive and of high quality, showing an extension of his expressive range and technical abilities. Several of his etchings are very large, including one of his earliest French commissions, the Siege of Arras (1641; de v–m 880), which measures 430×507 mm and shows an aerial view of the besieged city on a plain, with an army on the move in the foreground and a ground-level view of the city and its besiegers in a fictive scroll above (preparatory drawings, London, BM). Among his landscape and harbour views is the beautiful set dedicated to the Duc d’Enghien (c. 1643; de v–m 757–68), with small staffage figures walking, riding and fording streams, varied renderings of trees and views drawn from the Roman Campagna as well as France. Della Bella also produced sets devoted to military subjects, such as the exquisitely delicate Drawings of Troop Manoeuvres (Desseins de quelques conduites de troupes, c. 1644; de v–m 246–57), rendering vast battlefields, sieges, convoys and batteries of cannon, this time in tiny prints (60×120 mm), and he produced numerous sets of capriccios, such as Various Figures and Landscapes (Diversi figure e paesi, c. 1645; de v–m 165–72).
In 1644 Cardinal Mazarin commissioned from della Bella four sets of instructive playing cards for Louis XIV (de v–m 489–687). The subjects were mythology, each card illustrating a scene from Ovid’s version of the Greek myths; geography, showing costumed personifications of countries; historic kings and queens of France, each card of these sets having a tiny figurative composition with complicated actions and detailed costumes represented on a minute scale (50×60 mm). By way of contrast, the print of the Pont Neuf (1646; de v–m 850) is large, giving a topographically accurate view of the bridge and its embellishments, the Seine and the buildings bordering its banks. It has an enlarged foreground area filled with the teeming life of contemporary Paris: there are 451 explicitly drawn figures, including tooth-pullers and beggars, gypsies and hurdy-gurdy players, with horses, dogs, donkeys and a lamb.
Some of della Bella’s most original prints are his sets of ornamental etchings, numbering 52 plates in all, four suites of which were published in Paris (de v–m 987–1002, 1015–26, 1027–44, 1045–50). In these prints realistic creatures and half-human figures are combined with natural foliage and shells in cartouches and friezes that seem to anticipate the Rococo. One of the suites, the Collection of Various Vases (Raccolta di vasi diversi, 1646; de v–m 1045–50), depicts vases, ostensibly derived from antique prototypes, from which spring unexpected satyrs, serpents, death’s heads and luxuriant bouquets. These prints provided sources for subsequent decorative artists in many media.
The large Battlefield Scene (1648; de v–m 93) and the five smaller prints on the subject of death (1648; de v–m 87–91) are possibly the last of della Bella’s Parisian works. The macabre scenes, skeletons riding skeletal horses over bloody battlefields or carrying off victims through the Cemetery of the Innocents in Paris, were complemented by the artist’s supreme control of varied technical means and his rendering of violent action in a fully Baroque style.
(iii) Florence and Rome, 1650–64.
Della Bella’s return to Florence was precipitated by the hostility of the Parisians to Cardinal Mazarin’s Italian protégés during the period of civil unrest known as the Fronde. He resumed at least partial employment at the Medici court, making prints of festivals and serving as drawing-master to the future Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III. He continued to make plates for publication in Paris alongside those for Florentine publication. From 1657 to 1661 he made costume designs (e.g. London, BM) for theatrical productions given by the Accademia degli Immobili in the Teatro della Pergola. He was himself elected to the Florentine literary society, the Accademia degli Apatisti, in 1656. Noteworthy prints from this period include views of the gardens at Pratalino, depicting the tree-house, water jokes, fountains and avenues of the Medici villa (c. 1653; de v–m 838–43), the technically able but drier set of prints of the ships and harbour at Livorno (1655; de v–m 844–9) and the set of large-format night scenes showing the theatrical extravaganza of 1661, Il mondo festeggiante (de v–m 70–71), held at the Palazzo Pitti.
Stefano made some trips to Rome during the 1650s, from which resulted some of his finest prints, particularly the set of six large vertical-format landscapes (1665; de v–m 832–7) consisting of four animated and topographically accurate views of Rome and two of the Campagna.
2. Technique.
Della Bella’s drawings are readily recognizable. Over delicate preliminary sketches in black chalk he worked in a more finished manner, using a finely sharpened quill-pen and his own very light brown, or golden, ink, to which he often added a light grey or brown wash. Occasionally, as in the costume drawings in the British Museum and the illustrations for a treatise on fireworks (Paris, Bib. N.), he used pale coloured washes. His sketchbook pages, in black chalk, light brown ink and sometimes wash, demonstrate his interest in rapidly recorded on-the-spot observations. They provided him with subjects and also with technical inspiration for his etchings. Over the years he tried to approximate the style of his drawings in his etchings, constantly inventing ways to avoid the mechanical techniques of the reproductive printmaker: for example instead of mechanical crosshatching, he used either parallel strokes of shading that conformed to the rounded contours of figures and animals or minute and varied strokes that reproduced the texture of leaves, hair, animal fur and feathers. His unique series of Hunting Scenes (1654; de v–m 732–40) is remarkable for the lifelike rendering of fur and feather textures on animals seen in motion against dense foliage backgrounds. The artist avoided hard outlines, using tiny hair-like strokes protruding beyond the animal or bird contours to define their body shapes. Numerous preparatory drawings for this set exist (e.g. Florence, Uffizi; New York, Pierpont Morgan Lib.). In della Bella’s last years, his attempts to imitate his drawing style in etching led him to experiment with a technique of brushing dilute acid directly on to the plate to produce an effect resembling the later invention of aquatint. Unfortunately, such experimentally treated plates could produce very few fine impressions.
Phyllis Dearborn Massar. "Bella, Stefano della." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T007589 (accessed March 22, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
Flemish, 1575 - 1632
