STEFANO DELLA BELLA (1610-1664)
Circa 1650
Italy
Pen and ink
2 3/4″ x 2 3/8″

PROVENANCE
Kinnaird Castle
Richard and Trude Krautheimer (bears their collector’s mark on the verso)

A small Stefano Della Bella pen and ink figural study, with an architectural sketch in black chalk on verso.

This vivacious study of a man in motion is drawn with a thrilling economy of line and seems to capture a fleeting moment encountered by an artist who famously carried his notebook with him everywhere. The gestural quality of the pen indicates that it was made during Della Bella’s Paris years when, as J. Byam Shaw put it, his drawing style had made “a striking advance to a brilliantly free penmanship” [Burlington Mag. Oct. 1955].