Old Master Drawings

Stefano della Bella

Three camels and their driver, a pyramid in the distance

Auction Closed

January 27, 05:29 PM GMT

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Stefano della Bella

Florence 1610 - 1664

Three camels and their driver, a pyramid in the distance

Pen and brown ink over black chalk, within pen and brown ink framing lines

93 by 143 mm; 3 ⅝ by 5 ⅝ in

Bears collector's mark, possibly that of the Comte de Caylus (L.474);
sale, London, Christie's 20 June 1822, lot 43 (according to a note on the verso of the mount);
Professor Iohan Quirijn van Regteren Altena (1899-1980), Amsterdam,
by whose heirs sold, London, Sotheby's, 5 July 2006, lot 32

Review of 1970 Amsterdam exhibition, in Master Drawings, IX, 1971, p. 65

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Italiaanse Tekeningen, 1970, cat. no. 110, reproduced p. 86, fig. 73

This very charming drawing is not directly related to any print by Della Bella, although two are similar (de Vesme 706 and 707). Phyllis Massar writes that Stefano would have seen camels in Rome when he drew the retinue of the Polish Ambassador, but that he might also have encountered them in Florence where apparently Duke Ferdinand II had tried to establish them as beasts of burden in Tuscany. Two prints of heads of camels are also known, de Vesme 726 and 727.¹

1. P.D. Massar, Presenting Stefano della Bella, New York 1971, pp. 107 and 133