Artwork story
About Plate 6: cows crossing a valley to left, a group of trees to left, a horseman and other cows in the background, from "Roman landscapes and ruins" (Paysages et ruines de Rome)
The artist and artwork
Stefano della Bella made this small etching around 1643–48 as plate 6 of Roman Landscapes and Ruins. The Florentine artist filled sketchbooks with Roman countryside and antiquities while in Italy, then developed the thirteen-print series after moving to Paris. Here a herd crosses a low valley beneath a dense grove, with a mounted figure and more cattle receding toward the center. Etching suited della Bella's quick line: dark foliage dissolves into individual strokes, while tiny marks distinguish backs, horns, legs, and the distant rider.
The world around it
The print belongs to the closing years of the Thirty Years' War, when military conflict continued even as negotiations moved from 1643 toward the settlements of 1648. Della Bella's career connected Florence, Rome, and Paris through courts and publishers, showing how images could travel through an unsettled Europe. The Met explains that this Roman series combined accurate monuments with imagined countryside and ordinary life. Small, repeatable prints offered collectors a portable encounter with Italy when actual travel remained costly and vulnerable to conflict. This impression was issued by Paris publisher Pierre Mariette le fils.
A detail to notice
The cattle do not simply occupy the landscape; their movement explains its depth. The nearest animals form a pale procession from the dark trees at left toward the center. Behind them, the horseman and second herd shrink rapidly, turning a few inches of paper into a long crossing. Della Bella balances that horizontal movement against two very different trees: a packed wall of foliage on the left and a single twisting trunk reaching into the empty sky on the right. Rather than ending at a grand Roman monument, the route leads a nearly hidden rider after livestock through an invented valley. Plate number 6 in the upper-right corner reminds us that this pastoral world is one episode in a larger journey.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is print made in Etching and held in the Drawings and Prints department.
Recorded dimensions include Sheet: 5 1/4 x 5 3/8 in. (13.4 x 13.7 cm).
Subject terms include Cows, Horses, and Forests. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Bequest of Phyllis Massar, 2011.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
See the products currently available with this artwork. Product choices appear only when the exact item is published, in stock, and available to purchase.
