Artwork story
About A fisherman leaning against a large tree, a woman walking next to a horse in the background, from "Four large landscapes" (Quatre grands paysages en hauteur)
The artist and artwork
Stefano della Bella etched A fisherman leaning against a large tree, a woman walking next to a horse in the background around 1652–57 as one of Four Large Landscapes. The Florentine artist trained first in a goldsmith's shop and became an exceptionally prolific draftsman and printmaker. He drew outdoors in sketchbooks, then used etching's direct, flexible line to translate observation into repeatable images. Here, hundreds of short strokes distinguish rough bark, feathery leaves, rock, reeds, water, clouds, distant mountains, and open sky.
The world around it
Della Bella's career moved among Medici Florence, Rome, and Paris. He witnessed court festivals, military events during the Thirty Years' War, expanding Baroque Rome, and Paris's emergence as a political and artistic capital. This print dates shortly after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and after his return from France, when city buyers collected his etchings in the way later audiences bought illustrated magazines or postcards. His landscapes could mix careful observation with invented terrain, offering an urban market an animated vision of country life rather than a surveyed place.
A detail to notice
The title names people, but the tree takes command. Its broad trunk rises from the lower center, forks repeatedly, and spreads across almost the entire upper half of the vertical sheet. The fisherman becomes a small bent figure at its base, while the woman and horse nearly disappear on a distant road at right. A building perches above them; pale mountains open at left, and fine horizontal lines make the sky feel immense. Even the broken, hollowed side of the trunk matters: della Bella turns age and damage into the dark hinge connecting foreground rocks to the airy crown.
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: 10 3/8 x 7 1/2 in. (26.3 x 19 cm).
Subject terms include Men, Women, Horses, Landscapes, and Trees. 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
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