Artwork story
About A shepherd on horseback in the middle of a stream, dogs, goats and cows follow, a large tree to left and mountains to right in the background, from "Four large landscapes" (Quatre grands paysages en hauteur)
The artist and artwork
Stefano della Bella made A shepherd on horseback in the middle of a stream around 1652–57 for his Four Large Landscapes. The Florentine draftsman and etcher built the vertical sheet from many kinds of line: tight curls mass the foliage, parallel hatching opens the sky, broken strokes roughen the mountains, and short horizontal marks turn blank paper into shallow water. Etching suited an artist who drew continually from life because its needle could move through a coated plate with much of a pen's freedom.
The world around it
These were the artist's mature years after extended work in Rome and Paris and his return to Medici Florence. Della Bella had recorded court spectacle, soldiers, cities, travelers, animals, and the upheavals of the Thirty Years' War; after the Peace of Westphalia, his rural prints offered a quieter world to a broad collecting public. Seventeenth-century city dwellers bought his prolific etchings in large numbers. The scene is not identified as a specific valley, and its convincing details may combine outdoor observation with the ideal countryside that European print buyers expected.
A detail to notice
The crossing happens in the lowest quarter of a sheet dominated by air. A barefoot shepherd slumps diagonally across a small horse as it lowers its muzzle to drink. Dogs search the bank, goats climb behind the tree, and cattle follow through the stream at right; their staggered bodies make a route from the dark foreground into the valley. Above them, a great canopy presses in from the left while the right side opens into sunlit mountains and an enormous sky. The animals do more than decorate the landscape: their slow procession teaches the eye how to travel through it.
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 1/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.5 x 18.5 cm).
Subject terms include Animals, Men, Horses, Trees, and Shepherds. 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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