Master Art

As a designer of ornament, Stefano della Bella was a creative and highly original artist whose work anticipates the Rococo manner of the 18th century. Indeed, many of his ornamental prints, such as the series of designs for vases published in Paris around 1646 as the Raccolta di vasi diversi, can be seen to have directly influenced the later work of artists and designers such as Juste-Aurèle Meissonier, Gilles-Paul Cauvet, Mauro Tesi, Johan Paul Schor, and Gilles Marie Oppenord.

This drawing may be compared stylistically to an ornamental drawing by Della Bella of A Saltcellar in the Form of a Mermaid Holding a Shell in a private collection in Chicago, or a design for a garland in the Louvre. Similar drawings for table ornaments by the artist are in the Louvre, the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, the Uffizi, and elsewhere. Such fanciful designs may have been intended for decorative objects commissioned by the Medici.