Della Bella, Stefano

Stefano della Bella, one of the great etchers of the early modern era, here captures a scene from contemporary urban life. The Campo Vaccino (Cow’s Pasture), the site of a weekly cattle market, bustles with activity in the centre of seventeenth-century Rome. Only in the nineteenth century would the area be fully excavated to reveal the Roman Forum. Della Bella’s precise control of the etched line allows him to convey great spatial depth, and the vast pasture is populated with numerous figures to suggest a thriving domestic economy.