Stefano della Bella (1610-1664) in Rome and Paris: workshop practice, networks, war motifs and the depiction of people from the Ottoman Empire during the second third of the 17th century.

• Applicant: Dr. Stefan Morét
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 558157320

The draughtsman and etcher Stefano della Bella spent long periods of his life in Rome (1633-1637) and in Paris (1639-1650), where the majority of his prints were created. The aim of the project is a double one: In the first part, both periods will be analysed with regard to their significance as sources of inspiration and motif storage for della Bella's pictorial production, and the artist's networks in both places will be reconstructed. To this end, the drawings and etchings produced in Rome and Paris and held in European museum collections will be compiled and placed in chronological order. This corpus will then be used to analyse Della Bella's specific workshop practice. This concerns, for example, the complex question of the transfer from the drawing to the printing plate, the path from the first sketch to the finished etching, della Bella's use of his extensive archive of drawings or a technical experiment in the field of brush etching around 100 years before the invention of the aquatint. Building on these findings, the focus will be on two hitherto little-researched yet highly important thematic complexes in della Bella's work, namely his specific way of depicting military themes and those of people from the Ottoman Empire. Both subject areas in della Bella's work were developed during his stays in Rome and Paris. No other artist in printmaking in the first half of the 17th century devoted himself to them with similar intensity. Both parts of the project applied for here - workshop practice and networks in Rome and Paris as well as military depictions and depictions of people from the Ottoman Empire - will close research gaps. As a result, a much more differentiated assessment of the artist can be expected.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants