Rebus about Love

Cartouche containing rebus in Italian on the subject of love; oval cartouche with the head of a sphinx below at center, the rebus written on a large drapery and with pictorial figures and symbols (including Cupid, a ruin, a glove and the sun) in place of some words.

Etching, circa 1639, signed within image with monogram "SDB".

Enigmatic and suggestive subject matter perhaps to be used, applied to cardboard and attached to a wooden or ivory handle, to decorate a fan.

The rebus is a game that, by alternating figures and letters, invites one to decipher a solving sentence. By its nature, the rebus is related to the idea that words are also-or at least can be represented through-things (hence the name rebus, ablative of res). Before modern vignettes, the game was declined in linear form: figures and letters follow one another on the line of writing and must be spelled out in succession to arrive at the solving sentence. This happens in Leonardo da Vinci's figurative figures, also close to the genre of the feat; in Giovan Battista Palatino's figurative sonnet (Libro nuovo d'imparare a scrivere, 1540); in the seventeenth-century fans of Della Bella and Giuseppe Maria Mitelli.

Favorite themes include songs, love stories, occasional sonnets and, as in the case of Della Bella and Mitelli, also proverbs and idioms represented in rebus form, with alternating letters and figures.

Solution of the rebus: Ove è Amor è fedeltà/Amor solicito è segreto/Dove è Amore è gelosia/Amore è cieco e vede di lontano/Amore passa il guanto e l'acqua li stivali/Amor Amore, tu sei la mia rovina [Where is Amor is fidelity/Amor solicito is secret/Where is Love is jealousy/Love is blind and sees from afar/Love passes the glove and water them boots/Amor Love, thou art my ruin].

Stefano della Bella was one of the most interesting and original engravers in 17th-century Florence and can be considered the only brilliant continuator of Jacques Callot's work. His artistic education began in Florence in the workshop of the goldsmiths Gasparo Mola and Orazio Vanni, and the precision of sign, typical of the goldsmith's art, will remain characteristic of his style. He then studied under Giovanni Battista Vanni and perhaps also under Cantagallina and Cesare Dandini, but soon turned to engraving. His real master can be considered Jacques Callot, the French engraver who stayed in Florence for a long time and left a strong imprint on the city's artistic scene.

The most important years of his career were the ones he spent in Paris, from 1639 to 1650, salaried by Lorenzo de' Medici: he worked together with Israel Silvestre, with the publishers Langlois, Ciartres and Pierre Mariette, for French printers and for commissions of great prestige, such as those of 1641 for Cardinal Richelieu, who entrusted him with illustrations of his warlike exploits.

Around 1647, during a trip to Holland, where he executed etchings with views of the port of Amsterdam, he met Rembrandt, and from that date we note a profound echo of the Dutchman's art in Della Bella's graphic work.

A very good impression, printed with tone on laid paper, with margins, perfect condition.

Bibliografia

Alexandre de Vesme, Phyllis D. Massar Stefano della Bella. Catalogue Raisonné. New York, 1971, cat. no. 111.688.