Death on the Battlefield

Pathos and obvious expressivity makes this etching della Bella’s „most Baroque“ artwork. He did it during his sojourn in France, as suggested by the royal privilege and a poem in French describing the battlefield as the most beautiful walk of Death, which changes fertile fields into a river of blood. Death, a central figure, rides on horseback into the battle raging in the background of the scene, where more skeletons are depicted killing footmen, cavalrymen and even women. Stefano della Bella had seen the horrors of war with his own eyes. Cardinal Richelieu commissioned him to prepare a graphic documentation of the siege of Arras in 1640.