Portrait of Stefano della Bella

An inscription on the old stretcher says the painter was fifteen when he made this. The date is 1631, Dolci was born in 1616, and this is the earliest picture by him anyone has been able to find, a year ahead of the portrait of Fra Ainolfo de' Bardi now in the Uffizi. The sitter was barely older. Stefano della Bella was 21, a Florentine trained in a goldsmith's workshop who drew constantly and had not yet made his name. An inventory taken at the Medici villa of La Petraia in 1649 already describes him here dressed in the Spanish fashion, which is what the picture shows, a deep ruff above a dark doublet worked with gold. Two years after he sat for this, a Medici stipend sent him to Rome, and from there he went to Paris for a decade and came back as one of the finest etchers in Europe. He left behind more than a thousand prints and, as far as anyone knows, one painting of his own.