The Capture of a Swarm of Bees in a Farmyard
1578/1605
Medium
Pen and brown ink and blue watercolor, with opaque white watercolor, over black chalk, on cream laid paper, incised with a stylus for transfer, laid down on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Primary support: 19.6 × 28 cm (7 3/4 × 11 1/16 in.); Secondary support: 21 × 29.1 cm (8 5/16 × 11 1/2 in.)
Classification
pen and ink drawings
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
159874
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Primarily active in the court of Florence and patronized by the Medici, Johannes Stradanus designed tapestries depicting hunting, agriculture, and animal husbandry. Stradanus’s familiarity with these subjects is underscored in The Capture of a Swarm of Bees, in which he used remarkable precision to describe the removal of a beehive in the central foreground. His mastery of detail is especially evident in the protective headgear and clothing of the figures. A print based on this sheet forms part ...