Rébus on the subject of love, a riddle depicted on drapery, below a landscape with a pyramid and two obelisks, a bust of a sphinx at bottom, an oval composition

ca. 1639

Dating: Approximate date range
Held at: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Medium: Etching
Dimensions: Sheet (trimmed to plate): 11 7/16 × 8 1/4 in. (29.1 × 20.9 cm)
Collection no.: 68.742.2
Attribution: By the artist
Image rights: CC0 1.0License details

Stefano Della Bella. Rébus on the subject of love, a riddle depicted on drapery, below a landscape with a pyramid and two obelisks, a bust of a sphinx at bottom, an oval composition. Stefano Della Bella; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951, by exchange. CC0 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). Full-frame proportional resize and JPEG compression.

Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

About this artwork

Rébus on the subject of love, a riddle depicted on drapery, below a landscape with a pyramid and two obelisks, a bust of a sphinx at bottom, an oval composition — Stefano Della Bella. ca. 1639.

Medium: Etching. Dimensions: Sheet (trimmed to plate): 11 7/16 × 8 1/4 in. (29.1 × 20.9 cm).

Collection record: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

Credit line: The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951, by exchange.

This is a museum catalogue record, not a current-display assertion.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.

Location checked Sep 10, 2026. This does not indicate whether the work is on display.

Artwork sources

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