the Hermitage. Two further landscapes were auctioned at Dorotheum on 20 October 2015 as lot 279. These latter works are executed in a painterly technique, reminiscent of the 'picturesque' style of late 16th-century artists Titian and Jacopo Bassano. The two compositions likely do not depict a particular story, but are rather an evocation of a romanticised wild countryside, frequented by intrepid warriors wearing fantastic costumes. Della Vecchia maintained close links with the members of the Accademia degli Incogniti. Their philosophical occupations were reflected in the iconography of some of his paintings of the 1650s and 1660s. In some works he treated the mathematical, philosophical and cabalistic ideas in a serious manner and in others he ridiculed them through salacious images. For example in the Allegory of architecture (1654, Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti di Bergamo), which depicts a half-naked woman crouched over a book on a ledge with an old man and another half-naked woman seeming to beseech her, he gives expression to some of those ideas. Further reading B. Aikema; Pietro Della Vecchia and the Heritage of the Renaissance in Venice, Florence, 1984 Notes External links 17th-century Italian painters Italian male painters Painters from Venice Italian Baroque painters People from the Province of Vicenza 1603 births 1678 deaths