Carlo Dolci

Template:Short description Template:Infobox artist Carlo (or Carlino) Dolci (25 May 1616 – 17 January 1686) was an Italian Baroque painter, active mainly in Florence, known for highly finished religious pictures, often repeated in many versions.

Biography

He was born in Florence, on his mother's side the grandson of a painter. He was precocious and apprenticed at a young age to Jacopo Vignali, and when only eleven years of age he attempted a whole figure of St John, and a head of the infant Christ, which received some approbation.Template:Sfn However Dolci was not prolific. "He would take weeks over a single foot", according to his biographer Baldinucci.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His painstaking technique made him unsuited for large-scale fresco painting. He painted chiefly sacred subjects, and his works are generally small in scale, although he made a few life-size pictures. He often repeated the same composition in several versions, and his daughter, Agnese Dolci, also made copies of his works.

After attempting the whole figure of St John, and the head of the infant Christ, he painted a portrait of his mother, displaying a new and delicate style which brought him into notice. This procured him extensive employment at Florence (from which city he hardly ever moved) and in other parts of Italy.Template:Sfn

Dolci was known for his piety. It is said that every year during Passion Week he painted a half-figure of the Savior wearing the Crown of Thorns.Template:Sfn In 1682, when he saw Giordano, nicknamed "fa presto" (quick worker), paint more in five hours than he could have completed in months, he fell into a depression.<ref>Web Gallery of Art biography</ref>

Dolci's daughter, Agnese (died circa 1680), was also a painter.<ref>Dizionario biografico universal, By Gottardo Garollo, 1907, page 692.</ref> Dolci died in Florence in 1686.

Works

File:Dolci Saint Paul the hermit.jpg

Saint Paul the Hermit, before 1648, National Museum in Warsaw.

The grand manner, vigorous coloration or luminosity, and dynamic emotion of the Bolognese-Roman Baroque are foreign to Dolci and to Baroque Florence. While he fits into a long tradition of prestigious official Florentine painting, Dolci appears constitutionally blind to the new aesthetic, shackled by the Florentine tradition that holds each drawn figure under a microscope of academicism. Wittkower describes him as the Florentine counterpart, in terms of devotional imagery, of the Roman Sassoferrato.<ref>Wittkower, p. 345.</ref> Pilkington declared his touch "inexpressibly neat ... though he has often been censured for the excessive labour bestowed on his pictures, and for giving his carnations more of the appearance of ivory than the look of flesh",<ref>A general dictionary of painters, Volume 1, by Matthew Pilkington, page 268.</ref>Template:Sfn a flaw that had been already apparent in Agnolo Bronzino.

Among his best works are a St Sebastian; the Four Evangelists at Florence; Christ Breaking the Bread;<ref>Subsequently at Burleigh</ref> the St Cecilia at the Organ;<ref>in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie.</ref> an Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery, London; the St Catherine Reading<ref>in the Residenzgalerie, Salzburg.</ref> and St Andrew praying before his Crucifixion (1646) in the Palazzo Pitti.Template:Sfn He completed his portrait of Fra Ainolfo de' Bardi, when he was only sixteen. He also painted a large altarpiece (1656) for the church of Sant' Andrea Cennano in Montevarchi. As was typical for Florentine painters, this was a painting about painting, and in it the Virgin of Soriano holds a miraculous and iconic painting of St Dominic.<ref>Charles McCorquodale, "Some Unpublished Works by Carlo Dolci" The Burlington Magazine (1979) pages 140, 142-147, 149-150.</ref>

Gallery

• "Mary Magdalene" by Carlo Dolci.jpg

  Magdalen

• Dolci Santa Cecilia.jpg

  Saint Cecilia

• Dolci San Simone.JPG

  San Simone

• Carlo Dolci 004.jpg

  Saint with golden heart

• Dolci David con la testa di Golia.jpg

  David with Head of Goliath

• Dolci San Matteo.PNG

  St Matthew

• Saint Philippe Benizzi (Dolci Carlo 1616-1686).jpg

  St Philip Benizzi

• Carlo Dolci - Diogenes.jpg

  Diogenes

• Carlo Dolci - Moses - WGA6379.jpg

  Moses

• Carlo Dolci Salome Head of St John the Baptist.jpg

  Salome and Head of St. John the Baptist

• Carlo Dolci - Vase of Flowers - WGA6374.jpg

  Still-life Flowers

• Dolci Santa Caterina da Siena.JPG

  St Catherine of Siena

• Carlo Dolci Mater dolorosa.jpg

  Mater Dolorosa

• Dolci Annunciation.jpg

  Annunciation

• Dolci Vergine annunciata.jpg

  Annuciation Virgin

• Dolci Angelo annunciante.jpg

  Annuciation Angel

• Carlo Dolci 006.jpg

  Madonna and Child

• Dolci Madonna col Bambino2.PNG

  Madonna and Child

• Dolci Gesù fiori.jpg

  Jesus with flowers (1663)

• Carlo Dolci - The Guardian Angel - WGA06375.jpg

  Guardian Angel

• Dolci Crocifissione Andrea.jpg

  Cruxifixion of St. Andrew

• Dolci Visione di San Luigi.jpg

  Vision of St Louis (1675)

• Carlo Dolci - The Holy Family with God the Father and the Holy Spirit - WGA06376.jpg

  The Holy Family with God the Father and the Holy Spirit

• Dolci Claudia Felicita.jpg

  Claudia Felicitas of Austria

• Dolci Teresa Bucherelli.jpg

  Teresa Bucherelli

• Carlo Dolci - Portrait of Vittoria della Rovere in Widow's Weeds - WGA6382.jpg

  Vittoria della Rovere as Widow

• Carlo Dolci 008.jpg

  Mattias de' Medici (1635)

• Dolci Ainolfo de Bardi.jpg

  Ainolfo de Bardi

• Dolci Stefano Della Bella (lighter).jpg

  Stefano della Bella

• Dolci Sir Thomas Baines.JPG

  Sir Thomas Baines

References

• Template:Cite book

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External links

• Template:Cite CE1913
• Template:Ws, engraved by William Ensom for The Easter Gift, 1832 with a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.
• Template:Ws, engraved by S. Sangster for The Easter Gift, 1832 with a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.
• Template:Ws, engraved by S. Sangster for The Easter Gift, 1832 with a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.