Carlo Dolci

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Carlo Dolci (self portrait, 1674).
Carlo Dolci (self portrait, 1674).

Carlo (or Carlino) Dolci (25 May 1616 – 17 January 1686) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Florence.

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[edit] Biography

He was born in Florence, on his mother's side the grandson of a painter. Although he was precocious and apprenticed at a young age to Jacopo Vignali, Dolci was not prolific. "He would take weeks over a single foot", according to his biographer Baldinucci.[1] 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 excellent copies of his works.

Dolci was known for his piety. It is said that every year during Passion week he painted a half-figure of the Saviour wearing the Crown of Thorns. 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.[2] He died in Florence in 1686.

[edit] Works

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.[3] 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",[citation needed] a flaw that had been already apparent in Agnolo Bronzino.

His major works depict sacred themes. There is a want of character in his pictures, and his grouping lacks harmony, but the general tone accords with the idea of the passion portrayed. His protagonists are often highly emotive.

Among the best works of this master are St Sebastian; the Four Evangelists at Florence; Christ Breaking the Bread[4]; the St Cecilia[5]; an Adoration of the Magi; and a masterpiece is his St Andrew praying before his Crucifixion (1646) in the Pitti gallery. 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.[6]

Stolen Madonna of the Veil Dolci work stolen in 1976, never recovered.
Stolen Madonna of the Veil Dolci work stolen in 1976, never recovered.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Getty Museum biography
  2. ^ Web Gallery of Art biography
  3. ^ Wittkower, p.345
  4. ^ Subsequently held at Burleigh
  5. ^ Held in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie.
  6. ^ Some Unpublished Works by Carlo Dolci, by Charles McCorquodale. The Burlington Magazine (1979) pages 140,142-147,149-150.

[edit] References

  • Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750. Penguin Books, Pelican History of Art, p. 345-346. 


This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.