Carlo Dolci

Carlo Dolci
Self-Portrait (1674), Uffizi, Florence
Born	(1616-05-25)May 25, 1616 Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Died	January 17, 1686(1686-01-17) (aged 69) Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Resting place	Santissima Annunziata, Florence
Nationality	Italian
Education	Jacopo Vignali
Known for	Painting
Movement	Baroque
Spouse	Teresa Bucherelli ​ (m. 1654)​
Children	Agnese Dolci

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. Dolci was not prolific; "He would take weeks over a single foot", according to his biographer Baldinucci. 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.

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. 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.

Dolci's daughter, Agnese (died circa 1680), was also a well-known painter. Two of her paintings, Jesus took bread and blessed it and Maria and Child, were included in the 1905 book Women Painters of the World. Her "Consecration of the Bread and Wine" is in the Louvre. Dolci died in Florence in 1686. He was buried in his family tomb in the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

Works

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. 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", 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; the St Cecilia at the Organ; an Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery, London; the St Catherine Reading and St Andrew praying before his Crucifixion (1646) in the Palazzo Pitti. 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.

Gallery

• 
  Madonna and Child
• 
  Saint Christina of Bolsena
• 
  Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist
• 
  Allegory of Sincerity
• 
  David with Head of Goliath
• 
  St Matthew
• 
  Madonna in Glory
• 
  The Penitent Magdalen
• 
  Salome and Head of St. John the Baptist
• 
  The Adoration of the Kings
• 
  St Catherine of Siena
• 
  Mater Dolorosa
• 
  The Trinity in Glory
• 
  Annuciation Angel
• 
  The Penitent Magdalene
• 
  Charity
• 
  The Virgin and Child with Flowers
• 
  Jesus with flowers (1663)
• 
  Still life With Flowers
• 
  Cruxifixion of St. Andrew
• 
  Self portrait
• 
  Portrait of the Artist's Daughter
• 
  Vittoria della Rovere
• 
  Claudia Felicitas of Austria
• 
  Mattias de' Medici (1635)
• 
  Ainolfo de Bardi
• 
  Stefano della Bella
• 
  Sir Thomas Baines

References

• Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750. Penguin Books, Pelican History of Art. pp. 345–46.
• Guerrieri Borsoi, Maria Barbara (1991). "DOLCI, Carlo". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Vol. 40: Di Fausto–Donadoni. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-88-12-00032-6.
• McCorquodale, Charles (1979). "Some Unpublished Works by Carlo Dolci". The Burlington Magazine. 121 (912): 140, 142–147, 149–150. JSTOR 879503.

Attribution:

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rossetti, William Michael (1911). "Dolci, Carlo". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 386.

External links

• Hunt, Leigh Harrison (1909). "Carlo Dolci" . Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 5.
• Christ Blessing the Bread., engraved by William Ensom for The Easter Gift, 1832 with a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.
• The Magdalen., engraved by S. Sangster for The Easter Gift, 1832 with a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.
• Infant Christ with Flowers., engraved by S. Sangster for The Easter Gift, 1832 with a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.