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Carlo Dolci

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Carlo Dolci
Self-Portrait (1674), Uffizi, Florence
Self-Portrait (1674), Uffizi, Florence
Born May 25, 1616
Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Died January 17, 1686 (aged 69)
Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Resting place Santissima Annunziata, Florence
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.[1] Dolci was not prolific; "He would take weeks over a single foot", according to his biographer Baldinucci.[2] 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.[1]

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.[1] 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.[3]

Dolci's daughter, Agnese (died circa 1680), was also a well-known painter.[4] 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.[5][6] 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.[7]

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.[8] 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",[9][1] 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;[10] the St Cecilia at the Organ;[11] an Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery, London; the St Catherine Reading[12] and St Andrew praying before his Crucifixion (1646) in the Palazzo Pitti.[1] 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.[13]

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Carlo Dolci — Painter, born in Florence, Italy, 25 May, 1616; died 17 January, 1686. The grandson of a painter, he seems to have inherited a talent for art. He studied under J. Vignali, and when only eleven years old he attracted attention by the excellence of his work, notably a figure of St. John and a head of the Infant Jesus. The precocious youth made a carefully-finished picture of his mother, and thereafter was kept busy filling the numerous commissions he received in Florence, a city he seldom left during his long life, which he devoted to art. Dolci was one of the few masters whose pictures were eagerly sought for by his countrymen during his lifetime. He was very pious and painted religious works exclusively. It is recorded that in every Passion week he painted a picture of the Saviour. He limited his brush to heads -- usually of Christ and the Virgin -- and seldom undertook a large-sized canvas. He is celebrated for the soft, gentle, and tender expression of his faces, the transparency of his colour, the excellent management of chiaroscuro, and the careful and ivory-like finish of his pictures. The simplicity and tranquillity on the faces of his paintings of Christ and the Virgin seem little short of inspired. Hinds calls him mawkish and affected; but Dolci was the last of the Florentine School, the last real "master of the Renaissance"; and as decadent sweetness permeated all Italian art, his pictures but reflected the dominant character of the close of the seventeenth century. Patient and slow, he painted pictures that are perfectly finished in every detail. His masterpiece (1646) is "St. Andrew praying before his Crucifixion" (Pitti Gallery, Florence). It is one of the few works where his figures, always well drawn and standing out in beautiful relief, are life-size. Next in excellence to this is the "St. John writing his Gospel" (Berlin). His "Mater Dolorosa" called "Madonna del Dito" (of the thumb) is known throughout the civilized world because of its many reproductions. In 1662 Dolci saw with chagrin Giordano accomplish in a few hours what would have taken him weeks, and it is said he was thereupon seized with melancholy, which ultimately led to his death. Loma, Mancini, Mariani, and Agnese Dolci (his daughter) were a few of his pupils and imitators. Contemporary copyists have filled European collections with spurious Dolcis. Angese Dolci, who died the same year as her father, not only made marvellous copies of the master's pictures, but was herself an excellent painter. Her "Consecration of the Bread and Wine" is in the Louvre. Other works by him are: "Virgin and Child", National Gallery, London; "The Saviour seated with Saints", Florence; "Madonna and Child", Borghese Gallery, Rome.

References

  1. Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 Back to citation occurrence 1.2 Back to citation occurrence 1.3 Back to citation occurrence 1.4 Rossetti 1911.
  2. Back to citation "Getty Museum biography". Archived from the original on 2006-09-19. Retrieved 2006-11-10.
  3. Back to citation Web Gallery of Art biography
  4. Back to citation Garollo, Gottardo (1907). Dizionario biografico universale. Vol. 1. Milan: Hoepli. p. 692.
  5. Back to citation Shaw Sparrow, Walter (1905). Women painters of the world, from the time of Caterina Vigri, 1413-1463, to Rosa Bonheur and the present day. London: The Art and Life Library, Hodder & Stoughton.
  6. Back to citation Jeanna Bauck as a "German painter" at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and Exposition
  7. Back to citation Guerrieri Borsoi 1991.
  8. Back to citation Wittkower 1993, p. 345.
  9. Back to citation Pilkington, Matthew. A general dictionary of painters. Vol. 1. London: T. M'Lean. p. 268.
  10. Back to citation Subsequently at Burleigh
  11. Back to citation In the Dresden Gemäldegalerie.
  12. Back to citation In the Residenzgalerie, Salzburg.
  13. Back to citation McCorquodale 1979, pp. 140, 142–147, 149–150.

Bibliography

  • 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.

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