Carlo Dolci

Carlo Dolci
File:Carlo Dolci 002.jpg Self-Portrait (1674)
Born	(1616-05-25)May 25, 1616 Florence
Died	Florence
Nationality	Italian
Known for	Painting
Movement	Baroque

Carlo (or Carlino) Dolci (25 May 1616 – 17 January 1686) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, 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 VignaliVignali, 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. However 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 excellent copies of his works.

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. He afterwards painted a portrait of his mother, and displayed a new and delicate style which brought him into notice, and 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 painter. 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. 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

• "Mary Magdalene" by Carlo Dolci.jpg

  Magdalen
• Dolci Santa Cecilia.jpg

  Saint Cecilia
• Dolci Cecilia organo.jpg

  Saint Cecilia
• Dolci San Simone.JPG

  San Simone
• Śviaty Kazimier. Сьвяты Казімер (C. Dolci, XVII).jpg

  St Casimir
• 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
• 

  Mater Dolorosa
• 

  Madonna
• 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
• 

  Cruxifixion of St. Andrew
• Dolci Visione di San Luigi.jpg

  Vision of St Luigi (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
• Erzherzogin Claudia Felicitas.jpg

  Claudia Felicitas of Austria
• Dolci Claudia Felicita.jpg

  Claudia Felicitas of Austria
• Dolci Teresa Bucherelli.jpg

  Teresa Bucherelli
• Carlo Dolci 007.jpg

  Vittoria della Rovere
• 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

Footnotes

Media related to Carlo Dolci at Wikimedia Commons

References

Attribution:

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 

External links

•  
• 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.