| Much maligned yet justly famous for his creation of highly polished, richly detailed, and excessively sentimental religious subjects, Carlo Dolci remains something of a paradox. To many, he epitomizes seventeenth-century Italy's intense, exaggerated, and sometimes insincere religious sentiment, yet others contend that he was equally out of step in his own day when most artists working for private patrons painted primarily secular subjects or treated religious subjects less sentimentally. He also deserves recognition as the Florentine exemplar of the idealized "French" manner that gained ascendency in Europe during the second half of the seventeenth century. A pupil of Jacopo Vignali, Dolci lived and worked in Florence his entire life, with the exception of one trip to Innsbruck in 1672 to paint the portrait of Claudia Felicita on the occasion of her marriage to Leopold I. He was, nonetheless, famous throughout Italy. His biographer, Baldinucci, described Dolci as a child prodigy who by age eleven in 1627 had already come to the attention of the Medici and other nobles. Intensely religious, Dolci practiced his devotions under the guidance of the Benedictines, who also became his patrons. When he joined the Accademia del Disegno in 1648, he, significantly enough, painted a portrait of his equally pious predecessor, Fra Angelico. Upon his marriage in 1654, Dolci reportedly had to be dragged away from his devotions to begin his honeymoon. He inscribed the backs of many of his pictures with religious hieroglyphs referring to Saints' days and years, to indicate the commencement or conclusion of a work. To some, he was the perfect exemplar of Cristinus pictor who during Holy Week concentrated only on scenes of Christ's passion. Dolci*s earliest surviving works are portraits. They support Baldinucci's story that Dolci had demonstrated such precocity as a portrait artist in his youth that Pietro de' Medici commissioned a double portrait of himself and his friend Antonio Landini, a musician. Dolci's painting of a young man from the Casa Bardi (dated 1631, Florence, Palazzo Pitti) is our earliest surviving dated portrait, followed by his masterpiece: Portrait ofFra Ainotfo de' Bardi (dated 1632, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi), painted when Dolci was sixteen years old. Already in command of his medium, with a fresh and observant eye and a good sense for composition and color, Dolci turned from away from portraiture to specialize in religious subjects by the 1640s. Baldinucci would have us believe the shift came from Dolci's own piety, but perhaps a disinclination to compete with Sustermans,* the official portrait painter in the Medici court, reinforced his specialization. Many of Dolci's religious subjects were largely the result of the patronage of "the unfortunate taste of that silly woman, the Grand Duchess Vittoria," to quote the eminent scholar, Sir Ellis Waterhouse. Silly or not, she and her son, Cosimo III, supported the production of some of the most exquisite images of the entire period. Dolci's early religious subjects include the Madonna of the Lilies (dated 1642, MontpelHer, Muste Fabrc) and Andrew Adoring the Cross (dated 1643, Great Britain, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery). Both reveal his careful study of Quattrocento models, as well as the work of Sustermans, Rosselli,* and Lorenzo Lippi. The clear, isolated, nearly frozen action and the pragmatic realism, are reminiscent of Quattrocento painting, while the intense facial expressions show Dolci's awareness of his contemporaries. During the 1650s Dolci's oeuvre expanded to include numerous allegorical and devotional half-length figures. The best known of these are the depictions of Poetry, Freedom or Patience, and Mope, which are documented with payment records from 1648/9 to 1653 and are today in the Corsini gallery, Rorence. One of his largest paintings, Christ in the House of Simon (Corsham Court, Collection Lord Methuen), was also painted sometime after 1649. Generally speaking, Dolci's style in the 1650s moved toward an increased hardness; the lighting tends to become more mysterious and the landscape sometimes nightmarish (as is demonstrated by the example of The Repentant Magdalen in the Desert, probably painted in the 1650s, Schleissheim, Neues Schloss und Staatsgalerie Schloss). Few dated works allow us to follow Dolci's precise chronology from 1656 to 1664. Nonetheless, an interest in decorative details, sharpened forms, sumptuous materials, and a heightened preciousncss emerges in the 1660s which is evident in his 5. Margherita (dated 1664, Florence, Palazzo Pitti). Always striving to outdo himself, Dolci reached new levels of technical refinement, achiev ng a porcelain-like quality in his painting in the late 1660s and 1670s. No doubt he cast an appreciative eye at the Medici collection of Dutch artists such as Frans van Miens* and Gerrit Dou.* A particularly fine example of his later pictures is Infant St. John the Baptist Asleep (Florence, Galleria Palatina), painted for the Grand Duchess Vittoria in 1673. As Sustermans grew old, Dolci also returned to portraiture in the 1670s. In 1672, he made his only known excursion outside Florence to Innsbruck on behalf of the Medici to paint several portraits of the Archduchess Claudia Felicita. The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna preserves a version in court dress, and the Galleria Palatina, Florence, has the portrait of Claudia as Galla Placid ia done in 1675. Dolci's portraits from this period include a likeness of Carlo Borromeo (in the Pitti, Florence). His last work with a certain date is the Christ Child with a Garland of Flowers (signed and dated 1680, Munich, Alte Pinakothek). In his late religious images, Dolci seems to have moved toward greater simplification, idealization, and obvious symbol. Perhaps inspired by the great iconic tradition of the Duegento and the sweet, rarified, religious idealism of Fra Angelico and such artists as Perugino, Dolci often pushed his works to an extreme which is beyond our sympathies. Today a secure oeuvre of some thirty signed and dated, or datable, works survives. Our understanding of Dolci's work is complicated by the fact that he often replicated a work several times to satisfy the demands of his patrons. Even if they are autograph, these replicas tend to be less valued than the first version. Furthermore, his students, including Onorio Marinari (1627-1715?), Alessandro Lomi (ca. 1665-1702), and Barolomeo Mancini, as well as his daughter Agnese (d. 1689), followed his style and their works are still mingled with his. Because of Dolci's patronage, much of his work remains in the Corsini Galleries and the Pitti in Florence. Besides the Medici and the Benedictines, his Florentine patrons included the Salviati, Quaratese, the Gerini, and, of course, the Corsini. Sir John Finch, English Resident in Florence from 1665 to 1670 (whose portrait by Dolci is now in Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum), brought a number of Dolci's pictures to England. |
