Carlo Dolci

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] However 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 painter.[4] Dolci died in Florence in 1686.

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.[5] 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",[6][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;[7] the St Cecilia at the Organ;[8] an Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery, London; the St Catherine Reading[9] 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.[10]

• 
  Magdalen
• 
  Saint Cecilia
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  San Simone
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  Saint with golden heart
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  David with Head of Goliath
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  St Matthew
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  St Philip Benizzi
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  Diogenes
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  Moses
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  Salome and Head of St. John the Baptist
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  Still-life Flowers
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  St Catherine of Siena
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  Mater Dolorosa
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  Annunciation
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  Annuciation Virgin
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  Annuciation Angel
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  Madonna and Child
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  Madonna and Child
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  Jesus with flowers (1663)
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  Guardian Angel
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  Cruxifixion of St. Andrew
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  Vision of St Louis (1675)
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  The Holy Family with God the Father and the Holy Spirit
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  Claudia Felicitas of Austria
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  Teresa Bucherelli
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  Vittoria della Rovere as Widow
• 
  Mattias de' Medici (1635)
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  Ainolfo de Bardi
• 
  Stefano della Bella
• 
  Sir Thomas Baines

Media related to Carlo Dolci at Wikimedia Commons

• Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750. Penguin Books, Pelican History of Art. pp. 345–46.

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.

• 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.