Carlo Dolci

Carlo Dolci (Florence, May 25, 1616 - Florence, January 17, 1686) was an Italian painter

Equipped with great technique, it was the most Florentine painter of the seventeenth century and enjoyed extraordinary fame already alive and until the nineteenth century, when the taste for its sweet and oleographed religious representations began to decline Painter especially of isolated figures, he was an appreciated portraitist And one of the most intense interpreters of the sacred painting

Carlo Dolci was born at noon on Thursday, May 25, 1616, fifth of Andrea, "very honored man" of the tailor's profession, and by Agnese Marinari, daughter of the painter Pietro and sister of Gismondo and Bartolomeo Marinari, both painters in turn His father died In 1620, leaving the family in grave restraint: so that Charles, who had already learned from his grandfather and his older brother the first notions of painting, "giving a mark of genius," in 1625 was recommended by his mother to the shop of Jacopo Vignali , Already a pupil of Matteo Rosselli

At the age of eleven, he would paint "for the first time a head of Jesus child: and then another of Jesus' adult crowned with thorns: and a Saint John, fullheaded; after that, over her broom she relocated Agnesa her mother , Which led her to see in the master's room, where Pietro de 'Medici, who was very fond of art, and who worked in painting, stayed well among other gentlemen; So he made him want to be made by Carlino, whom he was called by everyone, his own portrait, and also that of Antonio Landini, a famous musician and his friend. These portraits, together with the painter himself, were made by Pietro de ' Doctors went to see the glorious memory of the Duke of Ghisa who was then in the Serenissimo palace, which all looked remarkably and marvelously together; then with that kindness and goodness, which was his usual, he had three good pockets in his pocket. He gave it to the child; and not pleased with this, he led him from the Serenissimo Grand Duke, who immediately wanted to see him sketch two heads; And I returned with a gift of ten new plates »

Nothing is known about these works: on the antiquarian market, among its first paintings, a Saint Francis in the contemplation of the Crucified, an intense religious activity, was nourished by the "visceral and emotional painting" of the Vignals of the 1920s

Also the fruit of the past of the Dolci fifteen years is Stefano della Bella's portrait in truncated jacket and lattice collar: Stefano della Bella was a painter and, in particular, an engraver, protected by Don Lorenzo de 'Medici, contractor If in general this painting Reminds us of the Vignali's way of portraiture, in the portraiture of Cristofano Allori's portraits that were certainly known to him, but the Sweets "added an absent charm to the portraits of Allori, combining an unimaginable psychological acuity in a boy of fifteen Years with an originality that wants to be a variant to the official portraiture of Sustermans »

His taste for precise reproduction of the details is confirmed in the Portrait of Ainolfo de 'Bardi of 1632, made "as natural as the knee, in a hunting suit in the air", in addition to those of the grandson of that Florentine knight, Giovanni de 'Bardi, and Raphael Ximenes, a noble who was delighted to paint in the Vignali shop

Narrator Baldinucci, the Florentine scholar who has the most important biography of the Sweets, whom he knew and of which he was a drawing student and friend, who already very young Charles had attended the "Company of St. Benedict," in which every More in devotion, he had made a very firm proposition of never in his life that he wanted to paint that Sacred Images, or sacred histories, so represented, that they could bear the fruits of Christian piety in those who intended them, "even though he refused to paint Profane themes, but "he was so modestly dressed up, that it was a strange thing to be seen"

In fact, the Dolci was a painter so chaste that he never represented naked in his canvases and his devotional virtue could at that time express himself with the Adoration of the Magi commissioned by the son of Cosimo II, later Cardinal Leopoldo de 'Medici - perhaps the same Blenheim Palace, in Woodstock (Oxfordshire), or perhaps the one kept in the Burghley House in Stamford, Lincolnshire, while the Glasgow Adoration could be earlier - replicated for another buyer, Thomas Parents

At the end of the 1930s the "four octagons" with the four Evangelists, made by Charles at the earliest times for one of his confessors, should be traced back to no more than five shields, but then Charles again put out his hand, reduced it In the same beauty of axes »

They were identified in St. Matthew of the Getty Museum, St. John of Berlin, where he came to 1818, and in two other private collections The Dolci confirms the constant portraiture of the faces, while "the crystalline style of these works has, in Florence, the only preceding Bronzino, of which the Sweets married the meticulous definition of every detail with the chiaroscuro and the modeled caravaggesque and, in the Getty picture, with a certain correction »

He was a well-known master, he opened his own studio in Florence at Casa Zuccari and in 1648 he was admitted to the Academy of Drawing for which, as usual, gave his own work, the Portrait of Blessed Angelico, derived from the bas-relief covering the tomb Of the painter in the Roman church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva

The Sweets, an excellent portraitist but of poor compositional abilities, was used to relate to works of others to set up complex paintings: his Christ at the Farisean Table, 1649 - today in the Methuen collection of Corsham Court - has a similar work by Cigoli - which was also kept in the same English collection - and was paid by his doctor, only 160 shields, while the marquis Filippo Niocolini came to offer 1200 Orders began to arrive from all over Florence, the Grand Ducal court, Italy and Europe Poniatowski's principals stopped in Florence for commissioning a series of works

He married Teresa Bucherelli in 1654, tells Baldinucci, another confirmation of the particular devotion of the Sweets, that on the morning of the wedding celebration, the painter was not found "He is looking for and looking for Carlino and the company and at home. For several churches, and Carlino is not there: and at last being close to the hour of dinning, who with no hope of finding him sought him, found him in the Church of the Most Holy Nunziata in the chapel of the Crucifix of the well-rescued dead in the act of Prayer "They had eight children: seven daughters - some nuns - and one male son, Andrew, who became a priest

For Venetian commissioners he made several paintings, among which the baby Jesus "with one of beautiful flowers in his hand, almost inviting the soul to pretend to be Christian virtues," which repeated several times, and a version was made for Empress Claudia Felicita , Daughter of Ferdinando Carlo and Anna de 'Medici

For the occasion of the wedding of Leopoldo, the Sweets, as a "high-line painter", was invited to make his portrait, being the portraitist of the Habsburgs, Giusto Sustermans, which was too far ahead in the years to intervene the noble Florentine Cesario Larioni, his confessor, commanded him the trip to Innsbruck, to which the Sweets, which had never been released from Florence, would have been reluctantly removed because of his innate timidity

On April 5, 1673, he was introduced the day before Easter to the next empress and mother, who, "knowing the subject well, did not have the benign demonstrations received before, who introduced him into the talk of devoted things." Easter celebrations, he made two portraits of Claudia Felicita, one of which was Galla Placidia, a San Filippo Neri for the courtesan Abbot Viviani and restored several canvases in the imperial gallery until he was rewarded with money and jewels on 25 August. Florence, where he arrived on September 8, 1673

It was the first and the last time Dolci left the walls of Florence The journey though, although a success from an artistic point of view, had traumatic aftertaste for Sweets that went into a kind of blockade of the painter, aggravated by a series of family problems: Nevertheless, he continued to produce, albeit at a pace other than sustained

"This is because of a pertinacious melancholic mood, which waits for its kind of painful, reflexive and fearful nature, if it was in all and for all gained so that it was no longer possible for him to have it, but a speech One word but everything went sighs: as far as he could see, a deadly anguish in the heart. His tougher friends struggled to withdraw from those thoughts, which persuaded him to believe that he had lost all his ability Be better than anything; And this was of much greater turmoil than he had already seen loads of seven maiden daughters; Nor did he severely bore his tormented fantasy, to see his wife for the fatigue, to which he was obliged to care for his person by day and night on that sinister, reduced to a bad state of health until he gave birth to a male son Out of time He who writes these things and who, since he was his friend from childhood, perhaps more than any other was persuaded to possess his own will, in order to outgrow him from that fixation, sometimes made him almost alive in his home power and Led out of the city, and they did so to do each other; But much more worked by our gentleman Domenico Baldinotti, whom he had also taught to draw These essendosela understood with Father Ilarione his Confessor, took one day together with him to his home: the Baldinotti gave a hand to a pint, I'll accommodate you on The colors, put worms and brushes on the order, and then gave a fire to the big piece, and this was that the Religious put me in place, commanded him by obedience to end a veil at one of the two Images of the Virgin Mary Glorious, which he had already conducted, one for the Serenissima Grand Duchess Vittoria, and the other for Filippo Franceschi, rich knight Fiorentino Died by the painter; And the work succeeded so well, that in one moment, he became angry that he had lost all skill in art, and vanished the dark ghosts, and so after a year of life, worn in a mood, 'Hell, serious to the attentions and to himself hateful, gradually reduced to primary health, running the year 1675'

He then resumed his artistic activity and the commissions returned to rain on his shop until in 1682 the fatal encounter with Luca Giordano

"Then he wanted Jordan to visit the rooms of the most renowned painters, and among them, for the debt of gratitude, that of our Carlo welcomed him with signs of sincere love, and he showed him all his work. He spied Giordano with great pleasure his marvelous way To end without saccheria or seemingly tender, he praised him very much, and also gave him some colors of lace, perhaps from Carlo never seen nor seen; then with his casual and solicitous manner, in his gracious way of speaking Napolitano, so began To say: I like everything, Carlo; But if you follow that, I say, if you spend so much time in conducting your works, so far away, that I think you are to put together the one hundred and fifty thousand shields, which has procured to me my brush, which I believe that you will be hungry These words said by heart, there were so many wounds in the heart of the miserable Charles, and since then aroused by the great stir of thoughts, he began to give signs of what he had succeeded »

It went back to acute depression from advanced age and physical ailments. There was no use of the gimmicks previously used to get him out of the crisis that further aggravated the following year with the death of his wife Dolci lay in bed and did not resume more
He is buried in the Basilica of Santissima Annunziata in Florence

In 2015, Palatine Gallery at Palazzo Pitti in Florence dedicates a monographic exhibition curated by Sandro Bellesi and Anna Bisceglia, the first in modern times The Galleria Palatina is in fact the museum with its most works in the world without counting the great amount of sweets paintings In the Medici inventories In the catalog of the exhibition, the Baldinucciana biography of the Sweets is transcribed and annotated

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. 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.

The Sacred Family with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, circa 1630, copper oil, 28 x 23 cm, Private Collection.
Portrait of Ainolfo de 'Bardi, 1632, oil on canvas, 149.5 x 119 cm, Florence, Uffizi Gallery
Sant'Andrea in front of the cross, 1646, oil on table, 122 x 99 cm, Florence, Pitti Palace, Palatine Gallery.
Santa Cecilia, second half of 1640, oil on canvas, 126 x 99.5 cm, St. Petersburg, Ermitage.
Escape to Egypt, circa 1648-1650, oil on canvas, 39.7 x 49.5 cm, Detroit, Institute of Arts.
Adoration of the Magi, 1649, oil on canvas, 117 x 92 cm, London, National Gallery.
Madonna With Child, 1651, Oil on Canvas, 92.1 x 77.8 cm, Detroit, Institute of Arts.
Virgin Annunziata, circa 1653-1655, oil on canvas, 52 x 40 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre.
Annulus Angel, 1653-1655, oil on canvas, 53 x 40 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre.
Maria Maddalena, 1660-1670, oil on canvas, 73 x 56 cm, Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina.
Annulus Angel, circa 1660, oil on canvas, 65 x 55, Piacenza, Palazzo Museo Museum Office.
Still life with flowers, 1662, oil on table, 70 x 55 cm, Florence, Uffizi Gallery.
Salomé with the head of the Baptist, 1665-1670, oil on canvas, 122.6 x 96.5 cm, Windsor, Royal Collection.
St. Matthew writes his gospel about 1670, oil on canvas, 53 x 44 cm, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum.
Santa Cecilia plays the organ, 1671, oil on canvas, 96.5 x 81 cm, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie.
Madonna with Child, 1675, oil on table, 86 x 68 cm, Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Palatina Gallery.
Guardian Angel, 1675, Oil on Canvas, Prato, Museum of the Opera of the Cathedral.
Mater Dolorosa, circa 1680, oil on canvas, 80 x 70, Piacenza, Museum Body Palazzo Costa.
David with the head of Goliath, 1680, oil on canvas, 131.5 x 106 cm, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts.
Head of Jesus Crowned with Thorns, Youth Work, Oil on Canvas 53 x 56 cm, Private Collection.
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