Carlo Dolci (self portrait, 1674).

Carlo (or Carlino) Dolci (25 May 1616 – 17 January 1686) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Florence. Events 1085 - Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo Spain back from the Moors. Events 38 BC - Octavian marries Livia Drusilla. 1287 - King Alfonso III of Aragon invades Minorca Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest Baroque art redirects here Please disambiguate such links to Baroque painting, Baroque sculpture, etc Florence ( Italian: Firenze Florentia and Fiorenza) is the Capital City of the Italian region of Tuscany

Biography

He was born in Florence, on his mother's side the grandson of a painter. Although he was precocious and apprenticed at a young age to Jacopo Vignali, Dolci was not prolific. Jacopo Vignali ( September 5, 1592 - August 3, 1664) was a Florentine painter of the early Baroque period "He would take weeks over a single foot", according to his biographer Baldinucci. Filippo Baldinucci ( 1624 &ndash January 1 1696 / 1697) was an Italian art historian and biographer ^[1] 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.

Dolci was known for his piety. It is said that every year during Passion week he painted a half-figure of the Saviour wearing the Crown of Thorns. In Christianity the Crown of Thorns, one of the instruments of the Passion, was the woven chaplet of thorn branches worn by Jesus before his Crucifixion 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. Luca Giordano ( October 18, 1634 &ndash January 12, 1705) was an eclectic peripatetic and influential Italian late Baroque ^[2] He died in Florence in 1686.

Works

The grand manner, vigorous coloration or luminosity, and dynamic emotion of the Bolognese-Roman Baroque are foreign to Dolci and to Baroque Florence. Baroque art redirects here Please disambiguate such links to Baroque painting, Baroque sculpture, etc 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. Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato (also known as Giovanni Battista Salvi August 25, 1609 - August 8, 1685) was an Italian ^[3] 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. Agnolo di Cosimo ( November 17, 1503 &ndash November 23, 1572) usually known as Il Bronzino, or Agnolo Bronzino (mistaken

His major works depict sacred themes. There is a want of character in his pictures, and his grouping lacks harmony, but the general tone accords with the idea of the passion portrayed. His protagonists are often highly emotive.

Among the best works of this master are St Sebastian; the Four Evangelists at Florence; Christ Breaking the Bread^[4]; the St Cecilia^[5]; an Adoration of the Magi; and a masterpiece is his St Andrew praying before his Crucifixion (1646) in the Pitti gallery. The Palazzo Pitti, in English sometimes called the Pitti Palace, is a vast mainly Renaissance Palace in 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. ^[6]

Stolen Madonna of the Veil Dolci work stolen in 1976, never recovered.

Footnotes

References

• Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). Rudolf Wittkower (1901 - October 11 1971) was a German art historian Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750. Penguin Books, Pelican History of Art, p.  345-346.  

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911 is a 29-volume reference work that marked the beginning of the Encyclopædia Britannica The public domain is a range of abstract materials &ndash commonly referred to as Intellectual property &ndash which are not owned or controlled by anyone