Carlo Dolci is considered the most important Florentine painter of the 17th century; he was praised for his extraordinarily precise and detailed painting technique and for his religious motifs, which he composed with a harmoniously delicate colour palette and sculptural shadows, mostly in small format.
(...) Continue readingCarlo Dolci - The start of his career as a highly talented portraitist
Carlo Dolci was born in Florence on 25th May 1616. His artistic talent, which he probably owed to his maternal grandfather, who had worked as a painter himself, was recognised early on. However, Carlo Dolci quickly outgrew the training of an unknown Florentine painter, so that he was placed in the expert hands of the honoured Baroque master Jacopo Vignali. Alongside Vignali, it was above all the Mannerist-leaning Medici court painter Agnolo Bronzino who had a lasting influence on Dolci's understanding of art and painting. Works such as the floral still life in the Florentine Uffizi also suggest that Dolci was also very familiar with the features of Flemish and Dutch painting. Regardless of these influences and models, however, Dolci developed his own style. He initially showed a great talent for portrait painting, but failed to pursue this artistic path consistently. Instead, under the influence of the Counter-Reformation, he chose religious themes as his central subject, which he executed impressively over the course of his career.
Great success with religious compositions
Contrary to the customs of his time in his hometown of Florence, Carlo Dolci chose not to join the many Florentine painters who moved to Rome, which was experiencing a great surge in monumental Baroque painting. In the remoteness of Tuscany, he discovered his own individual painting style from the rather sober and static traditions of his home, in contrast to the sumptuous and superficial conventions of contemporary bravura painting. Instead of powerful, bright colours and powerful emotions, Dolci chose a delicate colour palette and a slightly sweet piety. Although he never gave up portrait painting, thanks to his early successes, and was highly praised as a portraitist his whole life, his most famous compositions were ensconced in the genre of religious painting. Dolci resonated greatly amongst the collectors and patrons of his time and thus produced many of his pictures in several variations to please the demand. His extremely diligent way of painting was not suited to large-format frescoes, and so he painted predominantly in small format.
A devout artist and a slow worker
Carlo Dolci was famous for his devoutness: At the early age of eleven, he made an impression with an early attempt at depicting St John and later painted a new half-figure of the Redeemer with a crown of thorns every year during Holy Week. The artist is said to have spent his last years in melancholy, supposedly ignited by the confrontation with the incomparably quick and effective working tempo of his famous guild colleague Luca Giordano, known as Fa Presto, ‘speedy worker’, who produced a greater amount of work in five hours than Dolci produced over several months. He was notorious for his sparse productivity: His biographer, Baldinucci, testified to this by teasingly writing he needed many weeks to paint a single foot. The premature death of his daughter and pupil Agnese Dolci, who painted in his style and had helped duplicate many of his works, also threw a dark shadow on the artist’s old age.
Carlo Dolci died on 17th January 1686 in his hometown of Florence.
Carlo Dolci - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
