Carlo Dolci

Born to the tailor Andrea Dolci and to Agnese Marinari, daughter of the painter Pietro Marinari and sister to painters Bartolomeo and Sigismondo Marinari¹, at an early age Carlo entered the workshop of Jacopo Vignali, who was to have a profound influence on his early career. Chosen by his mother for his fervent religious spirit and talent as a painter, Jacopo took Carlo under his wing, introducing him to the Compagnia di San Benedetto Bianco, which was to become the focus of his spiritual life and a fundamental lodestar for Vignali’s favourite pupil.

The Confraternity, which met in the eastern cloister of the church of Santa Maria Novella, faithfully followed the Benedictine motto Ora et Labora, and demanded of its members an irreproachable lifestyle based on repentance and on the imitation of Christ: a combination of the contemplative life and the active life alone could produce a perfect Christian.

The Compagnia achieved its moment of greatest glory from the 1620s to the 1650s and was frequented by numerous painters including Matteo Rosselli, Cristofano Allori, Giovanni Battista Vanni and Vincenzo Dandini, along with such sophisticated thinkers as the patron of the arts Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, poets such as Jacopo Soldani, philosophers of the calibre of Niccolò Arrighetti and men of letters and astronomers such as Mario Guiducci.

Despite pursuing two stringently disciplined yet very different lifestyles – Vignali never married and he spent long periods of time as a hermit, while Dolci had eight children and never missed an opportunity to pray – and despite painting in increasingly different styles as the years went by, master and pupil worked together until the 1640s.

Dolci’s output consisted almost exclusively of religious paintings, in addition to portraits – a very significant chapter in his career, from his portrait of Ainolfo de’ Bardi in the Gallerie degli Uffizi (1632) to those of Claudia Felicita (one in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, [1672], the other in the Galleria Palatina in Florence [1675]) – and allegories of moral virtues such as Justice (1645-1650, private collection), Poetry (1648-1649, Florence, Galleria Corsini), Charity (1659, Banca Intesa) and Patience (1677, London, Trinity Fine Art).

He painted his only known still-life, a superb Vase of Flowers and Basin for that enthusiastic collector of still-lifes Cardinal Giovan Carlo de’ Medici and now in the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence, in 1662.

A champion of Catholicism and a genuine naturalist, as the years went by Carlo painted with increasingly brilliant brush strokes and with an almost metaphysical light, in an attempt to bring out the divine in his figures.

His talent reached an absolute peak in the above-mentioned Portrait of Claudia Felicita as Galla Placidia, signed and dated 1675, in the Galleria Palatina in Florence, a masterpiece of subtle invention and suggestive allusion. Claudia Felicita of Austria is shown in the garb of Galla Placidia (388/392 – 450 AD), a daughter of the Emperor Theodosius the Great who herself became Empress in the 5th century and spent her life fighting heresy in favour of the Church. Like the Empress Galla Placidia, so Claudia too, on becoming Empress of the Holy Roman Empire and Queen of Bohemia and Hungary, felt it her moral duty to become the spokeswoman for the values of the Catholic faith in a Protestant land. Dolci caused her figure to glow by cladding her in precious jewels and a refined gown, highlighting her lofty morality by emphasising the pride in her face and her majestic bearing, and portraying her clutching the crucifix on the boots of a small panel depicting Diana, a goddess who symbolised the pagan tradition that plunged the world into chaos.

One of Dolci’s most significant works in terms of both composition and technique is the Guardian Angel now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Prato, which he began in 1670 and completed in 1675 for the Chapel of the Purification or Assumption in Prato Cathedral, in which the figure is divided between the lure of pleasure and the difficulties attendant on duty. The moral significance of the scene is highlighted in the inscriptions on scrolls painted at the bottom of the altarpiece: the inscription on the rapid path towards life is clear, in gilded lettering, while the opposite inscription on the leisurely path to perdition is in shaky red lettering conjuring up the flames of Hell. The difference between the two paths is also underscored by the contrast between the humble beauty of the thorny wild roses spangled on the rock face and the lure of the tulips on the broad path lost in a misty landscape.

The brilliantly decorative painting, executed with impressive speed, of the Neapolitan artist Luca Giordano who had arrived in Florence in 1682, unnerved Dolci who, on the contrary, was maniacal in his technically unimpeachable execution, dwelling on every detail and its meaning in full.

An insensitive question put to him by one of his most loyal patrons, Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere, before a work by Giordano – most probably the Flight into Egypt recorded in the Villa of Poggio Imperiale in 1691 and now in the Galleria Palatina in Florence –, namely whether he could ever have believed that it was painted in the space of only a few days (as indeed it had been), unnerved Dolci to such an extent that he almost gave up painting. On losing his beloved wife Teresa Bucherelli in 1693, he shut himself away and left his daughter Agnese and his cousin and pupil Onorio Marinari to pursue his path.

We know too little about Agnese to be able to grasp her talent, though it must have been out of the ordinary judging by her Self-portrait in a private collection, but we do know enough about Onorio Marinari to be able to state categorically that he never achieved either the lofty formal purification or the peak of potential of his master.

Insensitive to the Baroque and shying away from all wordliness, Dolci brought to a close the era of stringent figurative purism that qualifies, and indeed may be the greatest boast, of the painting practised in Medici Florence in the 17th century.

The adherents to this neo-16th century style include, in chronological order, Santi di Tito, Ottavio Vannini, Lorenzo Lippi in his later years and Cesare Dandini, all of whom scholars have long since identified as ranking among the leading players of their century.

The supreme quality of Dolci’s painting prompts us to meditate on his artistic message: meticulous draughtsmanship, an inordinate length of time in producing a picture, the use of precious colours such as lapis lazuli and shell gold, and his brilliant light all come together to make his pictures timeless jewels that continue even today to enchant those with eyes to see.