Carlo Dolci

Carlo Dolci was a key figure of Florentine painting in the seventeenth century and enjoyed an international reputation during his lifetime. Demonstrating an artistic talent from a young age, his style combined an emotive Baroque affect with the elegant design and bright colours favoured in his native Florence. Pious and meticulous, Dolci specialised in devotional paintings, stating that it was his 'firm intention to paint only works that would inspire the fruits of Christian piety in those who saw them.' His lavish still lifes and polished portraits were also highly desirable among sophisticated patrons across Europe.

Dolci entered into the studio of Jacopo Vignali in 1625, and was encouraged by his master to focus on intense and emotive religious subjects. Dolci's attention to detail and finely painted textures set him apart from other Florentine painters of the time. Among his first patrons was Piero de' Medici, the musician Antonio Landini and Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici. 

In the 1640s, Dolci continued to produce original religious pictures but also imbibed the works of earlier Florentine painters, copying artworks by Correggio and others. During the 1650s and 1660s, he honed the format of religious painting that would become his signature: half-length, single-figure paintings that showed religious characters in intense emotional states. These pious depictions were often highly didactic, imparting a simple yet definite narrative about the religious experience or life of the figure represented. From the mid-1670s, Dolci's mental state began to decline, a deterioration that was to accelerate with Luca Giordano's arrival in Florence in 1682, becoming a rival to Dolci's success.

Over the course of a hugely influential career, Dolci's creative process, capturing the refined details of magnificent textiles and jewellery, and the glowing skin of faces and hands, set him apart from his contemporaries. His religious subjects and attention to details made him one of the most significant artists of the seventeenth century.