Cesare Dandini

Born in Florence, in 1621 Cesare Dandini began studying at the Accademia del Disegno. His first known work is a Pieta for the sacristy of the Santissima Annuziata, painted in 1625. By the 1630s, he was working for several important Florentine patrons, including Lorenzo de’ Medici. 

He developed a highly personalised style, at once idealised and theatrical, and exhibiting great refinement. His dramatically yet harmoniously coloured and elegantly crafted compositions were carefully calibrated to appeal to his sophisticated courtly audience. He shared with Florentine contemporaries Jacopo Vignali and Carlo Dolci a devotion to the style initiated in the 1590s by Lodovico Cigoli, Gregorio Pagani, Jacopo da Empoli, Passignano and Curradi and refined in the 1610s and 1620s by Matteo Rosselli, Giovanni Bilivert and Allori (who was perhaps the most influential for Cesare). 

Throughout his career, he worked across genres, producing varied works including portraits in miniature on copper, salon pictures of religious, secular and allegorical figures, and large-scale compositions depicting religious and literary themes. Dandini's theatrical elegance and poetic mood exerted a strong influence in Florence in the second quarter of the seventeenth century and he counted among his pupils Antonio Giusti and Alessandro Rossi.