CARLO DOLCI

1616 - Florence - 1686

The Adoration of the Shepherds

Provenance

Florence, Ginori Collection, first half 18th century

Mrs Evelyn Williams, Ealing

thence by descent to her Grandson

Literature

Francesca Baldassari. Carlo Dolci, Turin, 1995, Plate 1, cat. no.1, p. 33

Note

Carlo Dolci, a child prodigy, was sent to study with Jacopo Vignali at the age of nine. Although none of his juvenilia survive, accomplished portraits are preserved in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence from the 1630's when the artist was only fifteen. His talent for portraiture brought him to the attention of the Medici whom he was to serve throughout his career. Nevertheless it is for his small-scale exquisitely finished and finely detailed religious paintings that he was in most demand and for which he is best remembered today. His works were enormously popular with visiting English nobility, as well as many local families.(1)

This remarkable devotional painting shows Dolci's technical gifts at their most intense and immediate. It is related to a small corpus of Adoration pictures executed by Dolci between 1635 and 1655. (2 & 3). Another, larger, Adoration of the Kings on canvas was sold at Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York dated 1649 (4), now in the National Gallery, London.

This painting, in its miniaturistic jewel-like quality recalls Baldinucci's praise of the artist's "exquisite perfection". The painting is a variant of the Clevelend and Burghley paintings (2 & 3) with the Madonna and child virtually identical, and with differences in the other figures and in the background. McCorquodale dates this painting in the late 1640's. (5) and this is in agreement with Dr Baldassari (6).

References

  1. C P McCorquodale A fresh look at Carlo Dolci Apollo XCVII 1973, pp.477-88.
  2. F Russell An Early Masterpiece by Carlo Dolci Burlington Magazine, CXXVII 1985 p 716, figs. 1 & 74.
  3. A T Lurie Two Devotional Paintings Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, LV 1968 p. 225 fig 12.
  4. Sotheby's New York, Sale 2nd June 1989 Lot 55 $1,600,000.
  5. . C P McCorquodale 1987 private communication.
  6. Francesca Baldassari. Carlo Dolci, Turin, 1995, Plate 1, cat. no.1, p. 33.

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