A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

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934. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

Carlo Dolci (Florentine: 1616-1686).

Carlo Dolci, the son of a Florentine tailor, is, like his contemporary Sassoferrato, a good instance of the affected religious school described in our introduction to the Later Italian Schools. He was of a very retiring and pious disposition, much given, we are told, to melancholy. Every one who looks first at the pictures of similar subjects by earlier Italian artists will be struck by something sentimental and effeminate in Dolci's conceptions. Similarly in his execution there is an over-smoothness and softness, corresponding to "polished" language in literature (see Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. ix. § 7). In the Dulwich Gallery is a St. Catherine of Siena which is one of Dolci's chefs d'œuvre.