Vincenzo Dandini

Marchese Ippolito Venuti-Ginori Lisci (1858-1947), Marchese of Riparbella, Florence, by 1922;

Art market, Lombardy, 1980;

Where acquired by the present collectors.

Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Mostra della Pittura Italiana del Sei e Settecento in Palazzo Pitti, 1922, no. 429 (as Furini).

Mostra della Pittura Italiana del Sei e Settecento in Palazzo Pitti, exhibition catalogue, Rome 1922, p. 92, cat. no. 429 (as Furini);

G. Cantelli, "Mitologia sacra e profana e le sue eroine nella pittura fiorentina della prima meta del Seicento," in Paradigma 3 (1980), p. 175;

G. Cantelli, Repertorio della pittura fiorentina del Seicento, Fiesole 1983, p. 63, reproduced fig. 262;

S. Bellesi, "Vincenzo Dandini," in Il Seicento Fiorentino, Biografie, Florence 1986, p. 74;

P. Bigongiari, "Tra allegoria e concettismo, La 'meraviglia' interiore e la cultura degli emblemi nel Seicento fiorentino, con alcuni addenda," in Paradigma 8 (1988), p. 138;

S. Bellesi, "Una vita inedita di Vincenzo Dandini e appunti su Anton Domenico Gabbiani, Giovan Battista Marmi, Filippo Maria Galletti e altri," in Paragone (1988), p. 112 note 56, reproduced pl. II;

S. Bellesi, "Dandini, Vincenzo," in La pittura in Italia, Il Seicento, Milan 1989, vol. II, p. 711;

F. Baldassari, Carlo Dolci, Turin 1995, p. 28;

S. Bellesi, Vincenzo Dandini e la pittura fiorentina del Seicento, Pisa 2003, pp. 85-86, cat. no. 10, reproduced;

F. Baldassari, La pittura del Seicento a Firenze, Turin 2009, p. 310. 

One of Vincenzo Dandini's most poignant and chromatically rich paintings, the present work dates to the late 1630s, soon after the artist's return from Rome. The pathos-filled nocturne—its subject a unicum in seventeenth-century Florentine art—epitomizes the highly cultivated visual language of early seventeenth-century Tuscany, one characterized by a nobility of form and a classicizing, almost choreographic, compositional arrangement.

Moses Abandoned on the Banks of the Nile is equally remarkable for its highly refined execution and unusual iconography: the painting is the sole depiction of the subject in seventeenth-century Florentine art.¹ Rather than illustrate the finding of Moses by Pharaoh's daughter, a far more usual subject, Dandini depicts the episode preceding it. Amram, Moses's father, places his infant son in the basket in which he will eventually be found. At the center of the painting stands Jochebed, Moses's mother, who serves as a stabilizing force, both structurally and chromatically. Two young women join the parents: one kneels, resignedly watching the episode transpire; the other implores the heavens, seemingly overcome by her suffering.

Dandini executed the present work at the same moment he produced The Adoration of Niobe and Venus, Mercury, and Amor for Lorenzo de' Medici's villa at Petraia (both today at the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence). In all three paintings, the artist used gem tones (sapphire blues, fuchsia pinks, and scarlet reds), to imbue the compositions with remarkable tonal splendor.

¹ As first noted by Giuseppe Cantelli. See "Mitologia sacra e profana e le sue eroine nella pittura fiorentina della prima meta del Seicento," in Paradigma 3 (1980), p. 175.