* Carlo Dolci Florence 1616 - 1687

The present exquisitely finished small copper is unpublished and dates to very early in the artist’s career, circa 1630. This was a moment when the very young Dolci’s intensely emotive style was being formed under the influence of the senior generation of Florentine artists, most particularly his master Jacopo Vignali. Dateable works to this period are extremely rare and the present work’s reappearance represents a major addition to Dolci’s oeuvre.

The subject of the present work is unusual, a variation on the traditional theme of the Sacra Conversazione, a venerable one among Florentine painters. In the present copper, the mature Christ is shown between the Virgin and his putative father Saint Joseph. He gazes upward at the Holy Spirit and above him God the Father. The combination of the figures, therefore, void of other extraneous saints, represents the "Celestial" and "Terrestrial" Trinities together. This highly intellectual and theological approach to a traditional subject would be typical of Dolci’s temperament throughout his career and demonstrates his particular seriousness even at the very tender age at which the present copper would have been painted. The theme, in fact, was treated again by Dolci, but in a much more usual way and much later in his life, once in a picture formerly at Bowhill and again in one painted for Ferdinando II de’ Medici, now in the Museo di Arezzo (see Baldassari, Carlo Dolci, Turin 1995, pp. 168-9, cat nos. 142-143).

Stylistically, this Sacra Conversazione relates to a number of other very early works by Dolci. The facial types of the figures; the strong lighting from directly above against a dark background; the particular key of the palette: all are reminiscent of a number of early works. The same treatment may be seen in the small copper of the Adoration of the Shepherds (formerly Wengraf, Ltd., London) and an even smaller painting of the same subject at Burghley House, both of which Baldassari dates to circa 1630 (cf. 1995 op. cit., pp.33-34, cat nos. 1-2). Baldassari (in discussing the present painting) has more interestingly noted specific borrowings by Dolci from his master Vignali. The figure of God the Father appears to be directly derived from a painting by Vignali of the Baptism of Christ, painted in 1627 for the chapel in the Villa Strozzi al Poggetto, near Florence (now in the Bigongiari collection, see F. Baldassari, La Collezione Piero ed Elena Bigongiari: Il Seicento fiorentino tra "favola" e dramma, Milan 2004, pp. 182-83, cat. No. 45). The documented Vignali altarpiece, therefore, allows a terminus post quem for the present work.  In addition, she notes the influence of Matteo Rosselli, particularly in the simplicity of the composition and delicate profile of the Virgin at left.

The painting may be the "sacra conversazione in figure intere piccole, con cornice intagliata e dorata di Carlino Dolci" mentioned in the 1727 inventory of Gian Gualberto Giucciardini (inherited by his son-in-law Marchese Rinuccini the following year). It appears also to have been at some point in the Antinori family collection, who also owned an unspecified "head" by Dolci (see Baldassari, 1995 op.cit., p. 197).

We are grateful to Francesca Baldassari for her help in cataloguing the present lot.