Studies in Iconology- Carlo Dolci. A Refreshment

Carlo Dolci. A Refreshment reevaluates the works of the Florentine painter Carlo Dolci. For art historical authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the name Dolci was used as a convenient epithet for mocking the sentimental style of the artist’s exclusively religious paintings. A seventeenth century audience, however, could still understand his ‘sweetness’ as an authentic expression of an old theological concept that went back to the bible itself: the so-called Dulcedo dei, or sweetness of God. This study looks at Dolci’s reception throughout the centuries to show how it came to be that the theologically substantiated aesthetic of sweetness in Dolci’s œuvre fell out of favor and into oblivion.