Why devote an exhibition to Carlo Dolci? And why now?

The best way to answer those questions is by conducting an overview of the current state of scholarship in the field of 17^th century art in Florence – a field on which much research has been focusing for several years now, sparked in particular by the memorable anthological exhibition on 17^th century art in the Tuscan capital curated by Mina Gregori and Piero Bigongiari in Palazzo Strozzi in 1986. Almost thirty years on from that "historic" exhibition devoted to Florentine painting in the age of the Baroque – a field of study still relatively untapped at the time and a neglected area of Italian art history in general – much study and exploration has now been devoted to Florentine artists of the era, spawning numerous monographic publications and exhibitions on the work of individual masters, including Francesco Furini in 2007–8. In view of this rapidly growing interest in 17^th century Florentine art, we felt duty-bound to devote an exhibition to its undisputed protagonist, Carlo Dolci.

An artist lauded by the critics and biographers of his day for producing works unique in their genre, painted with unimpeachable diligence and with a descriptive stringency that one might almost call "hyper-realistic", Dolci, who was extremely popular with the most illustrious members of the Medici family and with the aristocracy of Europe in general, distinguished himself in the masterly definition of his figures – often captured in poses of ecstasy, bathed in a sort of moonlight that gives them a complexion reminiscent of the finest porcelain – and in the intriguing, almost obsessive attention that he devotes to detail, from the soft, almost palpable fabrics of his figures' clothing to their splendid jewels which, to quote his biographer Filippo Baldinucci, were "imitated in such an astounding (and real) fashion that, however much one might touch the canvas to make sure that they were in fact painted, the eye still harboured doubt".

To pay fitting tribute to this great master, almost one hundred paintings and drawings  have been selected for the exhibition, to point up the lofty quality achieved by Dolci in the course of his career. His work is matched by painting and sculpture by other Florentine artists of his era, or a little earlier, and by a small but fascinating corpus of works which can be attributed to his pupils, who had the honour of preserving his style well into the 18^th century.

In its effort to shed light on the unique nature of Dolci's art, the exhibition showcases works of the first order from some of Florence's leading museums and from renowned public and private collections abroad, such as the British Museum in London, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, Burghley House near Stamford, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Brest, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and last but by no means least in importance, the Royal Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II, who has loaned for the occasion Dolci's fabulous Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist, which has never been shown in Italy before.

It is worth highlighting the fact that a major restoration campaign was undertaken to coincide with the exhibition, focusing in particular on Dolci's work in the Florence area in addition to the pictures in the Galleria Palatina and other Florentine museums, producing a total of 33 complete restorations and revisions. The Opificio delle Pietre Dure also restored and performed an in-depth technical inspection on the Dream of the Young St. John the Baptist (Galleria Palatina) and on a drawing of David and the Head of Goliath (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera). This provided us with an opportunity to deepen our knowledge of the unique painterly technique favoured by Dolci, who used a range of highly original expedients such as gold for haloes applied in light dust form to obtain a nuanced effect. X-ray analyses also revealed a number of totally unexpected facets even to some of Dolci's better-known paintings.

Dedicated to Mina Gregori, the exhibition is curated by Sandro Bellesi and Anna Bisceglia, who also edited the richly illustrated catalogue published by Sillabe with contributions from illustrious students of Florentine 17^th century painting. Thanks to this scholarship, much of which explores areas of Dolci's art overlooked until now, it has been possible to reconstruct the artist's "exact" career through the acquisition of hitherto unknown documents and the correct interpretation of the dates and inscriptions on some of his paintings, several of which had been erroneously transcribed even in recent studies. This comprehensive revision of Dolci's corpus of work, even today occasionally clouded by paintings of questionable attribution closely linked to the requirements of the art market and often devoid of any "history", has also led to the discovery of works hitherto unknown or thought lost, and presented here for the first time.      

The exhibition is promoted by the Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo with the Regional Secretariat of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività culturali e del turismo for Tuscany, the former Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze, the Galleria Palatina e gli Appartamenti Reali di Palazzo Pitti and Firenze Musei.