Cesare Dandini

Dandini’s career is described by Filippo Baldinucci, the 19th century biographer of Florentine painters of the seicento who recounted that he began his training as a 12 year-old in the studio of Francesco Curradi (1570–1616) who, because of Dandini’s outstanding beauty was said to have portrayed him in many of his works. He then trained with Cristofano Allori, the preeminent artist in Florence, but that relationship was short-lived and his more important association was with Domenico Passignano (1559-1638) who took him on as an assistant working in the cathedral at Pisa. Dandini’s first signed and dated work is the Dead Christ with Angels of 1625 painted for the SS. Annunziata in Florence.

At some point thereafter, Dandini may have gone to Rome where he would have been influenced by the new naturalism of Caravaggio traces of which appear throughout Dandini’s career. He may also have responded to the work of Orazio Riminaldi (1593–1630) who was in Pisa and that of Artemisia Gentileschi in Florence who was in Florence from 1612 to 1620. By the late 1620s, Cesare Dandini was working for Don Lorenzo de’ Medici (1599–1648) and soon developed an artificial theatrical style culminating in the ‘hothouse grandeur of his Diana‘ (Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst) of 1639. Although multifigural works such as Moses defending the daughters of Jethro (Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland) are admired for their balletic expression, it is for the multitude of single-figure allegorical and religious paintings depicting idealized young men or women which Dandini painted from the 1630s to the 1650s that the artist is, and was, best loved. The great care with which he rendered their various attributes — precious gems, glinting weapons, scientific instruments, and luxurious fabrics – reveal the meticulous eye of a still-life painter.

Indeed, on one occasion we know of, Dandini ventured into the world of still life, painting for his greatest patron, the debauched Don Lorenzo de’ Medici, a memorable Still life of two Hanging Shelducks (Private collection, New York) to go as a pendant to a similar composition now in the Gallerie degli Uffizi by Justus Sustermans. Dandini was a fine draftsman, a splendid colorist and also a talented painter of animals as can be seen in his numerous depictions of the lamb in his paintings of St John and Saint Agnes.

A testament to Dandini’s fame is revealed by the famous Galli Tassi trial in Florence in 1656, a court case involving members of the Dandini family and the patron Galli Tassi. When an opinion poll was taken to determine the most important artists active in Florence at that time, Cesare was the clear winner, followed by his brother Vincenzo, and at a distance were Lorenzo Lippi, Felice Ficherelli, Carlo Dolci, Pignoni, Vignali and Volterrano. Still, with many of his pictures disseminated among private collections, the artist fell into obscurity until the 1960s, when he was revived in scholarly attention by Mina Gregori on the occasion of two exhibitions in the Palazzo Strozzi and Palazzo Borghese. Subsequent shows at the Royal Academy in 1979 and 1986 further fueled a revival of interest in the Florentine Seicento, driven in no small part by the efforts of Charles McCorquodale, Sir Harold Acton, and Roberto Contini.