Masterpieces in Colour

Carlo Dolci

IF, in dealing with the life and work of Carlo Dolci, a writer sets down an apology by way of preface, it is in recognition of the fact that the art form of this painter, for all that it is serious and beautiful,[12] is one of the first that we outgrow. There are artists in plenty, and their names are written large in the roll of fame, whose work makes no immediate appeal to us. Rembrandt, Velazquez, Tintoretto, one and all must be approached with an eye that has received some measure of training, and then the beauty of their work brings perennial enjoyment, though at first it could not be easily seen. Other men who lived and thought and wrought on quite a different plane appeal to the eye right away. Their work conceals nothing, its beauties are patent and entirely free from reticence or subtlety; such painters bear the same relation to the really great masters of the art as the writers of the songs sung at Ballad Concerts bear to the composers of the Pastoral, Unfinished or Pathetic Symphonies. Yet in their way it must be admitted that both the[14] writer of ballads, and the painter of pictures that please, do a certain service. They help the uninitiated along the path that leads to higher things; they are a support that the timid explorer may rely upon until he has learnt to walk alone. There comes a time when the painter of pretty pictures and the writer of pretty songs cease to please us; we have mastered what we are pleased to regard as the tricks of both, and feel a little contempt for them. Then, perhaps, some of us are even anxious to forget our former attitude towards the men who charmed our youthful fancy. We think we have become as gods, knowing good from evil, and in this mood we ignore the fine points of work we criticise. Carlo Dolci was in many ways a man who never grew up, but he had a keen and almost childish sense of beauty and of righteousness, and he sought to[16] express it on canvas, leaving the deeper truths of art, and the more important aspects of life, to be treated by those who cared to deal with them. Beauty obvious, palpable; sentimental virtue as broad and unblushing as that of Edmund Spenser's heroines, were the themes that the artist chose to dwell upon, and it would be in the last degree unwise to forget that such a message as his will make a strong appeal to the rising generation as long as the world endures, and that by the time those who have been pleased are pleased no longer, there will be others waiting to take their place. Moreover Carlo Dolci laboured with a certain measure of sincerity until the message he had chosen to deliver to his generation became as true to him as the visions that helped Fra Angelico while he laboured in the cells of St. Mark's Convent in Florence.[17] To-day in Florence and in Rome the younger generation seek the pictures of Carlo Dolci and find in them a realisation of certain ideals. We may be a little shocked or even contemptuous, but to recognise the claims of those who are coming on as well as the claims of those who are passing, is to keep a sane outlook on life. For the world was not made for the middle-aged and the experienced, any more than it was created for the immature enthusiasts. There is a place on this planet for us all. Carlo Dolci painted, or over-painted, the romance of life. It was his misfortune that he always saw it in the same way. He was like a musician who, having all the keys of the piano at his disposal, regards anything more than the simplest modulation from tonic to dominant and back again as an extravagance to which he must not surrender. Nowadays[18] the horizon of art has widened very considerably; even in literature the obvious has passed out of fashion, but in the rather degenerate days when Carlo Dolci lived physical beauty was in a sense the keynote of all art work. No heroine could reach the last chapter of a romance in safety unless she chanced to be equipped with a measure of beauty that defied the assaults of time. Beauty other than physical was entirely overlooked, or was associated deliberately with good looks. Handsome sinners were as far removed from the public ken as ugly saints. In many senses the world was younger than it is to-day; indeed, it has aged more in the past two hundred years than in five hundred that went before. Consequently the living painter of prettiness stands now at a certain disadvantage. Perhaps he is more handicapped in the struggle for recognition now than he[19] will be a hundred years hence, because we have but recently taken possession of our heritage of culture and judgment and are a little anxious to forget that we have been young. It may be granted that while a large collection of the works of a painter who laboured for all time pleases our every mood, it would be hard to live in a room in which Dolci's pictures dominated the walls. Swinburne has expressed the position very simply in the first volume of his famous "Poems and Ballads": "A month or twain to live on honeycomb is pleasant; but one tires of scented time." We suffer from the painter's excess of sweetness, from a sentiment that comes dangerously near to sentimentality, from a quality that is almost as cloying as saccharine; but taken in the proper proportions, relegated to their proper place, the pictures[20] of Carlo Dolci are bound to please, and we feel perhaps a little envious of the man who throughout his life could see nothing that was not gracious and pleasing, and moral and sweet. As we have said, he has his counterpart in literature and in music, and had he not been forced by circumstances he could not control into the immediate neighbourhood of men who had so much more to say than he, Dolci would have received more attention from his contemporaries and from succeeding generations. But, perhaps unfortunately for himself, Dolci is to be found only in the best artistic company of the world. His work hangs in Florence and in Rome cheek by jowl with that of the world's great masters; before the flame of their genius his light pales and becomes insignificant. Yet he is by no means to be despised, for he saw through his own little[21] window a view of the pageantry of life that must have made him happy, and was destined to stimulate generations that have passed and generations still unborn. His pictures do not lack sincerity, and do not fail to express the best that was in him. He saw Holy Families and saints and living sitters with an eye that insisted upon beauty and righteousness. He painted with exquisite finish, with delicate colouring, and with a measure of enthusiasm that the years have not dimmed. In short, though many men have done better, he did his best, and the pictures that are reproduced in these pages indicate very fairly the measure of his achievement, even while they do nothing to conceal his limitations. Moreover, while greater artists have had their biographers by the score, it is hard to find in the literature of Great Britain, France, or Italy any work dealing even in the simplest[22] fashion with this painter's life, though it does not deserve to be neglected. Dolci would seem to have been ignored altogether, and this attitude of contempt is quite unfair, because no man who has pleased so many simple minds is unworthy of our attention, and it is more reasonable to praise a man for the gifts that were his than to ignore him on account of what he lacked. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 41836
Author: Hay, George
Release Date: Jan 13, 2013
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Hare, T. Leman (Thomas Leman), 1872-1935