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 oeuvre fell out of favor and into oblivion.