Saint John the Evangelist

Carlo Dolci was the preeminent Florentine painter of the seventeenth century, admired during his lifetime for half-length, single-figure religious subjects painted with a highly refined technique, such as Saint John the Evangelist. Dolci's first known works date to the 1620s, and in 1625 he entered the studio of Jacopo Vignali. By the 1630s, Dolci was enjoying the patronage of such distinguished names as Piero and Cardinal Leopold de'Medici. His paintings combined brilliant color with highly refined surfaces, combining the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio with the softness of Correggio. Francesca Baldassari has dated the present work to circa 1643, before Dolci shifted the focus of his production to the larger, more formally religious works of his later years. Relatively small in scale, it is an intensely personal and intimate work, depicting Saint John, chin in hand, gazing heavenward. The composition is simplified to the point of excluding even the book and eagle, John's traditional attributes. The undefined setting and faint golden halo contribute to the sense of otherworldliness, while Dolci's use of gold paint in the highlights of the hair and halo adds to the richness of the surface. This would have been a painting destined for a private patron, who might model his religious contemplation and self-reflection on that of the depicted saint.

The theme of the Evangelists is one that was revisited by the artist on several occasions. In 1995 Christie's sold another painting of Saint John by Dolci that was originally part of a series of the Four Evangelists, likely painted for Dolci's confessor Canonico Domenico Carpanti (Christie's, New York, 11 January 1995, lot 99). Dr. Francesca Baldassari, who has seen this painting and confirmed its attribution to Carlo Dolci, compares the physiognomy of the saint to that of Christ in a larger composition, Christ in the House of the Pharisee (Statens Museum for Kunst, Stockholm).