Presumed Portrait Of Bartolomeo Landini Circa 1640 - Cesare Dandini's Workshop

Oil on canvas. Clad in a Burgundy-red burlap, the torso barred by a dark scarf embroidered with gold threads, and the collar encircled by a soft and drooping strawberry called "confused", this ephebe is wearing a wide orange beret topped with an ostrich feather. Here we find Dandini's preference for representations of characters in half-figures with strong contrasts of chiaroscuro and "snowy" skin tones. Our lascivious look is an illustration of Dandini's taste for languidly exploring his male models to better capture their sensibility. Although the subject is portrayed in the opposite direction, the costume, the pose but also the features of the face inevitably bring us back to the portrait preserved in the Pitti Palace of Florence. And especially to another similar painting sold by the auction house Dorotheum Vienna in 2012. If we consider that our painting is a portrait of Bartolomeo Landini (musician of the great dukes of Tuscany), in any case the young man identified as such in four earlier versions (including those mentioned above), it can be dated around 1640. Indeed, these paintings are located in the mid-1630s by Sandro Bellesi. And our young man seems to be five years older. Finally, the 17th century historian Filippo Baldinucci himself, in his biographical notes on Cesare Dandini, evokes "a beautiful head of a young man wearing a beret representing the musician Bartolomeo Landini". We have chosen to present you the work in a spectacular late 17th century carved and gilded wood frame decorated with large curled and stylized leaves. Dimensions: 60 x 45 cm The view - 95 x 78 cm with the frame Cesare Dandini (Florence 1596 - Id. 1657) is the older brother of Vincenzo (to whom he teaches painting) and Pietro's uncle (or Pier). According to the art historian Filippo Baldinucci (1624 - 1697), Cesare was trained in the workshops of Francesco Curradi, Cristofano Allori and Domenico Cresti. Its peculiar beauty - Giovanni Battista Cecchi's engraving from a vanished self-portrait - makes him a model for his masters. His painting, first influenced by the fifecento of Pontormo and Bronzino and sensitive to the art of Caravaggio, is characterized by a clear and smooth manner aimed at the still perfection of his subjects. In 1621, Dandini enrolled at the Accademia del Disegno in Florence, and in the 1630s he worked for many great patrons, including Lorenzo de Medici, who was already his main benefactor. He develops a theatrical and idealized painting that combines realistic and classic elements, both in form and through its palette of colors. In addition to the many paintings in the Tuscan churches, his paintings can be admired in the world's greatest museums: Charity at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Renaud and Armide at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Moses defending the girls of Jethro at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin ... Literature: S. Bellesi, Cesare Dandini, 1996. F. Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue, 1681. M. Gregori, Painting in Florence, 1994