(Florence 1646–1712)
A young man playing the mandolin (Ottaviano or Valentino Dandini?),
oil on canvas, 95 x 79 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly Maria Brigida Dandini;
art market;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Sandro Bellesi for confirming the attribution to Pietro Dandini on the basis of a photograph. Bellesi suggests that the young man in the present painting may be Ottaviano Dandini, the artist’s eldest son.

We are also grateful to Federico Berti for his assistance in cataloguing the present painting and for alternatively suggesting that the young man in the present painting should be identified as Valentino Dandini.

The present painting relates to a family portrait by Pietro Dandini in the guise of Erminia among the Shepherds (see S. Bellesi, Ottaviano Dandini o l’epilogo di una dinastia di pittori fiorentini, in: Paragone, 33-34, 2000, p. 88, plate 88), in which the artist appears surrounded by his own children. One of these children is identified as the aforementioned artist’s eldest son Ottaviano (a future artist who continued the family business), and he plays the same instrument as the figure in the present painting is holding.

However, Berti argues that the identification of the musician in the group portrait as Ottaviano (born in 1681) is incorrect, as the figure of Erminia may in fact be a portrait of Ottaviano. Previously the group portrait was thought to include only three of the artist’s four children. Furthermore, there is a description of a portrait where the artist is surrounded by all his four children: ‘The family of Piero Dandini himself, that is, the Portraits of himself, of his wife Brigida Ciocchi and his sons Ottaviano, Valentino and Vincenzio, and Anna Maria’ (see S. Bellesi, Una vita inedita di Pier Dandini, in: Rivista d’Arte , XLIII, 1991, p. 175). The group portrait was in the home of Maria Brigida Dandini, where another portrait was also described as, ‘another wonderful portrait of Priest Valentino his son [by Pier Dandini], when he was a young man’. This may be the present painting.

Therefore, it is possible that the child playing a mandolin in the group portrait is Valentino Dandini (1684–1749), blond, like the young player with a mandolin in the present painting.

Pietro Dandini was one of the most prolific and successful artists in late seventeenth century Florence. He was trained by his uncle Vincenzo, and then, after important educational trips to Northern Italy, he played a leading role in his native city, both as a fresco painter, and also executed serveral paintings for churches and for the Florentine noble families, including the reigning Medici, who employed the artist on numerous occasions.