(Florence 1596–1657)
Saint Mary Magdalen,
oil on canvas, 116 x 99 cm, framed

We are grateful to Sandro Bellesi and Daniele Benati for independently confirming the attribution of the present painting. Bellesi dates this work to Dandini’s late production.

Dandini was a proponent of the Florentine devotion to strongly coloured and elegantly crafted compositions. His polished painterly technique would be continued by his younger brother Vincenzo Dandini. Their nephew Pietro Dandini was Vincenzo’s pupil, and Pietro’s two sons, Ottaviano and Vincenzo, a Jesuit, also worked as painters in Florence. Cesare Dandini trained first with Francesco Curradi, then briefly with Cristofano Allori, and later with Domenico Passignano. The limited knowledge there is of his life is based on Filippo Baldinucci’s (1624–1697) biography, in which is recorded that Dandini posed as Curradi’s model for numerous Madonnas on account of his appearance and was offended by the bad manners in Allori’s studio, a reaction that accords with the sense of refinement in his art. Curradi had introduced the young man to court. However, Dandini also seems to have developed a very restless lifestyle. Baldinucci writes ‘[...] incominciò a dar bando agli studi, e poco meno al dipingere, ed in quella vece a’ spendere il suo tempo ne’ passatempi e nella caccia [...]’ (see F. Baldinucci, Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, Florence 1681–1728, 6 voll.). He matriculated in 1621 at the Accademia del Disegno. His earliest known painting is a Pietà dated 1625 and located in the sacristy of the church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence. By 1631, the year in which he painted Zerbino and Isabella (Florence, Uffizi) for the musician Giovanni Battista Severi and the Virgin and Saints for the church of Santissima Annunziata, he had acquired many patrons, most notably Lorenzo de’ Medici, who would remain his most important supporter.

Dandini developed a theatrical, idealised style that was at once naturalistic, classicising, harmonious in form and colour and restrained in movement and expression. In his late works, such as the present painting, and the Conversion of Saul (1646–47, Vallombrosa, Abbey church), or the Death of Cleopatra (private collection), he introduced more rhetorical gestures and animated movement, reminiscent of Pietro da Cortona and his Florentine contemporary Baldassare Franceschini.

The recently rediscovered Saint Mary Magdalen is an exceptionally fine example of Dandini’s elegant late style which secured him a reputation as one of the leading Baroque painters in the seventeenth-century Florence. It can rightfully be considered a major work by the artist, distinguished by a dramatic treatment of light and bright, radiant colours. The skillfully rendered face and the soft, full lips, Mary Magdalen’s remote and enigmatic expression, the cool tonality of her flesh, and the strong colouring, particularly the striking blue employed for her dress and drapery, are all characteristic of Dandini’s fully evolved style which owed much to the artist’s training from his formative years. It compares well to other works of his late and mature years, such as a pair of paintings depicting Saint Dorothy of Cappadocia and Saint Catherine of Alexandria which was sold at Christie’s in 2015 (Christie’s, London, 18 November 2015, lot 120). A drawing illustrated in Sandro Bellesi’s monograph of the artist (see S. Bellesi, Cesare Dandini, Turin 1996, p. 48, no. 48s) shows an upward gazing young woman in a very similar pose and gesture of the hand to the ones in the present painting. The pose also recalls the one of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in a private collection (see S. Bellesi, Ibid., 1996, p. 162, cat. no. 105).