Pier Dandini (Firenze 1646 - 1712), Allegory of Painting

Oil on canvas cm. 95x75,5. Framed The painting is accompanied by an expertise by Prof. Sandro Bellesi.


This elegant Allegory of Painting is attributed by Sandro Bellesi to Pier Dandini, one of the leading protagonists of late Baroque Florentine painting. The young female figure, depicted with palette and brushes within a dark and intimate setting, reveals the artist’s refined pictorial culture, evident in the precious chromatic treatment of the silks, the soft definition of the flesh tones, and the lively freedom of the brushwork.
As noted by Bellesi, the work displays stylistic characteristics referable to the final phase of Dandini’s activity, between the end of the seventeenth century and the first decade of the eighteenth, showing affinities with paintings such as the Allegory of the Arts and Sciences in the Luzzetti Collection and the altarpieces executed for the churches of the Madonna del Giglio and San Niccolò in Prato. The composition also reflects the artist’s openness toward Neo-Venetian developments and sensibilities already approaching the Rocaille taste.