C esare D andini
Florence 1596 - 1657
4. Study of arms, hands and male face
(Study for Saint Antonino Pierozzi
and the miracle of the basket of fruit)
Sanguine
197 x 140 mm
Marked lower righ: V.D.g
Unpublished
Provenance:
Ottaviano Dandini, Florence; Targioni Tozzetti,
Florence; Art market, United Kingdom; Florence private
collection.
Cesare Dandini, Sant’Antonio Pierozzi e il miracolo del canestro di
Literature:
frutta, oil on canvas, 116,8 x 147,3 cm, private collection.
S. Bellesi, Una vita inedita di Vincenzo Dandini […], I,
in “Paragone”, 459-463, 1988, pp. 97-123
S. Bellesi, Cesare Dandini, Torino, Artema, 1996. A. Cerboni Baiardi, “Ogni sera disegnava il suo nudo”: appunti su quattro
disegni inediti di Pier Dandini e altro, in “Paragone”, 33-34, 2000, pp. 127-131. S.Bellesi, Cesare Dandini. Addenda al
catalogo dei dipinti, Firenze, Polistampa, 2007. Sotheby’s, Books, prints and drawings, Milan, June 26, 2007. S. Bellesi,
Catalogo dei pittori fiorentini del ‘600 e ‘700, 3 voll., Firenze, Polistampa, 2009
This preparatory study – related to a well-known painting by Cesare Dandini – represents an important addition to the
rather exiguous graphic corpus of the artist. As a matter of fact, there are not many drawings leading back to this refined
Florentine painter. Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, about a century after Cesare’s death, affirmed that his drawings were “not
many, and only drawn for few demanding paintings” 1 .
The oeuvre, to which this paper is related, is the Saint Antonino Pierozzi and the miracle of the basket of fruit (116,8 x
147,3 cm), belonging to a private collection; this painting represents several standing figures, moved by different ‘affetti’:
determination, surprise, curiosity, devoted gratitude. The setting of the figures, which are arranged in a semicircle, is
dominated by a rigorous perspective system. The emotional center of this canvas is the surprise reaction of the farmer, to
whom a miracle has disclosed the importance of the words “Iddio Vel Meriti” (God rewards you), which were said by the
Florence archbishop Antonino Pierozzi (1389 - 1459) as a reward to the gift of a basket of fruit.
The study for the character’s expression and, above all, the expressive gesture that follows such surprise – probably influenced
by the physiognomic researches expressed by Caravaggio in paintings such as the Contarelli Saint Matthew’s martyrdom – are
the main protagonists of the paper. This crucial moment of the oeuvre has been studied with red pencil on white paper,
Dandini’s favorite technique. Here, there is accurate confirmation of the character’s arms, as well as the open hands, and even
details such as the sleeves – although it has to be noted that in the drawing under consideration the elbows are not yet as worn
out as those of the painting. The face of the farmer, first studied by Cesare on a young assistant belonging to his workshop,
in the final oeuvre is properly altered in order to communicate the character’s humble origins.
The completely unreliable 2 “V.D.g.” initials traced on the paper are mistakenly referring to the almost unknown figure of
Vincenzo Dandini il Giovane (1686 - 1734). Trained by the father Pietro, he became a member of the Jesuit order and
moved to Rome in 1720 3 . This attribution was made by the already mentioned Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, an erudite
and naturalist who married Maria Brigida Dandini 4 and inherited about five thousand drawings from the Dandini family
in the mid 18 th century. The sheets were organized in twenty volumes and appointed to the various artists of the Dandini
family by means of their respective initials 5 . These attributions, produced by an ‘amateur’ sometimes about a century after
the realization of the graphic studies, have already been object of past revisions 6 , which have demonstrated that they are not
always reliable – this case included.
( FB )
Actual size