Cleveland Museum of Art

Adoration of the Shepherds

Carlo Dolci

Date

c. 1670

Medium

oil on canvas

Culture

Italy, 17th century

Department

European Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The historical significance of the Baroque painter Carlo Dolci, a precocious artist whose skill was recognized early by the leading Florentine patrons of his time, is often diminished due to his traditionalist compositions. Having gained local reputation as a talented portraitist and painter of religious narrative, Dolci's anti-Mannerist technique dismissed many of the leading Baroque trends as superfluous, retaining an unobtrusive and placid style in the manner of those before him. Having been a devout follower of the brotherhood of St. Benedict, Dolci draws upon a strict Christian iconography in his depiction of the shepherds' witness account of the birth of Christ. --Charles Eppley (January 2009)

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