Lot 120: Saint Dorothy of Cappadocia; and Saint Catherine of Alexandria

Cesare Dandini (Florence 1596-1657) Saint Dorothy of Cappadocia; and Saint Catherine of Alexandria both signed 'Di Cesare Dandini' (on the reverse) oil on canvas, unlined, octagonal, the corners made up the first: 47 ½ x 39 7/8 in. (120.5 x 101.4 cm.); and the second: 47 ¾ x 40 3/8 in. (121.3 x 102.4 cm.) (2)a pair

120.5 x 101.4 cm.

London, Royal Academy, 20 January - 18 February, and Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 27 February - 28 March 1979, Painting in Florence 1600-1700, nos. 12 and 13.

E. Waterhouse, 'Florentine Painting in the Seventeenth Century', Apollo, January 1979, p. 36, fig. 4 (St. Dorothy). C. McCorquodale, 'A Dark Century. The English Taste for Later Tuscan Painting', The Connoisseur, March 1979, p. 176, nos. 8 & 9, illustrated. G. Cantelli, Repertorio della Pittura Fiorentina del Seicento, Fiesole, 1983, p. 57. S. Bellesi, Cesare Dandini, Torino, 1996, p. 168, no. 113, illustrated.

Del Chiaro collection, Florence. Probably acquired by Francis Dashwood, 2nd Bt., later Lord Le Despencer (1708-1781), and by descent at West Wycombe Park, Buckinghamshire; Christie's, London, 11 April 1986, lot 76 (£54,000), when acquired by the present owner.

These unlined and beautifully preserved canvases are exceptionally fine examples of Dandini’s elegant late style which secured him a reputation as one of the leading Baroque painters in seicento Florence. According to legend, Saint Dorothy was a maiden of Caesarea in Cappadocia who suffered martyrdom under the Emperor Diocletian (reigned 284-305 A.D.) for her Christian faith and her refusal to marry on the grounds that she was already the bride of Christ. On her way to execution, she was accosted by the notary Theophilus, who mockingly asked her to send him roses from paradise. When they duly arrived by angelic courier, Theophilus too was converted, and eventually, like Saint Dorothy, was martyred and achieved sainthood. Saint Catherine lived in 3rd century Alexandria. Angered by her preaching and conversions, Maximin II, who shared the Imperial crown with Constantine the Great and Licinius, ordered her execution on four spiked wheels. After these were destroyed by a thunderbolt from heaven, she was beheaded. Bellesi dates the pictures to the 1640s (op. cit. p. 169) and compares them stylistically with the Calliope in the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, the Allegoria della Commedia in the Cassa di Risparmio, Prato, and the Madonna and Child in the Bigongiari collection, Florence. Saint Dorothy’s remote and enigmatic expression, the cool tonality of her flesh, and the strong colouring employed for her dress and drapery, are all characteristic of Dandini’s fully evolved style that owed much to the artist’s training from his formative years with Cristofano Allori and Domenico Passignano. Saint Dorothy’s unusual headdress adorned with a crown of flowers compares closely with that worn by the protagonist in Dandini’s late masterpiece, the Allegory of Charity, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. An autograph replica of the Saint Catherine can be found in the church of Santi Quirico e Lucia all’ Ambrogiana, Montelupo Fiorentino. The pictures were probably acquired by Sir Francis Dashwood during his trip to Italy in 1739 when he stopped at Florence before moving on to Rome early the following year. They were possibly purchased through Dashwood's agents, Anthony Lefroy and Peter Charron, who shipped from the nearby port of Leghorn consignments of pictures and antique statuary for the embellishment of his seat in Buckinghamshire, West Wycombe Park. Dashwood was one of the most idiosyncratic spirits of the age. Known to his intimates as 'St. Francis', he was a founding member of the Society of Diletttanti, a politician, a prodigious rake, and a man of exceptional taste, as the originality of West Wycombe shows. Dashwood's debauched activities in Italy were legendary and his later role in the formation of the Society of Monks, who met at the converted Cistercian abbey of Medmenham for mock-religious ceremonial drinking, only advanced his reputation as one of the great libertines of his age. He was the subject of a number of irreverent portraits including that by Adriaen Carpentiers, in which he is shown in the guise of Pope Innocent toasting a female herm (private collection). In another by William Hogarth (private collection), Dashwood is depicted as Saint Francis but, in a parody of the saint's traditional iconography, he is shown contemplating a female nude that has taken the place of a crucifix.