Anthony spied this on the zoom hangout a while ago, and I said I would upload, but being less than pleased with it held off, until I cared no longer about it - that time is now!
This in my opinion is his best picture by far. There’s something about the expression, light and upward gaze just works for me, so I had a crack at it. Now there are a bunch of things off, the feature placement is critical and I have this wrong which makes it look like a different person, so fail there. Then I haven’t gone for a smooth finish either, which I should have so that sucks. I think after I realised this wasn’t easily corrected I kinda gave up, but covered the canvas anyway, I wasn’t going to do the stars but thought it was probably good practise as I’ve not painted anything like that before. His edges are also much softer, so that’s something I will aim at in future too.
Pretty cool eh! As an aside - Dolci was a notoriously slow painter, very deliberate and methodical. Apparently he witnessed Luca Giordano knock a section of a work out in a few hours that would have taken him months, and fell into a massive steaming depression about it. So at least I have that over him, as I think mine was about 14 hours all in to this point.
My main issue to critique is, what would the best approach be for getting the blue fabric? I believe I made a mistake in that after a faint sketch for placement I went straight in with ultramarine and Prussian blue and tried to get the shapes and values right with those, but I hadn’t anticipated how transparent they were, even chucking them on real thick, so I started mixing with white in varying degrees to make them opaque and this kinda worked - but close up there’s a hint of patchiness caused by uneven layers underneath showing through. So all the blue oils I have are transparent, but I understand that cerulean is an opaque blue, so I could get some of that. Alternatively should I have just done a grisaille or monochrome, got it spot on with values and then glazed it. Any thoughts/recommendations welcome!
Hi Martin. This is a beautiful painting to copy (I adore that upward facing palm in the original) although I was not familiar with Dolci). You definitely did a great job with the copy. I’ve never attempted one like this. I’m no art historian, but I believe in order to get those soft edges, super soft value gradations, and luminous darks, you would have to start with a grisaille, apply glazes, and then scumble very small amounts of white or similar into the wet glaze to bring back the lights each time, creating a sfumato effect. I learned this process from a tutorial and I’ve used it in some paintings successfully. I can send you the link if you are interested.
Sure - I’d certainly be interested to look at the tutorial you mention. yes, my problem in the main was rushing it, so all my own doing, and once the likeness was ruined I didn’t feel like spending time rendering it out. So I intend at some point to just do a study of the face, and also that hand you mention (stunning isn’t it!), then I wont feel so pressed to get a move on in order to realise the whole piece.
Incidentally, this seems to stick out for me as Dolci’s best work, not a great amount of the others are anywhere near as impressive in my opinion, it has that delicate combination of softly rendered good looks, dramatic pose and chiaroscuro which I really enjoy. Although I would happily leave the stars/halo out (and almost did).
I’d probably like to do a Mona Lisa face too come to think of it, just to see if I can hit the sfumato about the eyes on the right note. Although too many ideas, too little time at present.
I posted a thread about Tom Keating the other day, if you scroll down on that - the episodes regarding Titian and Rembrandt are very heavy on glazes and scumbles which you may well be interested in checking out, they’re quite short.
I see you are a lover of Baroque painting. I lived in Madrid for a few years and spent a lot of time at El Prado, enjoying Velázquez, Murillo, Ribera, Caravaggio, Titian, etc.
