Pietro Dandini (Florence, April 12, 1646 – November 26, 1712), attributed, The Finding of Moses

Pietro Dandini (Florence, April 12, 1646 – November 26, 1712), attributed. The Finding of Moses Oil on canvas, 105 x 206 cm With frame, 116 x 219 cm Born, as reported by the scholar Baldinucci, in 1646 in Florence within a family of artists, Pietro (or Pier) Dandini received his first rudiments in painting from his uncle Vincenzo. Information about his life's trajectory is known to us through his very detailed biography, written a few years after his death, by Francesco Saverio Baldinucci: the fact that, within a very limited time frame from his passing, an independent biography was dedicated to him demonstrates the great critical fortune that the painter, already from the very beginning of the eighteenth century, enjoyed in the Tuscan area. Following his Florentine training, Dandini undertook a study trip to Venice, also tangentially touching the centers of Modena, Parma, and Bologna: in this period, the Tuscan had the opportunity to observe and carefully study the works of Titian, Veronese, Correggio, and the Carracci, which left an indelible mark on his branched-out visual imagination, markedly influencing his entire future production. In his early works, including A Miracle of Blessed Giovacchino Piccolomini – which the scholar Cinelli praised highly in 1677 – and the Assumption of the Virgin in S. Verdiana, a decided influence is noticeable with respect to the production of Pietro da Cortona, perceived as an ideal master. Starting in the 1690s, Dandini received important public commissions in Tuscany, often being hired by the Grand Duke himself: in 1591, for example, the artist frescoed an Allegory of Tuscany for the vault of the portrait hall of the Uffizi, a work highly acclaimed by the now elderly artist Livio Mehus; other members of the Grand Ducal family availed themselves of Dandini on multiple occasions as a decorator of their residences: Grand Duchess Vittoria, at Palazzo Pitti and Poggio Imperiale, and Cardinal Francesco Maria at the Villa di Lappeggi: here Dandini, in 1703, frescoed a ceiling with the Chariot of the Sun and six battle scenes of extreme quality that until the 1970s were considered to be by Borgognone (Rudolph, 1972; Gregori, 1978). Given the rarity of this painter's paintings in public Italian and foreign collections, considerations regarding his work can mainly be drawn from the works in churches in Florence or other Tuscan locations. Among the works certainly attributed to him stands out the altarpiece in S. Giovannino dei Cavalieri in Florence, with the Beheading of the Baptist, one of the masterpieces of the second Florentine seventeenth century. Although it is known from contemporary or slightly later writings relative to his life's trajectory that he also sent works to Germany and Poland (F. S. Baldinucci, p. 280; Moucke, 1762), he was undoubtedly mainly active locally, where he distinguished himself decisively and was not lacking commissions, not only for his great talent but also for the affable character that distinguished him and the literary and musical culture that procured him many respected friends. The themes related to the childhood of Moses have enjoyed great fortune, from an iconographic point of view, in the 17th century, primarily because in them one glimpsed the prefiguration of Christological themes illustrated in the pages of the four canonical gospels and the apocryphal texts. For example, in the adventurous story of the finding of little Moses by the pharaoh's daughter, one read the prefiguration of the Flight into Egypt of the Holy Family, in which Jesus escapes from the persecution of the pagan king Herod. The finding of Moses was also often interpreted as the symbol of man's triumph over the adversities that threaten him and grip his tormented existence. On various occasions throughout his entire career, Dandini presents, in his canvases, episodes from the life of Moses: suffice it to think, in addition to the beautiful canvas in question, of Moses as a child trampling on the Pharaoh's crown, currently at the Crociani art gallery in Montepulciano. In this case, the Florentine artist describes the scene of the discovery of the prophet child: in a landscape that recalls the verdant territories of the Lazio countryside crossed by the Tiber river, a large group of female figures moves. In the foreground, a servant hurries to save the little body of the child from the waters of the river, abandoned in a wicker basket visible at her feet. The woman is about to offer the newborn to the Queen of Egypt, richly dressed and with the crown – a typical attribute of Dandini's patrician women – on her head, who opens, in a gesture of extreme sweetness, her arms to welcome him, amid the astonished eyes of the gyneceum that crowds around her. In the painting, one perceives many of the crucial characteristics of Dandini's activity: the rapid and material brushstroke, the decided and rosy tone of the complexions, the sinuous and strongly connoted traits of the physiognomies of the faces, and the dense crowding of well-socially determined figures within the compositions.