Pietro Dandini

1646 – 1712

Pietro Dandini, part of an Italian family of painters which made a significant contribution to the Florentine Baroque. The polished and elegant style of Cesare Dandini was continued by his younger brother Vincenzo Dandini. Their nephew Pietro Dandini, was Vincenzo's pupil, and Pietro's two sons, Ottaviano (1681-1740) and Vincenzo (1686-1734), a Jesuit, worked as painters in Florence. Pietro Dandini studied with Vincenzo during the 1650s, and he produced his first paintings at the age of 18. Having studied in Venice, Lombardy, Emilia and Rome, he carried out numerous commissions in Florence for frescoes and oil paintings in a style clearly influenced by Pietro da Cortona and Giordano. Principal works are ceiling decorations in fresco in Florence (c. 1685; S Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi), and the Triumph of Hercules and the Allegory of the World, Tyranny and War (1695-96; Florence, Galleria Corsini). He was praised by Baldinucci, his contemporary, as a painter of incomparable vitality, and, more recently, by Cantelli, as one of the most considerable artists in late 17th-century Florence for his combination of new directions, particularly those of Giordano, with the Florentine traditions of precise design, painterly execution and ingenuity of invention.

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