We have seen in the course of our necessarily short survey that Carlo Dolci lived to the established age of man, and started his work before he was in his teens, that no long journeys or extended sojourns in foreign countries withdrew him from the area of his normal activities; we have seen that he never left Florence save on one occasion. And, as he was working throughout his life, his output would have been uncomfortably large but for the fact that he never allowed a canvas to leave his studio until every stroke that his brain could suggest, and his hand execute, had been added to it. His conscientiousness alone availed to check his output, and so intent was he upon expressing himself as well as he could within the obvious limitations of his gift that he never attempted to grapple with the problems that beset bigger men.
In composition, for example, Carlo Dolci was distinctly deficient; there is no more serious charge against him as an artist than that he could not compose a large figure picture. If he had to devote himself to one, under the terms of some commission from a wealthy patron, he would not hesitate to go to other masters in search of a composition that would suit his purpose. It may be put to his credit that he did these things openly, he does not seem to have claimed for himself the work that he borrowed from his contemporaries. In fact, it is quite probable that he knew his gifts did not lie in the direction of composition; he regarded it as something that did not matter very much, and was quite content with the praises that his single figure subjects received. One cannot help thinking that he would have been very successful as a painter of miniatures.
Dolci impresses us to-day with the feeling that he was a man who struggled valiantly and conscientiously with a very considerable gift, which he had neither the time nor the will to develop along the lines that lead from mediocrity to remarkable achievement. Then again we must remember that the fates were not auspicious, he was not taken in the early days to the studio of a first-class master, he did not have the inspiration of great work. By the time the seventeenth century had travelled over a third of its appointed course Florentine art, as we have seen, was hardly in a very flourishing condition. The days of great experiments and earnest striving had passed, and, although Venice is comparatively close to Florence, and was full even in Carlo Dolci's days of some of the world's most inspiring work, although the Venetians were delighted by Carlo Dolci's rich vivid colouring, and commissioned many pictures from his brush, there is no evidence to show that he ever visited the great city of the Adriatic, or that he found the time or the inclination to learn any of the lessons she has to teach.