Dolci then received a commission from the Empress Claude to paint a canvas for the Imperial Palace, but as she died in the following April this work was not completed. But he painted a fine martyrdom of St. Lorenzo and a striking picture of St. Francis of Assisi for the Duke. Then came more commissions from Venice, and the painter worked at half-a-dozen well-known pictures for that city. These pictures showed, perhaps, even more finish than those that had gone before, because concentration seems to have been the keynote of the painter's life, and while other men in all ages have used art as a means to an end, and have been unable to avoid the social temptations that have beset them in the day of their success, Carlo Dolci, like Tintoretto before him, had no care for anything save his work. So long as health was good he desired nothing better than to devote the whole day to labour, and his closest and most complete attention to what he had in hand. Of course, one only compares Dolci with Tintoretto in point of industry; all the developments that the great Venetian had made, all the truths he had discovered, were either unknown to Dolci or ignored by him. He was painting for a public that knew very little about art, and regarded exquisite finish as the surest sign of artistic accomplishment. Consequently the painter did not seek to develop along lines of independent thought; he had no pressing need to do so while everything he could reasonably require in the way of patronage and commission was at his command.
In 1682 Luca Giordano came to Florence to paint frescoes in the Chapel of the Corsini Palace. He admired Carlo Dolci's work very much, but used to rally him about the time he spent on it. "You do beautiful work, my Carlo," he said; "but how can you make it pay when you give hours and hours to that close finish? When I think of the 150,000 scudi I have earned since I took up the brush, I begin to fear that you will die hungry."
[Illustration: PLATE VII.--PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST
This is one of the collection of portraits of artists painted, each by his own hand. As may be seen from the canvas, Dolci executed it in 1674 when he was approaching his sixtieth year. The canvas hangs in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.]