Florence, of course, began to talk of the boy painter, for a prodigy is neither to be despised nor overlooked in any wealthy city. His reputation passed from palace to studio, gathering commissions on its travels, and in a very little time young Dolci had all the work he could do. He painted the portrait of the head of the Bardi family, and that of his nephew John de Bardi. He painted a portrait of Raphael Ximenes. When he was not painting portraits he turned his attention to still life, painting some fruit and flower pictures for his Confessor, Canon Carpanti. His next work was for Lorenzo de Medici, an "Adoration," for which he asked twenty scudi and received forty, and then he painted the subject again on a rather larger canvas for one of the Genitori family, who paid seventy scudi. This picture was sold at the owner's death and realised just four times the sum that had been paid for it, while some pictures of the Evangelists painted by Dolci for one of his Confessors realised nearly twenty times as much as he had received.
It may be suggested without much fear of contradiction, that the success of the painter's earliest work was not the best thing that could have happened to him. If he had been compelled to develop slowly and in the face of adverse circumstance, it is more likely that Carlo Dolci would have given the world work of more lasting merit, but circumstance forced him to paint for patrons at a time when he should have been studying for himself. The style and method of his labours were settled for him, his development was limited and circumscribed; with his native gifts he might have travelled far had he not been hampered by these early successes.
[Illustration: PLATE IV.--THE ETERNAL FATHER
This plate, so characteristic of the sentiment of Dolci, is only part of an altar-piece in fresco, painted for one of the religious houses in the middle of the artist's career.]
From his youth Carlo Dolci had been devout, the rules of the brotherhood of St. Benedict appealed to him very strongly. He passed much of his scanty leisure within the walls of the brethren in Florence, and, probably under the influence of his advisers there, made a firm resolve to paint nothing but religious subjects, or those that illustrated some one of the cardinal virtues. At the back of each canvas it was his custom to write the date upon which he had started the work and the name of the saint to whom the day was dedicated. In Holy Week his brush was devoted entirely to subjects relating to the Passion.