Carlo Dolci combined an emotive Baroque affect with the elegant design and bright colours favoured in his native Florence. He specialized in devotional paintings, stating that it was his "firm intention to paint only works that would inspire the fruits of Christian piety in those who saw them." At the same time, he also earned an international reputation with sophisticated patrons for his polished portraits and lavish still lifes. The process by which Dolci captured the refined details of magnificent textiles and jewellery, and the glowing skin of faces and hands, was a painstaking one: "[s]ometimes he would take weeks over a single foot," his biographer Baldinucci wrote.
