Poetry says something...

While I was printing up some pictures for Christmas presents last night, I realized that I’ve said goodbye to a lot of my art in 2009—like this mixed media piece: Poetry says something nothing else can. I worked on it on and off for at least five years, and with the deadline of my show approaching in October, I said to myself: This is something you must finish. Suddenly, it all came together. Then Poetry spoke to someone and now has a new home.
Thinking about the whole process in retrospect, I can see I was so enamored with the central image (it’s a painting by the 17th century Italian artist Carlo Dolci called Poetry) that I couldn’t make a any kind of decision I felt was visually worthy of her. Once I made her less personal and focused on the act of writing poetry, I was able to finish.
The interesting thing is that Carlo Dolci was a notoriously slow painter himself. “[S]ometimes he would take weeks over a single foot,” wrote his biographer Baldinucci. By all accounts, Dolci was a very sensitive man. He suffered from depression and went into a decline triggered by Luca Giordano’s 1682 visit to Florence. Luca joked that his own rapid style had brought him a fortune, but Dolci would starve if he kept taking so long. Dolci also had a daughter called Agnese who made copies of his work and was a painter in her own right.
The image I used of Poetry seems to be the one around that's available to scan. I got her from a book my godmother gave me years ago …a 1908 bio of Carlo Dolci by George Hay. The reproductions are all hand-tinted because there was no color photography in those days. If you want to check out the book, you can read it online here.And by a curious coincidence, a miniature portrait painted of Dolci painted in the 18th century by Nardelli is available on Ebay right now for $1795.00 U.S (see below). I'm thinking it's time to buy myself a lottery ticket pronto.