“Of these inventions alluding to moral things, he made a great many”

Purchased on the Florence antiques market in the 1990s, this painting is in a satisfactory state of preservation, as is particularly apparent in the dazzling colours of the paint film, dominated by a combination of intense blue, red and white tones. 

It was presented as an unseen work by Cesare Dandini at the Seicento fiorentino exhibition in 1986-87,¹ before being exhibited in Florence again five years later in the exhibition dedicated to the collection of Gianfranco Luzzetti. The attribution to Dandini was accepted unreservedly and literature on the painting has focused on the iconography of the work, which shows two sumptuously attired young men, characterised by the presence of attributes linked to the profession of arms: a pistol, embellished by silver inserts, for the figure in the foreground; a ceremonial visored helmet in late- Mannerist style for his companion, captured in the act of holding up a medal and raising his right index finger, perhaps intimating silence. The execution of half figures with allegorical meanings is a typical and well-known trait of Dandini’s work, as observed by his first biographer Filippo Baldinucci: “Of these inventions alluding to moral things, he made a great many”.² There is still some difficulty in fully deciphering the symbolic message entrusted to the two young men at arms in the Cerruti Collection canvas. Contini acknowledged the comparison between what can be achieved with the power of weapons with what can be achieved with money,³ while Mario Scalini,⁴ recognising the medal and the helmet as artefacts by Gasparo Mola, respectively one of the medals coined for Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy in 1605-06 and the visor with winged dragon made a few years later for Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici (now conserved in the Museo del Bargello in Florence), suggested that the two young men could be the sons of the grand duke, Giancarlo (1611-63) and Mattias (1613-67), linking the execution of the painting to Mola’s patronage between 1625 and 1630. However, as rightly observed by Sandro Bellesi, there are a few obstacles to Scalini’s theory: the headgear seen in Dandini’s canvas corresponds only very generically to the ceremonial helmet made by Mola for Cosimo II, while the physiognomy of the two figures seems rather stereotyped and not really comparable to the portraits of the two descendants of the House of Medici. Last but not least, we need to consider the style of the painting, which does not allow it to be placed so early on in the painter’s catalogue, as Contini also reiterated.⁵ Effectively speaking, the sophisticated colouring, the ease of execution and the smooth Baroque composition of the canvas, known by the conventional title of Two Young Men at Arms, suggest the more mature phase of Dandini’s production, when he was working on the altarpiece with the Conversion of St Paul in Vallombrosa, datable to 1647.⁶ They also reveal the complex stratification of his figurative language, able to combine echoes of Roman Baroque with a fascination with the classicism of Guido Reni and the naturalistic iconography of Salvator Rosa, who worked in Florence for some time in the 1640s.⁷ 

A detailed preparatory study in oil on canvas has been identified in a private British collection for the head of the young man with a pistol.⁸ 

Paolo Vanoli

¹ Contini, in Florence 1986-87, pp. 72, 309, no. 1.156.

² Baldinucci 1681-1728, ed. 1974-75, vol. IV, p. 557.

³ Contini, in Florence 1986-87.

⁴ Scalini, in Florence 1991.

⁵ Contini, in Florence 1991.

⁶ Bellesi 1996, pp. 153-154, no. 98.

⁷ Contini, in Florence 1991.

⁸ Bellesi 1996, p. 142, no. 86.