DOLCI

dolci, carlo, or carlino (1616-1686), italian painter, was born in florence in may 1616. he was the grandson of a painter on the mother's side, and became a disciple of jacopo vignali; and when only eleven years of age he attempted a whole figure of st john, and a head of the infant christ, which received extraordinary approbation. he afterwards painted a portrait of his mother, and displayed a new and delicate style which brought him into notice, and procured him extensive employment at florence (from which city he hardly ever moved) and in other parts of italy. dolci used his pencil chiefly in sacred subjects, and bestowed much labour on his pictures. in his manner of working he was remarkably slow. it is said that his brain was affected by seeing luca giordano, in 1682, despatch more business in four or five hours than he could have executed in as many months, and that he hence fell into a state of hypochondria, which compelled him to relinquish his art, and soon brought him to the grave. his works are not very numerous. he generally painted in a small size, although there are a few pictures by him as large as life. he died in florence in january 1686, leaving a daughter (agnese), who arrived at some degree of excellence in copying the works of her father. carlo dolci holds somewhat the same rank in the florentine that sassoferrato does in the roman school. without the possession of much genius, invention or elevation of type, both these artists produced highly wrought pictures, extremely attractive to some tastes. the works of dolci are easily distinguishable by the delicacy of the composition, and by an agreeable tint of colour, improved by judicious management of the chiaroscuro, which gives his figures a striking relief; he affected the use of ultramarine, much loaded in tint. "his pencil," says pilkington, "was tender, his touch inexpressibly neat, and his colouring transparent; though he has often been censured for the excessive labour bestowed on his pictures, and also for giving his carnations more of the appearance of ivory than the look of flesh." all his best productions are of a devout description; they frequently represent the patient suffering of christ or the sorrows of the mater dolorosa. dolci was, in fact, from early youth, exceedingly pious; it is said that during passion week every year he painted a half-figure of the saviour. his sacred heads are marked with pathetic or at least strongly sentimental emotion. there is a want of character in his pictures, and his grouping lacks harmonious unison, but the general tone accords with the idea of the passion portrayed. among the best works of this master are the "st sebastian"; the "four evangelists," at florence; "christ breaking the bread," in the marquess of exeter's collection at burleigh; the "st cecilia" in dresden; an "adoration of the magi"; and in especial "st andrew praying before his crucifixion," in the pitti gallery, his most important composition, painted in 1646; also several smaller pictures, which are highly valued, and occupy honourable places in the richest galleries. (w. m. r.) doldrums (a slang term, _dol_ = dull; cf. tantrum), the region of calms near the equator where the trade-winds die away, a region of constant precipitation in which the weather is close, hot, vaporous and extremely dispiriting. in the old days of sailing vessels, a becalmed ship sometimes lay helpless for weeks. a letter from this region saying "we are in the doldrums" ("in the dumps") seems to have been regarded as written from "the doldrums," which thus became the name of this undesirable locality. dole, a town of eastern france, capital of an arrondissement in the department of jura, 29 m. s.e. of dijon on the paris-lyon railway. pop. (1906) 11,166. it occupies the slope of a hill overlooking the forest of chaux, on the right bank of the doubs, and of the canal from the rhone to the rhine which accompanies that river. the streets, which in general are steep and narrow, contain many old houses recalling, in their architecture, the spanish occupation of the town. the principal buildings are the church of notre dame, a gothic structure of the 16th century; the college, once a jesuit establishment, which contains the library and a museum of paintings and has a chapel of the renaissance period; the hotel-dieu and hotel de ville, both 17th-century buildings; and the law court occupying an old convent of the cordeliers. in the courtyard of the hotel de ville there stands an old tower dating from the 15th century. the birth of louis pasteur (1822) in the town is commemorated by a monument, and there is also a monument to jules grevy. dole is the seat of a sub-prefect and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce and a communal college. metal-founding and the manufacture of fire-pumps, kitchen-ranges and other iron goods, chemical products, machinery, leather, liqueurs and pastry, are among the industries. there is a good trade in agricultural produce and live stock, and in wood, iron, coal and the stone of the vicinity. wine is largely grown in the district. dole, the ancient _dola_, was in roman times the meeting place of several roads, and considerable remains have been found there; in the later middle ages and till 1648 it was the capital of franche comte and seat of a parlement and a university; but in the year 1479 the town was taken by the forces of louis xi., and so completely sacked that only the house of jean vurry, as it is still called, and two other buildings were left standing. it subsequently came into the hands of maximilian of austria, and in 1530 was fortified by charles v. in 1668 and 1674 it was captured by the french and lost its parlement and its university, both of which were transferred by louis xiv. to besancon. dole (from old eng. _dal_, cf. mod. "deal"), a portion, a distribution of gifts, especially of food and money given in charity. the derivation from o. fr. _doel_, late lat. _dolium_, "grief," suggested by the custom of funeral doles, is wrong. in early christian days, st chrysostom says: "doles were used at funerals to procure the rest of the soul of the deceased, that he might find his judge propitious." the distribution of alms to the local poor at funerals was a universal custom in the middle ages. the amount of doles was usually stated in the will. thus in 1399 eleanor, duchess of gloucester, ordered that fifteen poor men should carry torches at her funeral, "each having a gown and hood lined with white, breeches of blue cloth, shoes and a shirt, and twenty pounds amongst them." later doles usually took the form of bequests of land or money, the interest or rent of which was to be annually employed in charity. often the distribution took place at the grave of the donor. thus one william robinson of hull at his death in 1708 left money to buy annually a dozen loaves, costing a shilling each, to be given to twelve poor widows at his grave every christmas. lenten doles were also formerly common. a will of 1537 bade a barrel of white herrings and a case of red herrings be given yearly to the poor of clavering, essex, to help them tide over the fast. one or two london doles are still distributed, e.g. that of st peter's, walworth, where a christmas dinner is each year served to 300 parish poor in the crypt. no one under sixty is eligible, and the dinner is unique in that it is cooked in the church. a pilgrim's dole of bread and ale can be claimed by all wayfarers at the hospital of st cross, winchester. this is said to have been founded by william of wykeham. emerson, when visiting winchester, claimed and received the dole. what were known as _scrambling doles_, so called because the meat and bread distributed were thrown among the poor to be scrambled for, were not uncommon in england. such a dole existed at st briavel's, gloucestershire, baskets of bread and cheese cut into small squares being thrown by the churchwardens from the gallery into the body of the church on whit sunday. at wath near ripon a testator in 1810 ordered that forty penny loaves should be thrown from the church leads at midnight on every christmas eve. the best known dole in the united states is the "leake dole of bread." john leake, a millionaire dying in 1792, left £1000 to trinity church, new york, the income to be laid out in wheaten loaves and distributed every sabbath morning after service. the dole still survives, though the day has been altered to saturday, each week sixty-seven loaves being given away. dolerite (from gr. [greek: doleros], deceptive), in petrology, the name given by hauy to those basaltic rocks which are comparatively coarse grained and nearly, if not quite, holocrystalline. as may be inferred from their highly crystalline state they are very often intrusive, and occur as dikes and sills, but many of them form lava flows. their essential minerals are those of basalt, viz. olivine, augite and plagioclase felspar, while hornblende, ilmenite, apatite and biotite are their commonest accessory ingredients. the chemical and microscopic features of these minerals agree generally with those presented in the basalts, and only their exceptional peculiarities need be mentioned here. many dolerites are porphyritic and carry phenocrysts of olivine, augite and plagioclase felspar (or of one or more of these). others, probably the majority, are non-porphyritic, and these are generally coarser grained than the ground-mass of the former group, though lacking their large conspicuous phenocrysts. the commonest type of structure in dolerite is the ophitic, which results from the felspar of the rock having crystallized before the augite; the latter mineral forms shapeless masses in which the idiomorphic felspars lie. the augite enclosing the felspars is well crystallized, though its continuity is interrupted more or less completely by the numerous crystals of felspar which it envelops, and in polarized light the former often behaves as a single individual over a considerable area, while the latter mineral consists of independent crystals. this structure may be so coarse as to be easily detected by the unaided eye, or so fine that it cannot be seen except in microscopic sections. some of the porphyritic dolerites have ophitic ground-masses; in others this structure is imperfect (subophitic); while in many the augite, like the felspar, occurs as small and distinct individuals, which react differently on polarized light, and have the outlines of more or less perfectly shaped crystals. ophitic structure is commonest in olivine-dolerites, though the olivine takes no part in it. the quartz-dolerites are an important group, hardly less common than the olivine-dolerites. they contain a small amount of quartz, and often micropegmatite, as the last element to consolidate, filling up little angular interspaces between the felspars and pyroxenes, which had previously crystallized. they rarely contain olivine, but pleochroic hypersthene is by no means rare in them (hypersthene-dolerites). some contain larger individuals of pale green, rather pleochroic augite (the so-called sahlite), and a little brown mica, and brownish-green hornblende may also be present. allied to these are olivine-free dolerites with more or less of interstitial glassy base (tholeites, &c.). in the rocks of this group ophitic structure is typically absent, and the presence of an interstitial finely crystalline or amorphous material gives rise to the structure which is known as "intersertal." transitions to the porphyritic dolerites and basalts arise by increase in the proportion of this ground-mass. the edges of dolerite sills and dikes often contain much dark brown glass, and pass into tachylytes, in which this material preponderates. another interesting group of doleritic rocks contains analcite. they may be ophitic, though often they are not, and they usually contain olivine, while their augite has distinctly purple shades, and a feeble dichroism. their characteristic feature is the presence of a small amount of analcite, which never shows crystalline outlines but fills up the interspaces between the other minerals. some writers held that this mineral has resulted from the decomposition of nepheline; others regard it as a primary mineral. usually it can be clearly shown to be secondary to some extent, but there is reason to suppose that it is really a pneumatolytic deposit. these rocks are known as teschenites, and have a wide distribution in england, scotland, on the continent and in america. often they are comparatively rich in brown hornblende. this last-named mineral is not usually abundant in dolerites, but in a special group, the proterobases, it to a large extent replaces the customary augite. a few dolerites contain much brown mica (mica-dolerites). nepheline may appear in these rocks, as in the basalts. typical nepheline-dolerites are scarce, and consist of idiomorphic augite, surrounded by nepheline. examples are known from the tertiary volcanic districts of the rhine. dolerites have a very wide distribution, as they are found wherever basalts occur in any number. it is superfluous to cite localities for them as they are among the commonest of igneous rocks. they are much employed for road-mending and for kerbstones, though their dark colour and the tendency they have to weather with a dingy brown crust make them unsuitable for the better classes of architectural work. (j. s. f.)