Carracci, Annibale

The Flight into Egypt (1603)

Annibale Carracci (November 3, 1560, in Bologna - July 15, 1609, in Rome) was an Italian painter, etcher and engraver.

In the Bologna of the early 1580s, his cousin Ludovico Carracci along with Annibale's brother Agostino, opened the Academy of Desiderosi (Desirous of fame and learning), later of the Incamminati (progressives); and finally the "School of the Eclectics" for training artists. The 17th century critic Giovanni Bellori, in his survey titled Idea, praised Carracci the epitome of Roman Baroque. While the Carraccis laid special emphasis on draftsmanship, but also mediated between the Florentine emphasis on linear drawing, and the Venetian attention to painting canvases with oil colors, that lead to a mistier edge of objects. These qualities became particularly associated with artists of the Bolognese School, including their most prominent trainees Domenichino and Reni. It is difficult to distinguish the individual contribution by each Carraci brother in many early works, including frescoes in the Palazzo Fava in Bologna (c.1583-84), where worked together until 1595, when Annibale, the best known, was called to Rome by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese to decorate the gallery in the Palazzo Farnese.

Work in Rome

Annibale first decorated a small room in the Palazzo Farnese called the Camerino with stories of Hercules; aptly because the room housed the famous greco-roman sculpture of the hypermuscular Farnese Hercules. Starting 1597, he led a team painting the ceiling of the grand salon with the secular themes of The Loves of the Gods, or as Bellori described it, "Human Love governed by Celestial Love". Although the ceiling is riotously rich in the interplay of illusionistic elements, it retains the framed and restrained classicism of High Renaissance decoration, drawing inspiration from Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling as well as Raphael's Vatican Loggie and Villa Farnesina frescoes. His work would inspire the untrammelled stream of Baroque illusionism still to begin in the work of Cortona and Lanfranco, as well as Pozzo and Galli.

Throughout 17th and 18th centuries, the Farnese Ceiling ranked alongside other cycles as a influential masterpiece of fresco painting. They were not only seen as a pattern book of heroic figure design, but also as a model of technical procedure; Annibale made hundreds of preparatory drawings for the ceiling, which accepted as a fundamental part of composing any ambitious history painting. In this sense, Annibale exercised a more profound influence than his late contemporary Caravaggio, for the latter never worked in fresco, which was still regarded as the test of a great painter's ability and the most suitable vehicle for painting in the Grand Manner.

Assumption of the Virgin Mary, in Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.

Other significant works painted by Annibale in Rome include Domine, Quo Vadis? (National Gallery, London, c.1602), which reveals a striking economy in figure composition and a force and precision of gesture that influenced on Poussin and through him on the language of gesture in painting. Annibale was one of the first Italian painters to paint canvasses wherein the landscape took priority over figures, such as his masterful The Flight into Egypt; this is a genre in which he was followed by Domenichino (his favorite pupil) and Lorraine.

After 1606, Annibale was overcome by melancholia and gave up painting almost entirely. He was buried, according to his wish, near Raphael in the Pantheon, Rome. It is a measure of his achievement that artists as diverse as Bernini, Poussin, and Rubens praised his work.

Annibale's art also had a less formal side that comes out in his caricatures (he is generally credited with inventing the form) and in his early genre paintings, which are remarkable for their lively observation and free handling ( see The Butcher's Shop) and his painting of The Beaneater.

The Carraccis often worked together. Agostino assisted Annibale in the Farnese Gallery from 1597 to 1600, but he was important mainly as a teacher and engraver. His systematic anatomical studies were engraved after his death and were used for nearly two centuries as teaching aids. He spent the last two years in Parma, where he did his own "Farnese Ceiling", decorating a ceiling in the Palazzo del Giardino with mythological scenes for Duke Ranuccio Farnese. It shows a meticulous but less spirited version of his brother's lively Classicism. Ludovico left Bologna only for brief periods and directed the Carracci academy by himself after his cousins had gone to Rome. Painterly and expressive considerations always outweigh those of stability and calm Classicism in his work, and at its best there is a passionate and poetic quality indicative of his preference for Tintoretto and Jacopo Bassano. His most fruitful period was 1585-95, but near the end of his career he still produced remarkable paintings of an almost Expressionist force, such as the Christ Crucified above Figures in Limbo (Sta Francesco Romana, Ferrara, 1614).

Chronology of Works

• Assumption of the Virgin (c. 1590) - Oil on canvas, 130 x 97 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
• The Baptism of Christ (1584) - Oil on canvas, San Gregorio, Bologna
• The Beaneater (1580-1590) - Oil on canvas, 57 x 68 cm, Galleria Colonna, Rome
• Butcher's Shop (1580s) - Oil on canvas, 185 x 266 cm, Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford
• Crucifixion (1583) - Oil on canvas, 305 x 210 cm, Santa Maria della Carità, Bologna
• Fishing (before 1595) - Oil on canvas, 136 x 253 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
• Hunting (before 1595) - Oil on canvas, 136 x 253 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
• The Laughing Youth (1583) - Oil on paper, Galleria Borghese, Rome
• Madonna Enthroned with St Matthew (1588) - Oil on canvas, 384 x 255 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
• The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (1585-1587) - Oil on canvas, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples
• Venus, Adonis and Cupid (c. 1595) - Oil on canvas, 212 x 268 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
• Venus and Adonis (c. 1595) - Oil on canvas, 217 x 246 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Venus with a Satyr and Cupids (c. 1588) - Oil on canvas, 112 x142 cm, Uffizi, Florence
• The Virgin Appears to the Saints Luke and Catherine (1592) - Oil on canvas, 401 x 226 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
• Frescoes (1597-1605) in the Palazzo Farnese, Rome
• Assumption of the Virgin Mary (1600-1601) - Oil on canvas, 245 x 155 cm, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome
• Lamentation of Christ (1606) - Oil on canvas, 92,8 x 103,2 cm, National Gallery, London
• The Flight into Egypt (1603) - Oil on canvas, 122 x 230 cm, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome
• The Choice of Heracles (c. 1596) - Oil on canvas, 167 x 273 cm, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples
• Mocking of Christ (c. 1596) - Oil on canvas, 60 x 69,5 cm, Pinacoteca Nazionale
• Pietà (1599-1600) - Oil on canvas, 156 x 149 cm, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples
• Domine quo vadis? (1601-1602) - Oil on panel, 77,4 x 56,3 cm, National Gallery, London
• Rest on Flight into Egypt (c. 1600) - Oil on canvas, diameter 82,5 cm, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
• Self-Portrait in Profile (1590s) - Oil on canvas, Uffizi, Florence
• Self-portrait (c. 1604) - Oil on wood, 42 x 30 cm, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
• The Martyrdom of St Stephen (1603-1604) - Oil on canvas, 51 x 68 cm, Louvre, Paris
• Triptych (1604-1605) - Oil on copper and panel, 37 x 24 cm (central panel), 37 x 12 cm (each wing), Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
• Holy Women at the Tomb of Christ Oil on canvas, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
• Atlante Sanguine, Louvre, Paris

External links

• Catholic Encyclopedia: Carracci

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