Annibale Carracci

Italian, 1560–1609

BiographyAnnibale Carracci was born in Bologna in 1560. His brother Agostino (1557-1602) was a painter and printmaker and his cousin Ludovico (1555-1619) was a painter. Annibale was trained initially by Ludovico and may have also studied with Bartolomeo Passarotti (1529-1592). Around 1580, under the influence of Passerotti and other North Italian painters, such as Correggio (ca. 1489/94-1534) and Veronese (ca. 1528-1588), Annibale broke away from the late mannerist style then dominant in Bologna. His early masterpieces were realist genre pictures that stressed spontaneity rather than refinement, as, for example, the Bean-Eater, in the Galleria Colonna, Rome. Intent on reforming the pictorial arts, Annibale, together with his cousin and brother, founded the Accademia dei Desiderosi in 1582 (renamed Accademia degli Incamminati in 1590), which stressed drawing after nature and the antique. The impact of the academy was profound, and under the Carracci tutelage, Bolognese painters, for the first time, attained a preeminent position in the arts.

In 1595, Annibale moved to Rome, and between 1597 and 1601 he frescoed the ceiling of the Galleria Farnese in Rome; this was perhaps the most important work of its kind since Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In Rome Annibale also produced a number of highly influential altarpieces and devotional works. Increasingly ill and despondent following an apoplectic attack in 1605, Annibale created few works during the last four years of his life, dying in Rome in 1609.