Carracci

Three Italian painters, Lodovico Carracci (1555-1619) and his two cousins, the brothers Agostino Carracci (1557-1602) and Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), who founded an influential school of painting in Bologna in the late 16th century, based on close study of the Renaissance masters and also life drawing. The three played a leading role in the development of the early baroque.

Lodovico Carracci was the founder of the school of painting, but finding that he could not carry out his plan without help, he persuaded Agostino and Annibale to join him in running the school in Bologna, opened 1585. From 1600 he carried it on alone. An artist of scholarly inclination, he made an extensive study of Renaissance masters, especially of Antonio Correggio and Titian. Susannah and the Elders (National Gallery, London) is an important example of Lodovico's work.

Agostino took a leading place in the Bologna academy and in directing its teaching, which was designed to counteract Mannerism. He worked with his brother Annibale on the decorations for the Farnese Palace in Rome 1595-97, moving to Parma in 1600. His masterpiece is his Communion of St Jerome (Bologna).

Annibale was the most original artist of the three. He studied Correggio's work and was particularly good at drawing (a skill stressed by all the Carraccis). His principal work was the decoration of the Farnese Palace, commissioned by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese (1612-1646). Based on the theme of the loves of the gods, this set of paintings, exuberant in movement and with a light-hearted approach to its mythological subject, was one of the first major works of the early baroque. Here Agostino joined him and assisted in the work till the two brothers quarrelled.

With its two compositions by Domenichino of the legend of Perseus, the Farnese Gallery served as a model for the French painter decorators of the 17th century under Charles Le Brun. In religious painting, Annibale may be thought less inspired and more conventional in the attempt to convey the pious spirit prescribed by the Counter-Reformation. In landscape, however, he was an originator, and one can trace to him the ‘classical’ landscape with ruins developed by Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin.