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| Annibale Carracci Christ & the Woman of Samaria 1596-97 Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest |
Paintings by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) – the most admired and successful European painter at the close of the 16th century. His stylish presentation of traditional figure-groupings both stimulated and reassured his patrons.
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| Annibale Carracci Assumption of the Virgin 1587 Prado |
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| Annibale Carracci Crucifixion 1583 Santa Maria della Carità, Bologna |
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| Annibale Carracci Women at the Tomb 1590s State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg |
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| Annibale Carracci Temptation of St. Anthony Abbot 1597-98 National Gallery, London |
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| Annibale Carracci Venus, Adonis & Cupid c. 1590 Prado |
Annibale's popularity gained him the richest commissions of his generation. From 1597 to 1601 he designed and led his workshop in executing a series of fresco decorations at Palazzo Farnese in Rome (below). The scale and ambition of the scheme deliberately invited comparison with Michelangelo's ceiling across the river at the Vatican.
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| Annibale Carracci Ceiling frescoes 1597-1601 Farnese Gallery, Rome |
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| Anninbale Carracce Ceiling frescoes 1597-1601 Farnese Gallery, Rome |
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| Annibale Carracci Mercury & Paris 1597-1601 Farnese Gallery, Rome |
Simultaneously, Annibale was devising idealized landscapes on the easel. Pictures like Rest on the Flight into Egypt (below) – with its intricate organization of receding planes populated to scale by groups of figures in receding sizes – became an acknowledged model for the mid-century school of Roman landscape masters led by Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain.
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| Annibale Carracci Landscape with the Flight into Egypt c. 1603-04 Galleria Doria Pamphilij, Rome |
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| Annibale Carracci Landscape with Bathers c. 1600 Prado |
Annibale's cousin Lodovico Carracci (1555-1619) remained in Bologna supervising the family art academy. Lodovico never developed a reputation to compare with his superstar relatives. Even today his paintings (like the St. Margaret, below) are more likely to be found in the churches for which they were created than in art museums.
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| Lodovico Carracci Martyrdom of St. Margaret 1616 San Maurizio, Mantua |
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| Lodovico Carracci Vision of St. Francis - the Madonna, Christ and St. John the Baptist c. 1601-03 Prado |
Annibale's older brother Agostino Carracci (1557-1602) cooperated on major corporate projects in Bologna and Rome, but concentrated on independent commissions. His landscapes (as below) were not forward-looking like Annibale's but instead relied on the old-fashioned glamour of Leonardo's blue & distant mountains.
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| Agostino Carracci Landscape with Bathers c. 1597-99 Palazzo Pitti, Florence |
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| Agostino Carracci Last Supper c. 1593-94 Prado |