The Timeline of Art History   The Metropolitan Museum of Art
World MapsTimelines / RegionsThematic EssaysWorks of ArtIndex  



Annibale Carracci (1560–1609)
Ludovico Carracci: The Lamentation Ludovico Carracci: Conversion of Saint Paul Annibale Carracci: Triton Sounding a Conch Shell Annibale Carracci: Saint Jerome in the Wilderness Agostino Carracci: Portrait of a Woman (recto); Study of a Girl (verso) Annibale Carracci: A Domestic Scene Attributed to Annibale Carracci: Two Children Teasing a Cat Agostino Carracci: Orpheus and Eurydice Annibale Carracci: The Coronation of the Virgin
Agostino Carracci after Federico Barocci: Aeneas and His Family Fleeing Troy Agostino Carracci: Omnia vincit Amor Annibale Carracci (?): The Drunken Silenus ('The Tazza Farnese'), Annibale Carracci: Study for The Drunken Silenus ('The Tazza Farnese') Pietro Aquila after a drawing by Carlo Maratti: Annibale Carracci Introduces Painting to Apollo and Minerva


Annibale Carracci: View of the Farnese Gallery

Galleria Farnese, Palazzo Farnese, Rome
Ceiling fresco, 1597–1601
Annibale Carracci (Italian, Bolognese, 1560–1609)
Enlarge for more detail
Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) was the most admired painter of his time and the vital force in the creation of Baroque style. Together with his cousin Ludovico (1555–1619) and his older brother Agostino (1557–1602)—each an outstanding artist—Annibale set out to transform Italian painting. The Carracci rejected the artificiality of Mannerist painting, championing a return to nature coupled with the study of the great northern Italian painters of the Renaissance, especially Correggio, Titian, and Veronese.

During the 1580s, the Carracci were painting the most radical and innovative pictures in Europe. Annibale not only drew from nature, he created a new, broken brushwork to capture movement and the effects of light on form. His Two Children Teasing a Cat (ca. 1590; 1994.142) marks a new chapter in the history of genre painting. In Ludovico's early and still unresolved Lamentation (ca. 1582; 2000.68), the figure of Christ—clearly studied from a posed model in the studio—gives the picture a jarring immediacy and actuality. The revolutionary potential of this new kind of painting would be taken up over a decade later by Caravaggio, who must have seen the Carraccis' work while traveling from Milan to Rome in 1592.

The Carracci saw themselves as heir to a great artistic tradition and they consciously situated themselves within the history of northern Italian painting. Annibale and Agostino visited Parma and Venice to study the work of Correggio, Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. Their altarpieces and secular fresco cycles in Bologna reasserted a northern Italian emphasis on color, light, and the study of nature, but with a new focus on emotive communication. Their success led to Annibale being invited to Rome to work for the powerful Farnese family (1595). Ludovico remained in Bologna to direct the academy they founded. Through the next generation of painters—Francesco Albani, Domenichino, Guido Reni, Giovanni Lanfranco, and Guercino—Bolognese painting became the dominant force in seventeenth-century art.

In Rome, Annibale's painting was transformed through his first-hand encounter with classical antiquity and the art of Michelangelo and Raphael. Individual scenes of ancient mythology are surrounded by an elaborate illusionistic framework with feigned statues, in front of which sit muscular nude figures seemingly lit from the actual windows (view of the ceiling of the Farnese Gallery). The corners are opened to painted views of the sky. When unveiled in 1600, the ceiling was instantly acclaimed as the equal of any work in the past. In combining northern Italian naturalism with the idealism of Roman painting, Annibale create the basis of Baroque art. His only challenger in Rome was Caravaggio, whose relation with the past was combative rather than assimilative. Moreover, Caravaggio's art was unsuited to large compositions and fresco cycles, and by 1630 Caravaggesque painting was in decline while Annibale's art was being studied by a new generation of artists. Rubens, Poussin, and Bernini were deeply indebted to Annibale.


Carracci, Annibale (Italian, 1560-1609), Carracci, Agostino (Italian, 1557-1602), Carracci, Ludovico (Italian, Bolognese, 1555-1619), Europe, period, Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Art, Correggio (Antonio Allegri) (Italian, Parma, died 1534), Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da (Italian, 1573-1610), Europe, geography, Italian Peninsula, Southern Italy (and Rome), Painting, Oil on Canvas, Painting, Oil on Canvas, Europe, Italian Peninsula , Rubens, Peter Paul (Flemish, 1577-1640), Portrait, Print, Poussin, Nicolas (French, 1594-1665), Bernini, Gian Lorenzo (Italian, 1598-1680), Baroque and Rococo

Department of European Paintings

Baroque Rome, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), Caravaggio (1571-1610) and his Followers, Mannerism: Bronzino (1503-1572) and his Contemporaries, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), The Rediscovery of Classical Antiquity, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641): Paintings, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641): Works on Paper, Titian (ca. 1488–1576 A.D.), Italian Porcelain in the Eighteenth Century, Poets, Lovers, and Heroes in Italian Mythological Prints, The Printed Image in the West: Etching, Venetian color and Florentine Design, El Greco (Domenico Theotokopulos) (1541-1614), Italian Fresco Painting, Abridged List of Rulers: Europe,

Florence and Central Italy, 1600-1800 A.D., Rome and Southern Italy, 1600-1800 A.D., Venice and Northern Italy, 1600-1800 A.D., Low Countries, 1600-1800 A.D., Rome and Southern Italy, 1400-1600 A.D.,

Europe, 1400-1600 A.D.