Annibale Carracci was born in Bologna on November 3, 1650 into a humble, working-class family. His father, Antonio, was a poor tailor and his uncle, Vincenzo, a lowly butcher, but since early childhood, Annibale was destined for greater things.
First apprenticed to a goldsmith, Carracci's artist cousin Ludovico Carracci convinced Antonio that his son should devote himself to art after seeing the young boy's prodigious sketches. Young Annibale studied art both with his cousin and with a local, successful painter named Bartolomeo Passerotti. During those early years, Carracci developed an astonishing new style completely different from the Mannerism currently in vogue: a style based on naturalism.
Annibale’s precocious talents developed in a tour of northern Italy in the 1580s, his visit to Venice being of special significance. He was said to have lodged in that city with the painter Jacopo Bassano, whose style of painting influenced him for a time. Annibale may be credited with the rediscovery of the early 16th-century painter Correggio, who had been effectively forgotten outside Parma for a generation; Annibale’s "Baptism of Christ", created in 1585 for the Church of San Gregorio in Bologna, was a brilliant tribute to this Parmese master. In 1587 – 1588, Annibale is known to have had traveled to Parma and then Venice, where he joined his brother Agostino.
Back in Bologna, Annibale joined Agostino and Lodovico in founding a school for artists called the Accademia degli Incamminati. "The Enthroned Madonna with St. Matthew" Annibale painted in 1588 for the Church of San Prospero, Reggio, displays two of the most persistent characteristics of his art: a noble classicizing strain combined with a genial and bucolic tone. By the time Annibale collaborated with the other two Carracci on frescoes in the Palazzo Magnani and two other noble houses in Bologna, he had become the leading master among them. His orderly and airy landscapes in those palaces helped initiate that genre as a principal subject in Italian fresco painting.
In 1595 Annibale went to Rome to work for the rich young cardinal Odoardo Farnese, who wanted to decorate with frescoes the principal floor of his palace, which was one of the most splendid in Rome. In that city, Annibale turned eagerly to the study of Michelangelo, Raphael, and ancient Greek and Roman art in order to adapt the style he had formed in the artistic centers of northern Italy to his new surroundings. On July 8, 1595, Annibale completed the painting of "San Rocco distributing alms." Having decorated the Camerino in the Palazzo Farnese, he was joined in 1597 by Agostino in the chief enterprise of his career — painting the frescoes of the coved ceiling of the Galleria with love fables from Ovid. Those decorations, which interweave various illusions of reality in a way that was more complex even than Raphael’s famous paintings in the Vatican loggia, were a triumph of classicism tempered with humanity. The Galleria Farnese soon became and remained a virtually indispensable study for young painters until well into the 18th century and was an especially rich feeding ground for the Baroque imaginations of Peter Paul Rubens and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, among others.
Annibale’s long and intense labors in the Palazzo Farnese had been dismally underpaid by Cardinal Farnese, and the painter never fully recovered from the ingratitude of his patron. He quit work altogether on the Palazzo Farnese in 1605 but subsequently produced some of his finest religious paintings, notably "Domine, Quo Vadis?", created in 1601 – 1602, and the "Pietà." Those works feature weighty, powerful figures in dramatically simple compositions. The lunette-shaped landscapes that Annibale painted for the Palazzo Aldobrandini, especially the "Flight into Egypt" and the "Entombment", proved important in the subsequent evolution of the heroic landscape as painted in Rome by Domenichino and Nicolas Poussin. Annibale died in Rome after several years of melancholic sickness and intermittent production.
Annibale Carracci was the most admired painter of his time and the vital force in the creation of Baroque style. Together with his cousin Ludovico and his older brother Agostino, Annibale set out to transform Italian painting. Annibale's Farnese Ceiling was considered the unrivaled masterpiece of fresco painting for its age.
Two Children Teasing a Cat
Corpse of Christ
The Penitent Magdalen in a Landscape
Virgin and Child
Triptych
The Cyclops Polyphemus
An allegory of Truth and Time
The Dead Christ Mourned (The Three Maries)
The Choice of Heracles
Römische Landschaft
Christ Wearing the Crown of Thorns, Supported by Angels
Venus, Adonis, and Cupid
Lord, whither goest thou?
Susanna and the Elders
Venus and Anchises
The fishing
The Temptation of St Anthony Abbot
The Flight into Egypt
Atlante
Butcher's Shop
Virgin and Unicorn (A Virgin with a Unicorn)
Nude Study
Holy Women at Christ's Tomb
Samson imprisoned
The Beaneater
Christ in Glory
Self-portrait on an Easel in a Workshop
River Landscape
Assumption of the Virgin Mary
Pietà
Pieta
Man with Monkey
Rest on Flight into Egypt
Venus inebriated by a Satyr (La Nuda)
Adorned by the Graces
Pietà with St Francis and Mary Magdalene
Angel announcing the resurrection of Christ to the three Marys
Venus with a Satyr and Cupids
Crucifixion
Landscape with the Toilet of Venus
Triptych
Apollo and Hyacinth
Self-Portrait
The Coronation of St Stephen
Portrait of a man
St Margaret
The Martyrdom of St Stephen
Translation of the Holy House
Sleeping Venus
The Assumption of the Virgin
Pietà
Bacchus
Jupiter and Antiope
St. Magdalene in the Desert
The coronation of the Virgin
Ganimede
Triton
The Virgin Appears to St. Luke and Catherine
Landscape with bathers
Preparatory drawing for Self-portrait on an Easel in a Workshop
Polyphemus Attacking Acis and Galatea
The Laughing Youth
The Butcher's Shop
Head of a Man
Face a woman turned towards the right
Hommage to Diana
Jupiter and Juno
Mocking of Christ
The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine
Portrait of Annibale Carracci
Mercury protecting Ulysses from the charms of Circe
Self-Portrait in Profile
Sheet of caricatures
Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne
Portrait of Giovanni Gabrieli with the lute
Hunting
Landscape with the sacrifice of Isaac
The Samaritan Woman at the Well
Perseus and Phineas
The Stoning of St Stephen
Baptism of Christ
His style was revolutionary for its unprecedented naturalism and careful, objective study from life. Unlike like-minded contemporary Caravaggio, Annibale was able to mix that revolutionary realism with the idealized perfection of classical and Renaissance art, thus pioneering a style of "idealized realism" that represented the middle path between the outlandish fantasy of Mannerism and the dark, gritty realism of Caravaggio and his followers. Annibale Carracci was also revolutionary for his insistence on direct observation of nature.
A quiet, introverted man, Annibale Carracci was noted for the conspicuous lack of torrid love affairs, salacious scandals, or violent behavior.
Physical Characteristics: Annibale was usually shabbily-dressed.
