Annibale Carracci

Annibale Carracci (b.1560-d.1609) was Italian painter, the most admired painter of his time and the vital force in the creation of Baroque. Together with his cousin Ludovico and his older brother Agostino, each an outstanding artist, Carracci 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, Veronese, and Titian. Carracci, his brother and cousin started a painting academy in Bologna in 1585, training many future Baroque painters.

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.

Carracci was commissioned to decorate the palace of Cardinal Farnese in 1595, producing a well-known series of mythological frescoes. Other significant late works painted by Carracci include Domine, Quo Vadis? (1602), which reveals a striking economy in figure composition and a force and precision of gesture.

In 1609, Annibale died, and was buried, according to his wish, near Raphael in the Pantheon of Rome.