Annibale Carracci was an Italian painter, born in Bologna on November 3, 1560, who died in Rome on July 15, 1609. With his brother Agostino and his cousin Ludovico, he brought painting back to drawing from life, from real models instead of other pictures.
In Rome he painted the ceiling of the Farnese Gallery, a work often set beside Michelangelo's Sistine vault. He is also known for The Bean Eater, a peasant caught in the middle of his meal, and for the claim that he invented caricature.
When he started out, much of Italian painting followed a late style known as Mannerism, full of stretched figures and twisted poses, with skin as smooth and cool as porcelain.
Annibale is often credited with rescuing painting from that empty polish by sending painters back to the living model. His own life was less triumphant. The finest ceiling he painted in Rome cost him more than it paid.
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He came from a modest home. Annibale was the son of a tailor, and he never quite left it behind: he liked to remind his brother Agostino that they were both tailor's sons.
Their city was famous for its university, not yet for its painters. He learned his trade most likely from his elder cousin Ludovico, and from Bartolomeo Passarotti, who ran a large studio in Bologna and painted market scenes such as fish stalls and butcher's shops.
In 1582 the three Carraccis opened a school of their own, and what they asked of their students there went against the habits of their time.
The studio of the eager ones
The school went by two names, first the Desiderosi, the eager ones, and later the Incamminati, those who have set out on the road…
What You'll Discover
What his academy did instead of copying.
What he saw in a peasant's lunch.
Whether he really invented caricature.
Why Rome handed him a ceiling.
What the cardinal paid, and what it cost.
How the painter of Rome's best ceiling died.