Annibale Carracci
Annibale Carracci was an Italian Baroque artist who lived from 1560 to 1609. He is credited with helping start the Baroque art movement of the seventeenth century.
Caracci was born in Bologna to a family of artists. He traveled around Italy with his brother, Agostino Carracci, and his cousin, Ludovico Carracci, to study the Italian art masters. In 1582, the three Carraccis opened their own art studio in Bologna, called Accademia degli Incamminati, which was one of the earliest art academies in Italy.
The academy and the artists themselves aspired to create a new art style that utilized the best features of the Italian art masters, including the colors, elegance, and forms of Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, and Correggio which they referred to as the “eclectic ideal”. The three Carraccis worked on commissioned frescoes and paintings together. Their fresco on the ceiling of the Farnese Palace in Rome is considered the fresco masterpiece of its time.
Annibale Carracci’s brush style was looser than conventional paintings in his day which helped him convey movement and light in a radical new way. He is credited with renewing interest in the art styles and traditions of the great Italian masters, such as Raphael and Michelangelo. Raphael was such a huge influence in Carracci’s life that his wish was that when he died, he would be buried near Raphael in the Pantheon of Rome. He was also one of the first to create a painting that focused more on the landscape than the figures, which was followed by the great Claude Lorrain. Annibale Carracci died in 1609 at 48 years of age and his wish of being buried near Raphael was fulfilled.
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