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Carracci

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Carracci

a family of Italian painters, born in Bologna: Agostino (1557--1602); his brother, Annibale (1560--1609), noted for his frescoes, esp in the Palazzo Farnese, Rome; and their cousin, Ludovico (1555--1619). They were influential in reviving the classical tradition of the Renaissance and founded a teaching academy (1582) in Bologna
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Carracci

 

a family of Italian artists of the Bolognese school, representatives of academism. Lodovico Carracci (baptized Apr.21, 1555, in Bologna; died there Nov. 13, 1619) and his cousins Agostino Carracci (born Aug. 15, 1557, in Bologna; died Mar. 22, 1602, in Parma) and Annibale Carracci (born Nov. 3, 1560, in Bologna; died July 15, 1609, in Rome) received their artistic training in Bologna. Their early works show the influences of Correggio, Michelangelo, and Tintoretto. Eclectically combining the devices of these masters, the Carraccis created their own style, which was a reaction against mannerism. They founded the Accademia degli Incamminate (Academy of Those Who Have Entered Upon the Correct Path) in Bologna circa 1585, which played an important role in the development of the principles of academic art. The academy’s methodology included painting from life. At the same time, following the formal traditions of the masters of the High Renaissance, the academy stressed the idealization of reality.

The Carraccis created a new type of altar painting, characterized by monumental compositions, bright colors, and effective foreshortening and representation of gestures. Their altarpieces include the Madonna of Bargellini (Lodovico Carracci, 1588), The Last Communion of St. Jerome (Agostino Carracci, 1591–93)—both are in the National Picture Gallery in Bologna—and the Assumption of the Virgin (Annibale Carracci, 1592) in the Church of Santa Maria del Popólo in Rome. The Carraccis collaborated in the painting of frescoes in several Bolognese palaces, including the Palazzo Fava (1580–85) and the Palazzo Magnani (1588–90).

Annibale Carracci was more talented than Agostino and Lodovico. He worked in Bologna, Parma, Venice, and Rome. Annibale’s genre paintings and portraits are noted for their keen and spontaneous observations (Self-portrait, 1590’s, the Hermitage, Leningrad). His landscape paintings, which are imbued with a sense of the grandeur and harmony of nature, played an important role in the development of the ideal landscape. The frescoes by Annibale and Agostino in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome (1597–1604) anticipated the decorative artistic complexes of the baroque period. In many ways, the two major schools of 17th-century European art—baroque and classical—were based on various elements in the art of the Carraccis.

REFERENCES

Catalogo critico del la mostra dei Carracci. Bologna, 1956.
Posner, D. Annibale Carracci. London, 1971.

V. E. MARKOVA

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive
Most Old Master dealers and collectors dream of finding an unrecognised 'sleeper' at auction--like the Annibale Carracci, in fact, which Richard Feigen had acquired in 1987 as a painting by the artist's pupil Sisto Badalocchio.
These tragic myths do lend a dark resonance to My Brilliant Friend, most notably at the end, when in the midst of Lila's wedding to the grocer Stefano Carracci, the Solara brothers appear--unwanted guests whose arrival forces Lila, in a terrible moment of recognition, to see that her new husband is hopelessly in thrall to the Camorra and that her efforts to outwit fate have failed.
En las versiones de Cavaliere d'Arpino (1620-1630) y de Annibale Carracci y Domenichino (1597), el escudo es reemplazado por la cabeza de Medusa, que es sujetada por las serpientes que aun conserva como cabellos.
Studies of Borghese and Barberini patronages have overshadowed the contribution that Aldobrandini made by supporting lesser artists, such as Cavaliere d'Arpino, Giovanni and Cherubini Alberti, Domenico Passignano, Antonio Tempesta, Bernardo Castello, and other painters who, though much beneath the originality of Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio, remain nevertheless important.
In the episode of the dance at Casa Doria, the purposefully chosen setting of Palazzo Farnese contains another implicit reference to Bernini, elicited by way of Sperelli's fascination with Annibale Carracci's decorated ceiling (which represents a key source for Bernini's sculpture).
Two hundred and fifty years after Machiavelli's nightly visits with his Roman friends, a twenty-one-year-old John Adams used and applied Xenophon's discussion of "The Choice of Hercules" from the Memorabilia (beautifully captured in Annibale Carracci's 1596 painting and in Handel's 1750 oratorio) to his own life.
John, in a Christie's catalog, which was wrongly attributed to Annibale Carracci. He also discusses his research on Holy Child, how attributions of old masters are made, the process of the discovery of other specific works of olost arto in the US, and the concept of oconnoisseurship.o Distributed by W.W.
How do Sirani's paintings compare to those of the greatest seventeenth-century Bolognese artists, the Carracci, Guido Reni, Guercino, and Francesco Albani?
In Carracci's "The Dead Christ Mourned" (1606), dead Jesus is presented with mourners around his corpse.
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