Annibale Carracci (Italian, Bologna 1560–1609 Rome)
Rinaldo and Armida, c. 1601
Oil painting on canvas
154 × 233 cm
National Museum of Capodimonte , Naples
Armida is a fictional character created by the Italian late Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso. She is a Saracen sorceress.
In his epic Gerusalemme liberata, Rinaldo is a fierce and determined warrior who is also honorable and handsome. Armida has been sent to stop the Christians from completing their mission and is about to murder the sleeping soldier, but instead she falls in love. She creates an enchanted garden where she holds him a lovesick prisoner. Eventually Charles and Ubaldo, two of his fellow Crusaders, find him and hold a shield to his face, so he can see his image and remember who he is. Rinaldo barely can resist Armida’s pleadings, but his comrades insist that he return to his Christian duties. At the close of the poem, when the pagans have lost the final battle, Rinaldo, remembering his promise to be her champion still, prevents her from giving way to her suicidal impulses and offers to restore her to her lost throne. She gives in at this, and like the other Saracen warrior woman, Clorinda, earlier in the piece, becomes a Christian and his “handmaid”. More on Armida
Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) was the most admired painter of his time and the vital force in the creation of Baroque style. Together with his cousin Ludovico (1555–1619) and his older brother Agostino (1557–1602), each an outstanding artist, Annibale 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, Titian, and Veronese.
Bolognese School, 17th Century
A GROUP PORTRAIT OF ANNIBALE, LUDOVICO AND AGOSTINO CARRACCI
Oil on canvas laid on panel
25 by 32 cm.; 9 3/4 by 12 1/2 in.
Private collection
Annibale Carracci (Italian, Bologna 1560–1609 Rome)
Two Children Teasing a Cat
Oil on canvas
26 x 35 in. (66 x 88.9 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Viewers of this painting are invited to imagine the result of teasing an obviously unhappy cat. For surely the little girl’s hand will be scratched. The painting thus incorporates a time factor and carries a lesson similar to “Let sleeping dogs lie” and “Don’t go poking around vipers.” Painted with a directness and spontaneity that look forward to nineteenth-century art, this painting is among the earliest Italian genre paintings. It belonged to Cardinal Tommaso Ruffo (1663–1753), who also owned Velázquez’s Juan de Pareja. More on this painting
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. His Two Children Teasing a Cat (ca. 1590) (See above) marks a new chapter in the history of genre painting.
Ludovico Carracci (Italian, Bologna 1555–1619 Bologna)
The Lamentation, a. 1582
Oil on canvas
37 1/2 x 68 in. (95.3 x 172.7 cm)
The Lamentation of Christ is a very common subject in Christian art from the High Middle Ages to the Baroque. After Jesus was crucified, his body was removed from the cross and his friends mourned over his body. This event has been depicted by many different artists.
Lamentation works are very often included in cycles of the Life of Christ, and also form the subject of many individual works. One specific type of Lamentation depicts only Jesus' mother Mary cradling his body. These are known as Pietà (Italian for "pity") More The Lamentation of Christ
In this painting, Christ has been painted with a directness and lack of idealization that sixteenth-century critics found shocking, while the figures of the Virgin, the three Maries, and Saint John are strikingly stylized. This experimentation with the means of representation rather than an abstract sense of harmony and beauty characterizes Ludovico’s early work. A landmark of the Carracci reform of painting, the picture belonged to Alessandro Tanari, papal treasurer of Bologna and an avid collector of Ludovico’s paintings. More on this painting
In Ludovico’s early and still unresolved Lamentation (ca. 1582) (See above), the figure of Christ—clearly studied from a posed model in the studio—gives the picture a jarring immediacy and actuality. The revolutionary potential of this new kind of painting would be taken up over a decade later by Caravaggio, who must have seen the Carraccis’ work while traveling from Milan to Rome in 1592.
Annibale Carracci (Italian, Bologna 1560–1609 Rome)
The Coronation of the Virgin, after 1595
Oil on canvas
46 3/8 x 55 5/8 in. (117.8 x 141.3 cm)
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Coronation of the Virgin or Coronation of Mary is a subject in Christian art, especially popular in Italy in the 13th to 15th centuries. Christ, sometimes accompanied by God the Father and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, places a crown on the head of Mary as Queen of Heaven. In early versions the setting is a Heaven imagined as an earthly court, staffed by saints and angels; in later versions Heaven is more often seen as in the sky, with the figures seated on clouds. The subject is also notable as one where the whole Christian Trinity is often shown together, sometimes in unusual ways. Although crowned Virgins may be seen in Orthodox Christian icons, the coronation by the deity is not. Mary is sometimes shown, in both Eastern and Western Christian art, being crowned by one or two angels, but this is considered a different subject. More on the Coronation of the Virgin
This picture was painted following the artist’s arrival in Rome in 1595. In it Annibale brings together two currents of Italian painting: a north Italian sensitivity to the effects of natural light and color, and the spatial organization and idealized figures associated with Raphael. The figure of God the Father was based on an ancient Roman sculpture of Jupiter. Together with Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci was the most influential painter of the seventeenth century and the main figure in the development of classicism. More on this painting
French School, 18th Century, After Annibale Carracci
The Madonna of Silence
Reinforced three-plank panel
51.2 cm x 68.4 cm
Private collection
Follower Annibale Carracci
Pietà
Oil on canvas
60 x 68 cm
Private collection
The Pietà is a subject in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, most often found in sculpture. As such, it is a particular form of the Lamentation of Christ, a scene from the Passion of Christ found in cycles of the Life of Christ. When Christ and the Virgin are surrounded by other figures from the New Testament, the subject is strictly called a Lamentation in English, although Pietà is often used for this as well, and is the normal term in Italian. More the Pietà
Follower of Annibale Carracci
THE PENITENT MAGDALENE
Oil on canvas
17 by 12 1/2 in.; 43.8 by 31.8 cm.
Private collection
A sinner, perhaps a courtesan, Mary Magdalen was a witness of Christ who renounced the pleasures of the flesh for a life of penance and contemplation. Penitent Magdalene or Penitent Magdalen refers to a post-biblical period in the life of Mary Magdalene, according to medieval legend.
According to the tenets of the 17th–century Catholic church, Mary Magdalene was an example of the repentant sinner and consequently a symbol of the Sacrament of Penance. According to legend, Mary led a dissolute life until her sister Martha persuaded her to listen to Jesus Christ. She became one of Christ's most devoted followers and he absolved her of her former sins. More on The Penitent Magdalen
Annibale Carracci, BOLOGNA 1560-1609 ROME
MAGDALENE IN PRAYER, between 1583 and 1585
oil on canvas
76.5 x 57.5 cm.
Private collection
The Carracci saw themselves as heir to a great artistic tradition, and they consciously situated themselves within the history of northern Italian painting. Annibale and Agostino visited Parma and Venice to study the work of Correggio, Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. Their altarpieces and secular fresco cycles in Bologna reasserted a northern Italian emphasis on color, light, and the study of nature, but with a new focus on emotive communication.
Follower of Annibale Carracci
SUSANNA AND THE ELDERS
oil on canvas
42.7 by 34 cm., 18 3/4 by 13 1/4 in.
Private collection
A fair Hebrew wife named Susanna was falsely accused by lecherous voyeurs. As she bathes in her garden, having sent her attendants away, two lustful elders secretly observe the lovely Susanna. When she makes her way back to her house, they accost her, threatening to claim that she was meeting a young man in the garden unless she agrees to have sex with them.
She refuses to be blackmailed and is arrested and about to be put to death for promiscuity when a young man named Daniel interrupts the proceedings, shouting that the elders should be questioned to prevent the death of an innocent. After being separated, the two men are questioned about details of what they saw, but disagree about the tree under which Susanna supposedly met her lover. In the Greek text, the names of the trees cited by the elders form puns with the sentence given by Daniel. The first says they were under a mastic, and Daniel says that an angel stands ready to cuthim in two. The second says they were under an evergreen oak tree, and Daniel says that an angel stands ready to saw him in two. The great difference in size between a mastic and an oak makes the elders' lie plain to all the observers. The false accusers are put to death, and virtue triumphs. More about Susanna
School of Annibale Carracci
Saint Margaret of Antioch
Oil on canvas
209 x 117 cm.
Private collection
Margaret is celebrated as a saint by the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches on July 20 and on July 17 in the Orthodox Church. Her historical existence has been questioned. She was declared apocryphal by Pope Gelasius I in 494, but devotion to her revived in the West with the Crusades. She was reputed to have promised very powerful indulgences to those who wrote or read her life, or invoked her intercessions; these no doubt helped the spread of her cultus.
She was a native of "Antioch" and the daughter of a pagan priest named Aedesius. Her mother having died soon after her birth, Margaret was nursed by a Christian woman five or six leagues from Antioch. Having embraced Christianity and consecrated her virginity to God, Margaret was disowned by her father, adopted by her nurse, and lived in the country keeping sheep with her foster mother (in what is now Turkey). Olybrius, Governor of the Roman Diocese of the East, asked to marry her, but with the demand that she renounce Christianity. Upon her refusal, she was cruelly tortured, during which various miraculous incidents occurred. One of these involved being swallowed by Satan in the shape of a dragon, from which she escaped alive when the cross she carried irritated the dragon's innards. The Golden Legend, in an atypical passage of skepticism, describes this last incident as "apocryphal and not to be taken seriously". She was put to death in AD 304.
As Saint Marina, she is associated with the sea, which "may in turn point to an older goddess tradition," reflecting the pagan divinity, Aphrodite. More on Saint Margaret of Antioch
Their success led to Annibale being invited to Rome to work for the powerful Farnese family (1595) (See below). Ludovico remained in Bologna to direct the academy they founded. Through the next generation of painters—Francesco Albani, Domenichino, Guido Reni, Giovanni Lanfranco, and Guercino—Bolognese painting became the dominant force in seventeenth-century art.
In Rome, Annibale’s painting was transformed through his first-hand encounter with classical antiquity and the art of Michelangelo and Raphael. Individual scenes of ancient mythology are surrounded by an elaborate illusionistic framework with feigned statues, in front of which sit muscular nude figures seemingly lit from the actual windows (Galleria Farnese ceiling). The corners are opened to painted views of the sky. When unveiled in 1600, the ceiling was instantly acclaimed as the equal of any work in the past. In combining northern Italian naturalism with the idealism of Roman painting, Annibale created the basis of Baroque art.
Annibale Carracci (1560–1609)
Farnese Ceiling, 16th century
Fresco
Palazzo Farnese, Roma
Annibale Carracci (1560–1609)
Detail; Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, circa 1597
Center panel
Fresco
Palazzo Farnese
The story of Ariadne and Bacchus begins when Ariadne, daughter of King Minor of Crete, helps Theseus, an Athenian hero, kill the Minotaur, a half man and half bull who lived in a labyrinth on Crete.
Ariadne saves his life by giving him a ball of thread so he can find his way back through the maze. Theseus kills the minotaur and finds his way to the entrance, thanks to Ariadne. After achieving the kill, he sets sail with Ariadne to return to Athens. Stopping along the way on the island of Naxos, Ariadne falls asleep. During this time Theseus deserts her! Upon awakening, she searches the shore of Naxos, desperately searching for her lost lover. Ariadne is suddenly surprised by Bacchus, God of Wine and his partying entourage. Bacchus falls in love with Ariadne and offers to marry her. He promises her a crown of stars as a wedding gift This is the scene depicted on this Majolica Platter below. In other versions of the story, Bacchus offers her the sky where she later becomes the constellation of the Northern Crown (Corona Borealis). More on Ariadne and Bacchus
The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne depicts a both riotous and classically restrained procession which ferries Bacchus and Ariadne to their lovers' bed. Here, the underlying myth is that Bacchus, the god of wine, had gained the love of the abandoned princess, Ariadne. The procession recalls the triumphs of the Republican and Imperial Roman era, in which the parades of victorious leaders had the laurel-crowned ‘imperator’ in a white chariot with two white horses. In Carracci's procession, the two lovers are seated in chariots drawn by tigers and goats, and accompanied by a parade of nymphs, bacchanti, and trumpeting satyrs. At the fore, Bacchus' tutor, the paunchy, ugly, and leering drunk Silenus, rides an ass. More on this painting See the Additional scenes
In Rome, Annibale’s painting was transformed through his first-hand encounter with classical antiquity and the art of Michelangelo and Raphael. Individual scenes of ancient mythology are surrounded by an elaborate illusionistic framework with feigned statues, in front of which sit muscular nude figures seemingly lit from the actual windows (Galleria Farnese ceiling). The corners are opened to painted views of the sky. When unveiled in 1600, the ceiling was instantly acclaimed as the equal of any work in the past. In combining northern Italian naturalism with the idealism of Roman painting, Annibale created the basis of Baroque art.
Manner of Annibale Carracci
Eracle al bivio/Hercules at the crossroads
Oil on canvas
cm 137x193
Private collection
Hercules at the crossroads, also known as the choice of Hercules and the judgement of Hercules, is an ancient Greek parable attributed to Prodicus and known from Xenophon. It concerns the young Heracles/Hercules who is offered a choice between Vice and Virtue—a life of pleasure or one of hardship and honour. In the early modern period it became a popular motif in Western art. More on Hercules at the crossroads
His only challenger in Rome was Caravaggio, whose relation with the past was combative rather than assimilative. Moreover, Caravaggio’s art was unsuited to large compositions and fresco cycles, and by 1630 Caravaggesque painting was in decline while Annibale’s art was being studied by a new generation of artists. Rubens, Poussin, and Bernini were deeply indebted to him. More on Annibale Carracci
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