Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/71

40 CARRACCI— CAKRACCI. Works, Bologna Academy, the Communion of St Jerome. LouTre, infant Hercules strangling the ser- pents. National Gallery, Cephalus and Aurora and Galatea, two Cartoons, made for frescoes in the Famese Gal- leiy, Rome. {Malvasia.) CARRACCI, Annibale, 6. at Bo- logna, 1560, d, at Rome, July 15, 1609. Bolognese School. The younger bro- ther of Agostino. His early youth was spent in his father's shop, but his cousin Lodovico rescued him from tailoring and made a painter of him. Annibale was an active teacher in the school, but more by example than pre- cept. In 1600 he went to Rome by the invitation of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, for whom he painted the celebrated gallery of the palace of that family at Rome ; it was completed about 1604. It is a great work, but is, SBsthetically, little more than an ex- ample of high technical skill : it shows, however, those qualities most com- monly aimed at by painters, and those most easily understood and most generally applauded : — ^fine drawing, in a taste combining both the qualities of the Vatican Stanze, and the Sistine chapel, with difficult and skilful fore- shortenings, and a gay effective light and shade ; the compositions also are exquisite, but these otherwise excellent frescoes do not even suggest the shghtest notion of expression or senti- ment, beyond what may be conveyed by the mere play and attitude of healthy limbs. The subjects are from classical mythologj' : the whole Gallery is engraved by Carlo Cesio. Annibale was one of the few of the earlier Italians who paid attention to land- scape ; some of his backgrounds of this class are of a fine character ; in some works the landscape is the prin- cipal. Works, Bologna, Gallery of the Academy, Madonna and Child, with angels and saints ; and five other works. Dresden Gallery, St Roch. Florence, Uffi^, Tribune, Holy Family; and Bacchante. Rome, Famese Palace; chapel of San Diego, in San Gia- como degli Spagnuoli; Dona Palace; landscapes. Louvre, a Pieta and twenty-four other pictures. Castle Howard, the three Marys, and other pictures. London, National Gallery, Erminia takes Refuge with the Shep- herds ; Domine quo vacUs ; two land- scapes, and four other specimens. (Malvasia, Passeri.) CARRACCI, Lodovico, 6. at Bo- logna, April 21, 1555, d, Dec. 13, 1619. He was the pupil of Prospero Fontana and Passignano at Florence, and the founder of the Eclectic School of Bo- logna. The famous school of the Carracci was opened in 1589, carried on by the cousins conjointly to 1600, and by Lodovico alone until his death. They professed to show how a painter might become perfect, by endeavour- ing to acquire the respective excellen- cies of the various Capimaestri of the great Italian schools. It is this selec- tion from several which constitutes their Eclecticism. It is the substantial principle of all academies, various great masters being held up as the special models of imitation in the different departments of the art Though such an attempt must ever be hopeless, as it reduces the art to simple copying, and supposes all men to be similarly endowed. The best productions of Lodovico and of his scholars, exhibit qualities that elevate them very much above the ordinary inanities of the Macchinisti and man- nerists of their time. Lodovico was simple, and even sombre in his colour- ing, and his works are distinguished for a solemn light and shade, which is perhaps carried to excess. The merits, however, of the Cairacci, were almost exclusively technical ; drawing, colour-