Agostino Carracci

Selfportrait as a watchmaker

Head of a Faun (c. 1595) 181 x 187 mm
Pen and brown ink on laid paper
National Gallery of Art, Washington.

The Communion of St. Jerome (1592).
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna.

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Agostino Carracci (or Caracci) (16 August 1557 – 22 March 1602) was an Italian painter and printmaker. He was the brother of the more famous Annibale and cousin of Lodovico Carracci.

He posited the ideal in nature, and was the founder of the competing school to the more gritty view of nature as expressed by Caravaggio. He was one of the founders of the Accademia degli Incamminati along with his brother, Annibale Carracci, and cousin, Ludovico Carracci. The academy helped propel painters of the School of Bologna to prominence.

Life

Agostino Carracci was born in Bologna, and trained at the workshop of the architect Domenico Tibaldi. Starting from 1574 he worked as a reproductive engraver, copying works of 16th century masters such as Federico Barocci, Tintoretto, Antonio Campi, Veronese and Correggio. He also produced some original prints, including two etchings.

He travelled to Venice (1582, 1587–1589) and Parma (1586–1587). Together with Annibale and Ludovico he worked in Bologna on the fresco cycles in Palazzo Fava (Histories of Jason and Medea, 1584) and Palazzo Magnani (Histories of Romulus, 1590–1592). In 1592 he also painted the Communion of St. Jerome, now in the Pinacoteca di Bologna and considered his masterwork. From 1586 is his altarpiece of the Madonna with Child and Saints, in the National Gallery of Parma. In 1598 Carracci joined his brother Annibale in Rome, to collaborate on the decoration of the Gallery in Palazzo Farnese. From 1598–1600 is a triple Portrait, now in Naples, an example of genre painting. In 1600 he was called to Parma by Duke Ranuccio I Farnese to begin the decoration of the Palazzo del Giardino, but he died before it was finished.

Agostino's son Antonio Carracci was also a painter, and attempted to compete with his father's Academy.

An engraving by Agostino Carraci after the painting Love in the Golden Age by the 16th-century Flemish painter Paolo Fiammingo was the inspiration for Matisse's Le bonheur de vivre (Joy of Life).^[1]

Works

• Head of a Faun in a Concave (drawing in roundel, c. 1595, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC)
• The Penitent Magdalen (private collection)
• The Annunciation, Musée du Louvre, Paris^[2]
• The Lamentation, Hermitage, St. Petersburg^[3]
• Reciprico Amore, Baltimore Museum of Art^[4]
• Carracci's erotic work

References

External links

• Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, a fully digitized exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on Agostino Carracci (see index)
• Catholic Encyclopedia: Carracci