Annibale Carracci was the greatest of the Carracci family of painters, which included his elder brother Agostino and his cousin Ludovico.
The Carracci founded an Academy in Bologna. Reni and Domenichino were among their pupils. After his move to Rome, Annibale came to be seen as rescuing Italian art from the excesses of Mannerism and the overstated realism of Caravaggio.
Ludovico Carracci was partly responsible for the training of Annibale, who travelled extensively in northern Italy in the 1580s, studying the work of Correggio in Parma and the work of the great Venetian painters, especially Veronese.
By 1595 he was in Rome working in the Palazzo Farnese, where he decorated a gallery ceiling with frescoes of mythological subjects; this was completed in 1603/4.
The Collection contains two of the cartoons for the ceiling attributed to Agostino Carracci. Annibale's early work included naturalistic genre paintings, like the 'Bean Eaters'. Later he executed landscapes, important precursors of the classical landscapes of Domenichino, Claude and Poussin.
Annibale Carracci
1560 - 1609
Paintings by Annibale Carracci
(Showing 6 of 9 works)
A bearded man in a hair robe is being violently threatened by a horde of demonic creatures. He has cast aside his book and is gazing up at the heavens for help, where Christ has appeared reclining on a cloud.This very small picture is one of a number of works on copper that Annibale Carracci pain...
Not on display
Saint Peter fled Rome after Christ’s crucifixion, scared that he too would be executed by the Romans; here, he stands in shock as Christ passes him on the road. When Peter asked Christ where he was going – the question in this painting’s title – he replied that he was headed to Rome to be crucifi...
A naked golden-haired youth sits on a rock, playing the panpipes; another set of pipes hangs from the tree behind him. An older bearded man sits nearby on the ground, his panpipes also hanging from a branch. This is perhaps the satyr Marsyas; the youth may be Olympus, described in classical sourc...
Using an animal skin, two laughing satyrs with pointed ears and short tails lift a plump, drunken man to pick the grapes that dangle above him. To the right a young satyr clambers up a vine and reaches out for another bunch. The man is Silenus, teacher and companion of Bacchus, the classical god...
This is perhaps the most poignant image in the National Gallery’s collection of the pietà – the lamentation over the dead Christ following his crucifixion. It was a subject to which Annibale Carracci returned frequently, especially during the last decade of his life.Here, the limp and lifeless bo...
Domesticity reigns in this exquisite little picture. A delightfully pretty Virgin Mary balances a squirming, curly-haired Christ Child on her knee. She herself is perched rather precariously on a laundry basket, and her nephew, the young Saint John the Baptist, tugs at her blue mantle. On the oth...
A naked young satyr, just like a little boy but with pointed ears and a curly tail, swings from a vine to pick grapes. This irregularly shaped panel was part of a musical instrument, probably a kind of harpsichord. Together with Silenus gathering Grapes it would have formed the inside of the lid...
Circle of Annibale Carracci
A young woman in armour, her horse tied to a tree behind her, has wandered into a kind of rustic concert. A shepherd and his family are sitting outside their cottage; the elderly father weaves baskets out of reeds and his sons hold musical instruments.This pastoral idyll is a scene from an epic p...
Not on display
Circle of Annibale Carracci
A young man reclines in a rocky landscape, filling a bowl with water spouting from a rock. With his naked torso he looks more like a classical god than a biblical figure, but this is Saint John the Baptist, a forerunner of Christ (whom he baptised). John lived as a hermit in the desert, preaching...
Not on display
You've viewed 6 of 9 paintings