Oil painting -> List of Painters -> Annibale Carracci

Early days: Annibale Carracci who was born in Bologna on November 3, 1560 was an Italian Baroque artist.He was the most well-known member of an powerful family of painters that included his elder brother Agostino as well their cousin Lodovico. In the year 1585 they formed the Accademia degli Incamminati, a painting school that aspired to transform art by reviving the traditional principles of the High Renaissance masters, as portrayed in the work of Michelangelo and Raphael. The art school attracted such talented young painters as Alessandro Algardi Domenichino,and Guido Reni, making Bologna one of the most lively as well as influential Italian art centres for more than two decades.

Career:

Annibale, with the design and implementation of noble fresco series as the lyrical Romulus cycle (1588-1592), in Bologna's Palazzo Magnani, was immediately recognized as the most talented work belonging to the Carracci family.Among his oil paintings of this period include The Butcher's Shop and The Assumption.

Annibale was invited to Rome in the year 1595 to adorn the state apartments of  Palazzo Farnese,which were the city’s most fabulous fresh private palace.He started his masterpiece, the splendid ceiling frescoes in the Galleria, by the year  1597. Set against a painted architectural background, portraying  stucco heroic pictures, bronze plaques, and engraved marble decorations were 11 huge easel paintings in elaborate frames. They depict, in  idealized  human form, scenes of the pagan gods, fetched  from the fables of the Roman poet Ovid. Completed by 1604, the frescoes astonished Rome's artistic world.