In late sixteenth-century Bologna, Annibale Carracci reinvigorated painting through a renewed study of nature in vivid depictions of a bean-eater and butchers, and moving religious images. In Rome, Annibale painted the exuberant loves of the gods in the Farnese Gallery – frescoes comparable to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and Raphael’s Villa Farnesina – which catapulted him to fame as a ‘new Raphael’. He was celebrated as a man of wit and a devoted teacher. This first modern biography in English highlights Annibale’s incisive pictorial and verbal wit and the shifts in taste that later obscured his legacy. Reassessing his art with clarity and nuance, the book brings into focus a painter of remarkable breadth and intelligence who profoundly shaped European art.
