Agostino Carracci - Life

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 began 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.

Read more about this topic:  Agostino Carracci

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.
    Jacques Attali (b. 1943)

    Viewed narrowly, all life is universal hunger and an expression of energy associated with it.
    Mary Ritter Beard (1876–1958)

    I heard a good one at Toulouse of a woman who had passed through the hands of some soldiers: “God be praised,” she said, “that at least once in my life I have had my fill without sin!”
    Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)