The Inventive Genius of Annibale Carracci
Diane De Grazia   page 5 of 6

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In spite of Annibale's meticulous care in drawing realistically described and articulated forms, what sets him apart from other fine draftsmen and places him in the category of great graphic artists is his ability to set down a few strokes to imply an entire scene. Lines that are extraneous and decorative did not enter his vocabulary as they did in that of his brother Agostino.24 In his landscape drawings, for example, such as the Coastal Landscape (cat. 70), brief hatching strokes suggest, instead of fully describe, the branches of the trees, whole bushes, the background hills, the foreground grasses, the walking figures, and the moving sailboats on the lake. Yet we feel the atmosphere of a breezy spring or summer day and can imagine a real landscape before us. In his studies for the ignudi for the Farnese Gallery ceiling (cat. 60), the figures were drawn quickly and assuredly with simple indications for hair and toes and surrounding foliate decoration. The interest here was not in fully describing the figure but on understanding the di sotto in su perspective and the fall of light on the form. In the study for the Self-Portrait on an Easel (cat. 88), the gaze of the figure at top as he turns toward us, holding his cloak, comes alive even though composed of only a few strokes. Below the portrait Annibale suggested the depth of the room by minimum lines for the ceiling beams. At times this paring down to basics is meant to amuse as much as to suggest, as in Landscape with Smiling Sunrise (cat. 89). No one before Annibale was as adept at insinuative draftsmanship, and only Rembrandt after him surpassed his genius for subtle suggestion.

One may need to credit Agostino Carracci and the camaraderie of learning in the Carracci academy for Annibale's ability to develop his natural talents to extraordinary lengths. In the academy the artists sought to perfect their art by copying the works of other masters, as well as relief sculpture and antique heads, and live male and female models. They made their own clay models. To understand anatomy they dissected corpses and learned the working of the muscles, bones, and nerves of the human body. Of course, they went outside and sketched the countryside and the people they saw, both beautiful and deformed. They studied architecture and perspective as well as history, mythology, and literature. From Malvasia we learn that they sketched whatever they saw, even eating bread with one hand and drawing with the other.25 They played visual games to increase their manual dexterity. One game entailed drawing several figures without lifting pen from paper.26 Another consisted of drawing a few lines to suggest a scene while the participants guessed what was presented.27 Exaggerating the features of a subject became a game in itself and the first true caricatures originated in the Carracci academy. The term "caricature" was first applied in the seventeenth century to works by the Carracci.28 Whether Agostino, to whom almost all the extant caricatures can be attributed, or Annibale invented the genre is not important here:29 the attitude was one embraced by the academy as suggestive of meaning beyond the forms depicted. The rigorous academy training obviously aided Annibale in his natural tendency to include observation of the everyday world in his work.

Annibale's late Roman works are a culmination of his previous study and style. His powers of observation did not diminish in his drawings for the Farnese Gallery, which have been described as hyperidealized, classicizing works. They focus and consolidate the earlier works into a concentration of action and form. Hands are not fully described but have become appendages with powerful meaning, with expressive gesture paramount (cat. 61). These drawings represent what the theorist Monsignor Giovanni Battista Agucchi, Annibale's admirer, termed affetti, actions that must be precisely rendered to suggest emotion.30 Yet affetti could not be effective without direct observation of gestural movement in living human beings, and Annibale's art emphasized the inclusion of nature in both facial and gestural movement.

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24. On a comparison of the three Carracci's graphic styles see De Grazia 1998b, 294-295.

25. Malvasia 1678 (1841), 1: 307-308, 334.

26. No drawings by Annibale like this are extant, but many exist by Agostino. See De Grazia 1988, fig. 1.

27. Malvasia 1678 (1841), 1: 334-335, described and reproduced some of these games.

28. Mancini 1617 (1956-1957), 136-137, was the first to describe this new genre, in relation to the Carracci, calling the works "ritratti ridicoli." Giovanni Antonio Massini (as Giovanni Mosini) first introduced the term caricature ("ritratti carichi"). The word "carichi" indicated that the forms were "heavy" or "loaded" with meaning (see Mahon 1947, 259-265). See also De Grazia Bohlin in Washington 1979, 67, n. 83.

29. On this and on the present writer's attribution of the origin of caricature to Agostino see De Grazia 1988, 98-109. The drawing by Annibale from Windsor Castle exhibited here (cat. 82) appears not to be a caricature but a depiction of an actual human being.

30. On Agucchi's description of the affetti in Annibale Carracci, see Mahon 1947, 148-151, and Malvasia 1678 (1841), 1: 360-368.

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