Annibale Carracci

Annibale Carracci (1560 – 1609) was born in Bologna, Italy. He painted in collaboration with his brother and cousin. Around 1582 the Carracci formed an academy, the Accademia degli Incamminati, to teach their innovative artistic theories. In their art they rebelled against the mannered styles of their contemporaries and took as its program a thorough study of nature combined with a study of preceding artists. They believed that this regimen would renew art and form a universal style. Always of a melancholic nature, Annibale suffered a decline in health around 1605. Annibale's death in Rome in 1609 brought an end to a career which spanned the three most revolutionary decades of Italian painting since the High Renaissance. His naturalistic style of the 1580s became the basis for one of the main trends of seventeenth-century art.