Annibale o Agostino - Il 'Caso' Della - Venere Dormiente - Di Chantilly (English Text) - About Art On Line PDF

4/12/2018 Annibale o Agostino ?
Il 'caso' della "Venere dormiente" di Chantilly (english text) - About Art on line
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4/12/2018 Annibale o Agostino ? Il 'caso' della "Venere dormiente" di Chantilly (english text) - About Art on line
aprile 8, 2018 ⁄ About Art Indirizzo email:
Annibale o Agostino ? Il Il tuo indirizzo
‘caso’ della “Venere Iscriviti
dormiente” di Chantilly
(english text)
Partner
di Clovis WHITFIELD
The Sleeping Venus

As I have argued, Agostino is behind the idea of the four
pairs of cupids Eros and Anteros who for Bellori were
the key to the subject-matter of the Galleria: the drawing
in Chicago on the back of Annibale’s study of the Tazza
Farnese is clearly by the elder brother.
Agostino
seems to
have had
almost an
obsession
with
cupids in
his latter
years,
both in
the Recensioni
frescoes
in Parma
but also
in the
Roman
drawings
and JACOPO
prints, BASSANO
where “VIVEZZA E
there are GRAZIA DI
numerous COLORE” →
Studi di Storia
dell’Arte in
onore di
Fabrizio
Lemme →
1
Chicago, Art InstituteTwo Cupids wrestling
verso of drawing with Drunken Silenus (Annibale)
and a decorative border (Agostino) Caravaggio tra
Pen and brown ink 282 by 175 mm originali e copie
– Barbara
Savina →
supporters to coats of arms as well as the central figure of
the 1599 print Omnia vincit amor. The cupids Agostino
painted on Fulvio Orsini’s spinet are today split into two
sections of the instrument cover in the National Gallery.
Both the cupids and the Silenus there relate closely to the
designs for the Tazza Farnese, and the idea of the
weaving branches of the vine extend the intertwined
stems of the border he invented for the silver dish. The
drawing in Frankfurt for Two Satyr Children however is Tiziano indagini
in three sulla pittura –
Utilizziamo i cookiepieces, stuck
per essere together
sicuri che tu possafor a ladifferent
avere effect, sul
migliore esperienza andnostro sito. Se continui ad utilizzare questo sito si
although this might seem presuppone che tu
to be sia d'accordo.
the product ofOka later Leggi di più
association, and the opportunity to make a more complete Andrea Donati –

study out of a couple of decorative putti, the landscape in con video →
between has every indication of being in the same hand,
and is consistent with the background of landscapes like
that of Agostino’s painting of Diana and Callisto at
Merton. It is as though this was an extension of the
composition to allow for another invention, and indeed
this is the Sleeping Venus now at Chantilly, where there
is a range of as many as twenty-eight cupids, all of them
reminiscent of Agostino’s figures that are familiar from La pittura di
his drawings and prints. Antonio
Mercurio
The cupids in Venus’s Amorosi – C.
bower have climbed Maggini e S.
higher but they are from Papetti →
the same inventive mind
as those of the Tazza and
Fulvio Orsini’s spinet.
Whether sharpening an Categorie
arrow or admiring
himself in a mirror, the Archeologia
cupid beneath Venus is Architettura
clearly of the same
e design
invention as the one on
Arte antica
the left of the Parma
Agostino Carracci Cupid bearing a ceiling of the Palazzo del Arte
Sword Giardino, or the drawing contemporanea
Pen and brown ink on cream for it in the Metropolitan Arte
paper Museum (detail) and the moderna
206 by 144 mm pair ‘making a Arti visive
marriage’ in Richard
Contest
Symonds’s words[1] on the right Esposizioni
of the Chantilly composition are Eventi
closely related to the kind of
Fiere
cupids Agostino did in the 1600
Fotografia
Epithelium for the
Aldondrandini / Farnese Interviste
marriage in 1600, discovered presuppone che tu sia d'accordo. Ok
Recensioni
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recently by Stefano Colonna, Scultura

or the single drawing of a Cupid
bearing a Sword in the
Uncategorized
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford,
or indeed the better known
drawing at Windsor Castle of
Venus, Vulcan and Cupid[2], Archivi
which has her also reclining on
aprile 2018
a bed with a curtain behind.
marzo 2018
febbraio
2018
gennaio
Agostino Carracci Cupid
gathering Grapes; oil of 2018
panel (fragment) 36,1 by dicembre
19 cm London national 2017
Gallery novembre
2017
ottobre 2017
settembre
2017
agosto 2017
luglio 2017
giugno 2017
maggio 2017
Agostino Carracci, Two satyrs gathering Grapes
Pen and brown ink and black ink over red
chalk, three joined pieces of paper.
Frankfurt, Stadel Museum
Agostino Carracci, Venus Vulcan and Cupid Windsor Castle, Royal

Collection
Pen and brown ink, brown was, real paper,
175 by 275 mm
The painting was actually executed by the most active of

the assistants in the Carracci studio (and the one who
was closest to Annibale) at the turn of the century,
Innocenzo Tacconi, and although it was celebrated early
on by Agucchi’s encomium, published in full by
Malvasia years later, it was not done by Annibale nor
mainly invented by him. It does look as though the
painting was the context of the disagreement between the
two brothers, that if it started with some of the vivid and
free brushwork that characterised his hand, it was for
Annibale stifled by the affirmative classicism that his
brother insisted upon now that he had shown that he
could compete with him as a painter as well as an
inventor.
Sleeping Venus, Chantilly, Musée Condé, oil on canvas, 190 by 328

cm
The Sleeping Venus [3] was a commission undertaken by

the Carracci in Rome, and while it has always been
difficult to distinguish separate contributions in their
projects, it turns out to be a rather revealing collaboration.
The learning and compositional framework, as well as the
insistence on a range of cupids in every attitude, looks to
be by Agostino, the formal invention of the main figure
could have originated with Annibale, but actually seems
to be a direct classical quotation, while the execution is
almost wholly by Innocenzo Tacconi. The colouring of
Annibale’s limbs with overlay of Greek form, sometimes
rather harsh and lacking in subtlety, should give cause to
think not only how much his character impacted on work
in the Farnese Gallery, where it is much less easy to
demonstrate who did what, and the extent to which this
amanuensis is responsible for giving the impression of
idealism to the late work of a master whose energies were
by no means as charged as they had been in Bologna.
Sleeping Venus,
Chantilly, Musée
Agostino Carracci Sleeping Venus,
Condé Detail
Cupid sharpening Chantilly, Musée
an Arrow, study Condé Detail
for the Parma
Palazzo del
Giardino ceiling
detail)
Metropolitan
Museum, New
York
However much posterity has written off this evidently

flawed personality, Innocenzo was patently valued by
Annibale during the very period he undertook the most
demanding project of his life, and we must assume that
his modus operandi was such as to be able to work with
this assistant, almost hand in glove, while he was still
physically able to meet the challenge, and collaborate in
this most fruitful way with his brother and the other
members of the Carracci team. It is only towards the end
of this joint operation that the tensions really come to the
surface: the impatience of the younger brother with the
superior knowledge of the elder one, the growing
presumption of the latter because he had finally won
confidence to paint his own contributions to the great task
where he had hitherto left Annibale to to the main
courses, and gained wide admiration, and an increasing
domination by the assistant that revealed his formulaic
andi somewhat
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tasks the studio was supposedpresupponetoche tu sia d'accordo.
fulfil. Ok Leggi di più
Annibale was
depressive, and
his mood after
the completion
of the Farnese
ceiling made it
difficult to
work, even
before the
complete
breakdown at
the end of
1604.
Odoardo had
Agostino Carracci Detail from the made his
Frontispiece of Epithelium for the marriage insulting
of payment,
Margherita Aldobrandini and Ranuccio deducting the
Farnese, 1600 cost of the
painters’
years-long stay
in the attics of his palazzo, probably in 1601, when at
least the ceiling had been completed. Baglione recounts
how after the completion of the work in the Farnese
gallery Annibale “si avvilì, e diede in una grandissima
malinconia, che poco mancò che no’l portasse a l’altra
vita ...”
It is probably
around this
time
Annibale
took refuge
with the
Dutch
merchant
Balthasar
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Coymans,
very wealthy presuppone che tu sia d'accordo. Ok Leggi di più
collector for Carracci Studio Tobias Healing his Father’s

whom Blindness
Annibale Oil on panel, 52.8 by 66.5 cm
provided a Kassel, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie
series of Alte Meister
paintings of
the Seven
Acts of Mercy, of which the surviving Tobias healing his
Father’s Blindness in Kassel seems to be painted entirely
by an artist from his studio[4].
It was a time of great change: learning of the death of

Agostino (March 22 1602) Annibale made his way to
Bologna to take charge of his young nephew Antonio,
returning with Ludovico as well. Although Malvasia’s
claim that the latter retouched the whole of the Galleria
on this visit is manifestly wrong, it has not so far been
suggested that Odoardo may have looked to Ludovico to
manage some of the projects that were now being thrust
upon Annibale, but this idea could make sense. Tacconi
left for Bologna with Ludovico in the summer of 1602,
and although he came back later, it was not to work for
the new studio team that looked after Annibale.The
much-repeated anecdote of Odoardo’s miserly payment
for the labours of the Galleria is not accompanied by a
real understanding of the events that could have led to his
parsimonious recompense, but it must surely have
something to do with the fact that Annibale was unable
to complete the job, or was otherwise uncooperative so
much so that both Giuseppe Cesari and the Alberti
brothers seem to have been asked to provide designs for
the walls, or complete what was originally planned.
Fulvio Orsini might have been a continuing source of
literary and archaeological information, but he died in
May 1600. The two main scenes that Agostino had done
in the Galleria were in some quarters seen as eclipsing
the rest, and Malvasia wrote [5] that it was said at court
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the painter.
“Per esser Annibale dipresuppone che tu sia d'accordo.
natura malinconico, Ok
et apprensivo Leggi di più
molto, si aggravò tanto nel pensiero della sua disgratia, e

cadde in humore di non più dipingere’.[6] Agostino also
had “poca salute e indispositioni continue” (Bellori 112),
was overweight, suffered from poor sight so that he had
to wear glasses, for the physician Mancini said that he
‘pativa di asma o difficoltà di respirare et il lavorare a
fresco gl’era inimicissimo’. Annibale’s health had
obviously deteriorated even before he came to Rome, but
the completion of the Galleria vault was a crisis from
which he never recovered fully. One of the assistants,
Innocenzo Tacconi, on whom Annibale evidently
depended, had exacerbated the tensions between the
brothers, and was perceived (by the new arrivals from
Bologna, Lanfranco, Guido Reni, Domenichino) as
having an undue influence on his work. Malvasia relates
that Annibale “left alone without his learned brother,
who directed the work and reduced his workload by half,
lost his head and as a result shortened his life” [7].
Agostino’s health too was broken, and he left to a
continuing decline ending after less than two years. This
was a personal tragedy for both of them, Annibale was
left in a state of extreme melancholy clearly even before
the final breakdown of his health at the end of 1604 and
spent the remaining years in Rome almost speechless and
unable to work, mesmerised by the extraordinary
achievements that their collaboration had pushed him to.
He was obsessed, according to Mancini, with claiming
all the merit for the Farnese Gallery “voleva la gloria di
quell’opera per se” and the good doctor underlined this in
a later annotation “tutta la gloria” ; even though he was
unable to complete it, or to repeat it. Whether or not his
troubles were associated with amorous adventures – the
disordini amorosi that Bellori speaks of (1672, p. 77), he
was evidently depressive.
But one of the characteristics of the workshop that bore

his name is that it failed to make public how much he had
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clients how much of their presuppone che tu were
paintings sia d'accordo.
actuallyOkpainted Leggi di più
by the man himself, even when he was quite unable to

hold a brush. Altarpieces were painted and delivered
without acknowledging that Annibale had not touched
them.
Studio of Annibale Carracci, c. 1600 Madonna and Child with Saints

Francis, Anthony and Dorothy canvas, 365 by 212 cm Duomo,
Spoleto
During the period of the Galleria Tacconi seems to have

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destinations outside Palazzo Farnese.He was deputed to
do work in the Bombasi chapel (1599/1600), where

Annibale’s altarpiece was only a copy made in Bologna
by Lucio Massari of a part of a painting he had done a
decade earlier for Reggio Emilia. The altarpiece supplied
in 1598/99 for the Duomo in Spoleto, the Madonna and
Child with Saints Francis, Anthony and Dorothy [8] was
evidently almost entirely painted by the young assistant.
The Cerasi Chapel Assunta was probably ordered at the
same time as Caravaggio’s paintings in the autumn of
1600, but was not yet in place in June 1601 (so after
Tiberio Cerasi had died 6 May) and perhaps not
completed until 1602[9]; although Tacconi is usually
credited with just the paintings surrounding the altarpiece,
it is reasonable to suppose that he must have helped with
the main picture too. All of the projects that Annibale
undertook during this period of the Farnese Gallery
were in some way compromised, as with the major
altarpiece of the Mass of St Gregory [10] commissioned
by Cardinal Salviati (who died in April 1602) for S.
Gregorio al Celio and painted likely after the return from
Bologna in 1602. Mancini reports this was done “con suo
disegno e ritocco” and at least some of the drawings
were by Antonio Carracci.
The same was the case with

the Pietà [11] in San
Francesco a Ripa (now in
the Louvre) that Albani says
he (Annibale) ruined it as he
was finishing it. This was
installed in Fabio Mattei’s
family chapel at Easter 1603;
it was evidently a favour for
Odoardo’ s courtier, and
perhaps a votive gift in
memory of his Farnese wife
Faustina, who had died in
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i cookie
1594 . He really did need Studio of Annibale Carracci,
his brother to manage presuppone
his che tu siaMadonna
d'accordo. Ok Leggi di più
di Loreto,
work schedule. Malvasia San Onofio al Gianicolo

says Tacco”i had ‘troppo Rome
dominio sopra Annibale in Canvas, 250 by 150, c.
Roma, onde lo reggesse, 1604/05
divoltasse, e faceva fare a
suo modo“[13], but the effect
of this stylistic incursion has not really been measured.
He needed someone to manage the commissions that the
Carracci received, so Albani was employed to run the
Herrera Chapel project (begun in 1602) where Annibale
seems not to have contributed a single brushstroke, and
also the lunettes for the Aldobrandini Chapel in the
Corso, which were under way only by 1605. The same
happened with the altarpiece of the Madonna di Loreto
for the Madruzzo Chapel in Sant’ Onofrio[14], which was
completed in 1605 without any participation of the master
himself. In a way the garish colours, that characterised
even the lost Mass of St Gregory, came to replace the
brilliance of Annibale’s freer brushwork, which had
always been an obstacle for some of the connoisseurs
who admired Carracci productions.
Studio of Annibale Carracci. c. 1602 Mass of St Gregory, canvas

265 by 152 cm
Formerly London, Bridgewater House (destroyed in WW II)
In reality although Tacconi is usually perceived as an

unimportant artistic personality following the bad press
he got, his collaboration with the Carracci was a high
point in his own career, and we should recognise the
results as being quite out of the league of his own
personal creations, as we know them from work done
subsequently. Few have discussed the contribution he
made to the Galleria, but he is an important presence
during the entire period it was painted, and had an

increasing part in the work Annibale had outside it. The
stepson of Ludovico’s sister Prudenzia, he is first
recorded in Rome in 1598, when work on the ceiling
began, and the connection with Ludovico might even
indicate an attempt to provide a useful hand from the
Carracci firm in Bologna to work productively with
Annibale, resulting in the work on the Farnese Galleria
getting going – finally. It cannot have been a wholly
negative partnership if it resulted in such industry.The
period of his influence was rather crucial: his presence
coincided with the beginning of work on the Galleria,
and his dominating collaboration with Annibale
continued at least until 1600/01; he accompanied the
master in a trip to Caprarola in May 1601 to work with
him on a Pietà, and probably until 1602. So he must have
been involved closely in the Galleria itself although there
perhaps the proximity of Annibale himself means that it
has so far been impossible to see where his handiwork
lies. He evidently felt that he knew his master and became
increasingly overbearing in his interpretation of his
designs, making him inaccessible to others. Since there
had always been a measure of ‘correction’ to his work,
Annibale was used to interference; here was an instance
of someone who understood his shorthand and built his
drawings, which tended to be for single figures, into
meaningful compositions. It is worth considering the
impact of this personality because it is obvious he got on
well with Annibale and this was the most productive
period in the latter’s entire career. The level of his actual
participation was actually very relevant, because his
brushwork rather than design was so important; but this
was always left ambiguous at best and completely
indistinguishable in the majority of the work. There is a
certain stylistic continuity over the four years of their
work together, and we could even deduce that there was
an increasing efficiency in his use of his designs, but
towards
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impressionistic brushwork presuppone
thatche tu sia
had beend'accordo.
the hallmark
Ok of
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his success. It is obvious that there was a major

interruption in service, as it were, when Annibale
returned from Bologna with Antonio: the disaffection, we
can only imagine, was probably brought about by the
news of Agostino’s death in March 1602, an event that
had a finality that he took badly. We know that Annibale
was profoundly depressed well before his health gave
way completely, and it must have been traumatic to
realise the effect of Tacconi’s intrigues towards his
brother and that he was now on his own, facing the
cumulative demands of the Farnese household.
But one of the most interesting works that came out of

this collaboration is perhaps one of the least studied, the
Sleeping Venus now at Chantilly, Musée Condé which
has long been regarded as executed by Innocenzo[15].
The terms of the Duc d’Aumale’s bequest in 1884 meant
that the painting cannot be lent, as so it has not been seen
in the context of the post-war exhibitions. It is well-
known that it was hanging in the Palazzetto Farnese as
early as 1644, but in reality we do not know if that was its
original location although this has always been assumed
to be the case. The Palazzetto, a pavilion on the other
side of the Via Giulia, was built for Odoardo Farnese
from mid-1602: the bridge that joins the main building to
the other side on the road was planned in 1602, but not
actually constructed until 1604. The main decorations of
the open loggia on the ground floor, the three frescoes
Domenichino did of Venus and Adonis, Apollo and
Hyacinth and Narcissus, would not be done until 1604/05,
so the rooms upstairs on the first floor were probably
done after that period too. The decorations that we know
from the inventories, particularly that of 1644[16], and
Richard Symonds’s description around 1650, that were
done by the scolari di Annibale, correspond with some of
the paintings described in the later 1662 Farnese
inventory[17]. These included the nineteen landscapes
around a per essere figure
central sicuri cheof
tu Apollo
possa avere
inlathe
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main esperienza
room, sul
allegorical figures ofpresupponeNight and che tu sia d'accordo.
Day Ok
now at Chantilly Leggi di più
with the Sleeping Venus. But the other paintings on the

walls, including Agostino’s Arrigo peloso, Amon motto,
Pietro matto, the little painting also by him of Europa and
the Bull (private collection, on loan to the National
Galleries of Scotland) and the Brussels Diana and
Actaeon that I have suggested should be restored to
Agostino’s authorship, must predate the decorative
scheme for the walls, which also were hung with a series
of earlier portraits of the royal family of Portugal. It does
look as though the real decorations of the walls had
already been dispersed before 1644, and indeed even the
little chapel there on the first floor by that date was
evidently reduced to a toilet.
The presence
in the 1662
inventory,
among the
paintings
apparently
coming from
the scola dei
Carracci, of
what was
evidently a
version of
Landscape with Diana and Callisto Mertoun, Duke
the Bologna
of Sutherland collection
Toilet of
[18]
Venus
suggests that this was where it and perhaps its
companion, the Mertoun Landscape with Diana and
Callisto hung, and gives the impression that this suite of
rooms was indeed the setting of the most important series
of Carraccesque landscapes, but not the original location
of the paintings hanging on the walls. These paintings
seem to represent an overflow from other locations in the
Palazzo Farnese itself, without any common
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paintings
that were, in contrast, presuppone
evidentlyche tu sia d'accordo.
designed Ok
for that location, Leggi di più
in a period when Annibale’s health had collapsed. The

Sleeping Venus was by far the most imposing picture in
these small rooms, and its scale relates more to that of the
paintings in the Galleria, the subject to the loves of the
Gods celebrated there, its elaborate literary background
to the intellectual input of Agostino,
who was not

only famous
for his
Sleeping Venus Chantilly, Musée Condé

oil on canvas, 190 by 328 cm
representation of Venus, but also seems to have been

obsessed, in his later years, with cupids, of which the
Chantilly painting shows no less than twenty-eight. It
was not just that these ball boys and girls were so useful
as supporters to the engravings that Agostino had made
for coats of arms, title pages of epithelia and the taming
of Pan in the Omnia vincit amor theme (in Bologna as
well as in the 1599 engraving) that in many ways
epitomises the Galleria subject-matter, they had been a
running theme with variations among the supporting
figures that punctuated the various interiors the Carracci
had done. As quadratura, this was what Carraccesque
decoration was about, and in designing the surround to
the Tazza Farnese, he had found further employment for
these cupids climbing the vines, as a kind of parenthesis
for the central figure group with the Drunken Silenus that
Annibale had invented with his usual facility. For Fulvio
Orsini Agostino had extended their territory to the spinet
cover, now in the National Gallery, and he pasted
together their antics with a landscape prospect in the
drawing in Frankfurt Two Satyr Children Picking Grapes
, (illustrated above) emblazoned on the cover of the 2000

exhibition catalogue in Washington, DC, dedicated to the
drawings of Annibale Carracci. But as has become clear,
this draughtsmanship is typical of Agostino, and it is
characteristic of the happy collaboration of the two
brothers that Agucchi describes, that this should be the
origin of the framing design of the large Sleeping Venus.
The drawing in Frankfurt is in three pieces, stuck together
for a different effect, and although this might seem to be
the product of a later association, and the opportunity to
make a more complete study out of a couple of decorative
putti, the landscape in between has every indication of
being in the same hand, and is consistent with the
background of landscapes like that of the Diana and
Callisto at Mertoun.
So the design of the Sleeping Venus is in

reality more closely connected with
Agostino’s work in Rome than that of his
brother.
It is no accident that the arbor that he invented for the

Tazza Farnese is developed into its elaborate framing
motif, and the vine in the drawing in Frankfurt used for
the cupids on the Orsini spinet cover obviously
anticipates Venus’s shady nook. In a way, Agostino’s
managerial concern with quadratura or the layout of the
ceiling, which was I think vital for that project, extends
into this painting as part of the invention itself – even
though in this case he did not paint it. It is a surround
subject, and the content full of the learning that he wanted
to introduce into the idiom of modern painting. And the
level of preparation, to judge from the drawings, was
exacting, to the extent that they have in the past been
mistaken for copies after the finished work. The
landscape, leading up to the distant scolloped hillside,
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designs, with sul
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trunks che
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bandsOkof light Leggi di più
and dark towards the horizon. No coincidence either that

the frieze-like impression of the figures is closely related
to the two principal scenes Agostino painted in the
Galleria, where he also uses the weightless forms of
flying cupids to give the impression of a painted
equivalent of a classical relief. If Annibale had started
the painting, in the spirit of collaboration that according
to Agucchi had worked sweetly in the Galleria, he
baulked at continuing and left it to his assistant to
complete even as the author of the design gave up and left
him to struggle on in Rome on his own.
The Venus is the subject of Agucchi’s lengthy

Descrizione that was secured by Malvasia and published
by him in the Felsina Pittrice. It is an exceptional
document, and an advertisement for the kind of classicism
that would be associated – by people like Bellori and the
French academic movement – with Annibale’s role in
energising the revival of painting with a lot of intellectual
input, from the Antique and celebrating the Renaissance
masters who were seen as his direct predecessors. How
much of Agucchi’s account is just a literary exercise,
descriptive of but not evocative of what he saw ? It is a
rhetorical essay full of praise, but even though he claims
to have taken away a drawing after the painting it is
singular how it does not capture its spirit. And there are a
number of interesting inconsistencies in Agucchi’s
account, almost suggesting that it was a different painting
that he saw. For he saw a painting on panel[19], (referring
three times to tavola) and although the dimensions are
quite consistent with the work now at Chantilly, his
account of the fluent brushwork is belied by the very tight
appearance of the painting today, usually explained by the
idea that it was completed by the assistant who had
Annibale’s ear in the quarrel with Agostino, Innocenzo
Tacconi. Agucchi also mentions that Annibale worked
entirely without drawings, “con somma celerità e senza
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surviving drawings are actually unusually close to the

final design.
Sleeping Venus, Frankfurt, Stadel Museum

279 by 379 mm pen and brown ink over black chalk heighten ed
with white
Both the pose of Venus herself in the drawing in

Frankfurt, and the twenty-one cupids in the Windsor
study of the left hand half of the composition, anticipate
the final design in a way unprecedented in all the
preparatory drawings for the Farnese Gallery – except
the cartoons that Agostino did for his two scenes either
side the of the Triumph of Bacchus. Agucchi, perhaps
surprisingly, does not refer to the inspiration taken from
the antique – the Vatican Sleeping Ariadne that is a
convincing source for the Venus, for the painting is
usually regarded as one of the key works in Annibale’s
conversion to a new classicism, with which the writer of
the Descrizione is closely associated. And it is a paradox
that Agucchi apparently admired the extraordinary
freshness and naturalism of Annibale’s familiar manner,
which is so signally absent in the finished painting, where
it is actually really hard to find passages that are
stylistically
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Vatican Museums, Galleria delle Statue Sleeping Minerva (‘’Ariadne

Sleeping’) Roman copy of a Hellenistic original
If Agucchi was not privy to the creative mind behind the

invention, it must indicate how secretive the Carracci
studio was in revealing who did what in their decorations.
We should also consider that although Agucchi says that
the painting was unfinished, “non intieramente da lui
stato a perfezione ridotto” it was all but “era nondimeno
a cotale termine di finimento arrivato, che poco pareva,
che desiderare gli si potesse“, and indeed the sheer
amount of detail that he describes leaves us in little doubt
that it was mainly as we see it today at Chantilly. Is it
really contemporary with the Galleria and one of those
paintings that the intellectual Agostino projected ? there
is no reference in the Descrizione of any verbal exchange
with Annibale himself, as if he was not present to
explain, and it looks as though this work was unfinished
when his brother left in the summer of 1600.
Silvia Ginzburg, among others, has already suggested

that the presence of the Sleeping Venus in the Palazzetto
Farnese should not be regarded as evidence that it was
painted at the late date of the construction of the building:
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description, avere la migliore esperienza sulis
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referred to by the author presuppone

himselfcheintua sialetter
d'accordo. Ok 1603,
of April Leggi di più
but while it has generally been assumed that the autumn

referred to in the text is that of the previous year, the
interior in which the Sleeping Venus eventually hung was
almost certainly not yet built at the time, and the painting
must be a piece done for one of the other camerini that in
fact Agucchi refers to in his brief account of the work
done at Palazzo Farnese[20]. It certainly must have been
inspired by Titian’s Garden of Venus that had arrived in
Rome in 1598 as part of Pietro Aldobrandini’s booty
from Lucrezia d”Este’s inheritance, but its literary
source in Philostratus’s Imagines and the more recondite
Epithelium of Palladias and Celerina by Claudian[21]
suggest that it was Agostino’s learning that led to the
elaborate and demanding narrative that the painter was
supposed to follow, and the research that led him to echo
the Vatican Sleeping Minerva in the pose of Venus
herself. He was also doubtless the source for the Farnese
impresa illustrated by the cupids shooting arrows at the
target in the background [22], that Anne Brookes has
shown is borrowed from Odoardo’s late uncle, Cardinal
Alessandro Farnese. Tacconi’s material execution of the
canvas has been argued consistently since Tietze over a
century ago, and seems to make sense in terms of his
stylistic characteristics – when his work was closely
monitored by the Carracci. The painting singularly is
missing that colorito soave of the neo-Correggiesque
paintings done for Bombasi around the turn of the
century, and the rich and oily impasto that seems the
natural continuation of Annibale’s bravura. The
collaboration between them was evidently pretty
successful, and it may be that it is the origin of the
‘classicising’ element in Annibale’s late work, or instead
the domination of his brother’s artistic idealism.
It has already been suggested (by Ann S. Harris[23]) that

the ink contours of the Frankfurt drawing, and the
alternative pose of Venus sketched there, are not by
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an addition possa could
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say edition)
by another hand, possibly presuppone che tu siaAnd
Tacconi’s. d'accordo. Ok
the articulation Leggi di più
in the ink of the knuckles is indeed rather similar to those

attributed to Tacconi in the Windsor drawing identified
by Brogi in his article [24] on Annibale’s right-hand man
[25]
.The need to arrive at the outlines, to choose the final
contours of figures planned for execution by others in
paintings, is a regular feature of many Carraccesque
studies, and the consideration that these studies for the
Venus have such a finality, that they correspond so closely
with the finished painting, should alert us to this reality.
They are at an advanced stage of production, but
represent a more emphatic interpretation of the original
charcoal study, with a more pronounced ‘Greek’ profile
that inevitably colours the original idea. When we remove
some of the ‘hard’ pen and ink outlines, we can see that
the charcoal underdrawing is by no means as definitive,
and the additional pen and ink studies left and right are
attempts to make a practical design for Venus’s pose in
the painting, by the hand responsible for her outlines. The
foundation of the design represented by the charcoal
underdrawing is by no means as affirmative, for it is
much slighter and as rather different from the vigorous
pencil studies, with much emphasis and re-statements of
Annibale’s authentic drawings for example for the fresco
Tacconi painted for the top of the Coronation of the
Virgin in the Bombasi chapel, and other late works like
those for the recurring Pietà theme. There are few pen
and ink studies by Annibale (it was not his preferred
medium), like that associated with the Chantilly
Archangel Gabriel, or the rapid sketch for a Danae that
was to be painted (the work that was at Bridgewater
House in London was destroyed in the War) in fact by the
studio, perhaps Albani. Annibale’s way with even with a
pen too was mostly much more undisciplined, not to say
impatient, while his usual medium of pencil / charcoal
gave him much more freedom to explore nuances of light.
By contrast the penned outline of Venus’s back turns out
to give her a less sensuous profile than for instance of
Venus
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sicuri che tu and
possa Adonis (1588/90)
avere la migliore or sul
esperienza thenostro sito. Se continui ad utilizzare questo sito si
Uffizi Venus, a Satyr and presuppone che tu sia(1588)
Two Cupids d'accordo.
evenOkthough Leggi di più
there Annibale was said to have used Ludovico’s

backside as his model. Instead these drawings we do
know for the Venus, the one in Frankfurt, another in
Windsor[26] and a third in Paris, Louvre [27] represent the
challenge faced by Annibale in fulfilling the increasingly
articulated detailed demands to follow a precise design.
Cupids Windsor, Royal Library Pen and brown ink over black chalk
233 by 265 mm
And so accurately do the Cupids in the Windsor drawing

for the left half correspond to the finished painting that
they have even been mistaken for copies after it. Their
heavily inked contours are characteristic of Tacconi’s
hand. These are the Amori that we recognise from many
Agostino designs, “tutti per lo più alla misura d’un
fanciullino ben formato, non s’impediscono dagli uni le
operationi degli altri” [28]. They are the successors not
only of the Cupids in designs like the Last Communion of
St Jerome (finished just before he came to Rome) the
Amor vincit omnia print of 1599, but also of a career
supplying endlessly varied poses in the supporting ball-
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would continue to coin in variations in the design for the

Tazza Farnese and afterwards in Parma.
Agostino Carracci Amor vincit omnia

Etching, 1599
Two have echoes of Michelangelo, like the boy raising

himself up the bank with one leg lifted, which Agostino
had already quoted in his tempera landscape in the Pitti
(and also in the medallion of Hero and Leander in the
Farnese Gallery). The drawings started evidently, as
Martin perceived, with light charcoal forms, later heavily
outlined in ink, to make the transition to a cartoon. This
commission was effectively the battleground of
Annibale’s fight with his brother, the pelo nell’ovo that
he had to insist on, for the classical sources that he was so
attached to, when his brother dispensed even with the
formality of preparatory studies. The painting is thus yet
another of the instances where Annibale’s original vital
creativity was cramped by the doubtless patronising
perception of his colleagues that it needed to be tamed
and tightened up, something that even happened with the
San Francesco a Ripa Pietà that Albani complained was
spoiled by late modifications, where Tacconi (or Panico)
may yet again have intervened to reduce the painterliness
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tu possa that lapainting, or simply
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finished it because ofpresuppone che tu sia
the difficulty of d'accordo.
getting theOkmaster Leggi di più
to apply himself to the task in hand. The prevalence of

the interferences in Annibale’s work, outside the
Galleria itself, going beyond the ‘corrections’ that his
colleagues contributed, are an indication of the fatigue
that had already set in, and confirm the physical collapse
that Mancini refers to after the completion of that work.
Was Agucchi really appreciative of the naturalism that is
one of the characteristics we most associate with the work
of Annibale in Bologna ? did he really approve of the
unfinished ‘Venetian’ quality of his handling, that the
Carracci studio had been used to tidying up? Ellis
Waterhouse found that Annibale‘s fancy was numbed by
the encounter with the classical remains of Rome, for this
work was then seen as a prominent instance of his ‘new
style’. But we should ask ourselves how much this really
due to the need to continue the fiction of his material
continuation after the Galleria ceiling was completed, a
conspiracy of the band of Bolognese pupils who
surrounded the artist in his decline to extract the most
from his magic palette, with the help of intellectuals like
Agucchi who admired the literary zeal of Agostino seen
through the imagery that his brother laid over it., and then
dealers who wanted to maximise the amount of material
that they could describe as Annibale’s. The veneer of
‘classicism’ that Tacconi gave to the Chantilly painting,
undoubtedly the most important work that he was
entrusted with, shows how much he was the purveyor of
the ‘hyper-idealism’ that Annibale’s late work has been
labeled with, while the genuine classicism that is behind
the invention is the result not of Annibale’s curiosity for
the marbles of ancient Rome, but of Agostino’s wide-
ranging culture. It would explain some of the
contradictions that have long made it difficult to reconcile
Annibale’s innate naturalism with a more intellectual
succession, a powerful new creative industry at precisely
the time of his physical decline. Annibale was not the
only artist to survive long after his prime and be kept as a
standard
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Agostino Carracci, Last Communion of St Jerome, 1592/97

Bologna, Pinacoteca
Detail
We do not see evidence of Tacconi’s collaboration after

this point in mid-1602; out of favour with everybody, he
left with Ludovico when the latter returned to Bologna,
leaving the studio to the new arrivals from Bologna. The
main stylistic continuity was actually assured not by new
arrivals like Reni, Domenichino and Albani, but by
Agostino’s son Antonio, who had been in Rome with his
father before he left in 1600, and returned with Annibale
(and Ludovico) in the summer of 1602. The new people
on his block were pupils of his late brother:
Domenichino, who arrived in Rome at the moment of
greatest pressure; he had hardly worked with him before,
for he had joined the Accademia degli Incamminati at
the age of fourteen, in 1595 and so had been taught by
Ludovico and Agostino: equally the even younger
Lanfranco and Badalocchio (arriving in 1602) were
seen as the pupils principally of the elder brother[29]
having per essere
also sicuri che
followed himtu possa avere la migliore
to Parma, while esperienza
Albani sul
andnostro sito. Se continui ad utilizzare questo sito si
Reni were already independent presuppone cheand
tu sia practising
d'accordo. Ok
on theirLeggi di più
own when they arrived in Rome in 1601. Tacconi does

not seem to have returned to his native town, but his
subsequent career seems to be independent of the
Carracci studio. It was Antonio who was the main
badante now; his father had taken him away when he left
in 1600 as Mancini relates[30] – un fanciulletto, a
teenager in modern parlance, and now perhaps
nineteen[31], and we see his hand already in some of the
drawings for the Mass of St Gregory. Despite the absence
of a complete plan for the rest of the Galleria, there were
evidently designs in the studio that could in some way
represent a continuity with what had come before, and
several of them relate to compositions that come from
Agostino. The drawings he left behind in the studio were
relevant to the new generation of Carracci students
because he had been their principal teacher, and they were
more educational than many of Annibale’s vivid
sketches. But the ‘classical’ imagery that had manifested
itself during the collaboration with Tacconi was over, and
there is none of his work in projects such as the Herrera
Chapel at San Diego degli Spagnoli, which was initiated,
as we now know, as early as 1602.
The principal reward of Agostino’s ardentissimo amore di

sapere, as Bellori described it, was that he was able to
articulate visual interpretations of mythological stories,
and root out obscure classical sources with his antiquarian
friends. Most iconography outside Christian themes had
previously been concerned with the attributes and
symbols that literary patrons were satisfied to read as an
emblematic language: the Carracci introduced a much
more sophisticated language of forms in motion, of
expressions and gestures that spoke volumes especially
when they had at hand the quite extraordinary gifts of
Annibale in being able to capture expression. The
combination was stunning, Agostino was a ‘genio
straordinario, che teneva al disegno’ and his interest in
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incredibly lively recreations presuppone che tu

from sia d'accordo.
texts like Ovid’s, Ok oftenLeggi di più
left quite dry and void of detail, but came to life because
Annibale had such astonishing visual imagination.
Keeping him on the straight and narrow was Agostino,
for Mancini a man of singular ability who had a long
track record of invention, direction and teaching. And the
continuing impact of his designs is evident not only in the
work of his son Antonio, but also in numerous quotations
that were more incisive than the brilliantly creative
brushwork of his brother. But it is paradoxical that
although Agucchi evidently saw the Venus while it was
still unfinished, it was still an Annibale Carracci
production as far as the outside world was concerned,
even Agucchi was not privy to the creative process
through which the Carracci firm arrived at their designs.
Clovis WHITFIELD London April 2018
NOTE
[1] a boy and a girle naked making a marriage, the girle has Venus slippers on’
see A. Brookes, Richard Symonds’s notes on his visit to Rome 1649/50,
Walpole Society, Vol 69, 2007, p. 84
[2] C. Robertson & C. Whistler Drawings by the Carracci from British

Collections, London, Oxford, 1996/97, No. 49; Wittkower, 1952, No. 101
[3] Canvas, 190 by 328 cm D. Posner, Annibale Carracci, 1971, No. 134, p.
59/61
[4] oil on poplar panel, 52,8 by 66,5 cm. See J. Bikker, ‘Balthasar Coyman’s
Italian Paintings and Annibale Carracci’ in Collected Opinions, Essays on
Netherlandish Art in Honour of Alfred Bader, London, 2004, 26-33.Bikker
traces the history of the series to the collector who was in Rome in the early
seventeenth century, and who was well-known to Joachim von Sandrart. Only
the Kassel painting from the Seven Acts has so far been identified.
[5] 1841, I, p. 404 ‘ e correva quel proverbio, già detto, per la corte: portarsi
assai meglio l’intagliatore del pittore’ . The già detto is in 1678 404 ‘correa
voce, nella Galleria l’Intagliatore assai meglio del Pittore portarsi’
[6] presuppone che tu sia d'accordo. Ok Leggi di più
Bellori, Vite, 1672, 67/68
[7]
296 solo e senza il dotto fratello che gli dirigeva il lavoro e li dimezzava la
fatica, ebbe a perdersi il cervello come vi si accorciò la vita
[8] Canvas, 364 by 211 cm . D. Posner, Annibale Carracci, 1971, II, cat. no.
109. The chapel was completed in 15
[9] For long the view prevailed that it had been delivered before Tiberio Cerasi
died (7 May 1601); but there is no mention of it in 1601 alongside the
Caravaggio’s, and it is more reasonable to agree with Benati that it was not
delivered until he spring of 1602 (D.Benati, Annibale Carracci, catalogue,
2006/07. p. 200)
[10] Canvas, 265 by 152, formerly at Bridgewater House, London, destroyed in

WW II. Posner, II, No. 130. p. 57/58
[11] Canvas, 277 by 187 cm
[12] She was the last child of Giulia Farnese.
[13]
1841, I, p. 404
[14]
Canvas, 250 by 150 cm. Posner, II, o. 151. The altarpiece dates from c.
1604/05, the chapel being completed during the latter year.
[15]
A. Brogi, ‘Innocenzo Tacconi, e l’officina classicista: Un eredità dilapidata’
Paragone, 1998, p. 26-57
[16]
B. Jestaz, L’inventaire du Palais et des propriétés Farnèse à Rome en
1644, Ecole française de Rome, 1994, p. 135/137.
[17]
Filangieri di Candida……**********
[18] ibid…*** It may be this picture that R. Symonds saw ‘ Another of Diana
Bathing’ in the Palazzetto see Brookes, op. cit., Walpole Society, V. 69, 2007,
p. 84, rather than the Diana and Actaeon now in Brussels.
[19] Summerscale’s admirable translation of this passage in the Felsina Pittrice

does not pick up on this anomaly, referring only to ‘canvas’. Some of Agucchi’s
descriptions give the impression he was looking at an engraving of the
painting, for the equivocation of left and right.
[20] presuppone
D. Mahon, Studies in Seicento che tu1947.
Iconography, sia d'accordo. Ok Leggi di più
[21]
see G. Dunphy Wind, Annibale Carracci’s ‘Sleeping Venus’ a source in
Claudian’ in Source” Notes in the History of Art’, X, 1991, p. 37-39
[22] See A. Brookes, ‘ A Farnese impresa in Annibale Carracci’s Sleeping

Venus’, in Burlington Magazine, v 140, 1998, p. 676-69
[23] Review of The Drawings of Annibale Carracci, in Master Drawings, XLIII,

No 4, 2005, p. 529
[24] A. Brogi, Innocenzo Tacconi e l’officina classicista: un eredità dilapidata,

Paragone, Arte, XLVI, nuova serie, 49 (549) Jan. 199, p. 27-57.
[25] But it ought to be noted that the ink outlines are just as forceful when as
with the single drawing for a cupid in the Louvre (Inv 7303 term, Posner 1971
II, Pl. 134c) there is no chalk accompaniment.
[26] R. Wittkower, The Drawings of the Carracci in the Collection of H.M The
Queen at Windsor Castle, London, 1952, p 147, No. 358, Fig 51; J. R. Martin,
Drawings by Annibale Carracci for the Sleeping Venus,Master Drawings, V. 2,
No. 2, 1964, p. 160-163, 214/215,
[27]
Published first by Martin, loc. cit., this is Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, Inv.
7303 ter. , Loisel, , No. 547
[28]
From Agucchi’s Descrizione.… Malvasia 1841 ed., I p. 360
[29]
Mancini says the Duke Ranuccio sent them to Rome to be aiuti di bottega
to Annibale in Palazzo Farnese; Domenichino was staying initially with
Cardinal Sfondrati at Santa Prassede, like Guido Reni, and then with the
Agucchi brothers.
[30]
Mancini (Considerazioni, I, p. 218) specifically says that Agostino left
Rome with his son, ‘to whom he could only instil a natural inclination to art’.
The idea promoted in M. Pirondini, E. Negro and N. Roio’s Antonio Carracci
(2007) that he was born in 1593 does not stand scrutiny: as L. Sickel has
pointed out ‘Il testamento di Antonio Carracci e il Diluvio universale per
Bernardo de’ Franchi’ in Nuova luce su Annibale Carracci, ed S. Ebert
Schifferer & S. Ginzburg, p. 262/63, the document relating to his marriage
papers in 1615 does not say he was twenty-three then but merely that he had
arrived in Rome thirteen years before. It is still likely that Antonio was born in
the early 1580s, the result of his liaison with the Venetian courtesan Isabella.
and that
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esperienza
[31]
Mancini (Considerazioni, I, p. 218) specifically says that Agostino left
Rome with his son, ‘to whom he could only instil a natural inclination to art’.
The idea promoted in E. Negro and N. Roio’s Antonio Carracci (20 ***) that he
was born in 1593 does not stand scrutiny: as L. Sickel has pointed out ‘Il
testamento di Antonio Carracci e il Diluvio universale per Bernardo de’
Franchi’ in Nuova luce su Annibale Carracci, ed S. Ebert Schifferer & S.
Ginzburg, p. 262/63, the document relating to his marriage papers in 1615
does not say he was twenty-three then but merely that he had arrived in Rome
thirteen years before. It is still likely that Antonio was born in the early 1580s,
the result of his liaison with the Venetian courtesan Isabella. and that he was
already in Rome in 1600 when Agostino finally departed.
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Annibale o Agostino ? Il Il tuo indirizzo

The Sleeping Venus

association, and the opportunity to make a more complete Andrea Donati –

recently by Stefano Colonna, Scultura

Agostino Carracci, Venus Vulcan and Cupid Windsor Castle, Royal

The painting was actually executed by the most active of

Sleeping Venus, Chantilly, Musée Condé, oil on canvas, 190 by 328

The Sleeping Venus [3] was a commission undertaken by

However much posterity has written off this evidently

collector for Carracci Studio Tobias Healing his Father’s

It was a time of great change: learning of the death of

molto, si aggravò tanto nel pensiero della sua disgratia, e

But one of the characteristics of the workshop that bore

by the man himself, even when he was quite unable to

Studio of Annibale Carracci, c. 1600 Madonna and Child with Saints

During the period of the Galleria Tacconi seems to have

do work in the Bombasi chapel (1599/1600), where

The same was the case with

work schedule. Malvasia San Onofio al Gianicolo

Studio of Annibale Carracci. c. 1602 Mass of St Gregory, canvas

In reality although Tacconi is usually perceived as an

during the entire period it was painted, and had an

his success. It is obvious that there was a major

But one of the most interesting works that came out of

with the Sleeping Venus. But the other paintings on the

in a period when Annibale’s health had collapsed. The

who was not

Sleeping Venus Chantilly, Musée Condé

representation of Venus, but also seems to have been

, (illustrated above) emblazoned on the cover of the 2000

So the design of the Sleeping Venus is in

It is no accident that the arbor that he invented for the

and dark towards the horizon. No coincidence either that

The Venus is the subject of Agucchi’s lengthy

surviving drawings are actually unusually close to the

Sleeping Venus, Frankfurt, Stadel Museum

Both the pose of Venus herself in the drawing in

Vatican Museums, Galleria delle Statue Sleeping Minerva (‘’Ariadne

If Agucchi was not privy to the creative mind behind the

Silvia Ginzburg, among others, has already suggested

referred to by the author presuppone

but while it has generally been assumed that the autumn

It has already been suggested (by Ann S. Harris[23]) that

in the ink of the knuckles is indeed rather similar to those

there Annibale was said to have used Ludovico’s

And so accurately do the Cupids in the Windsor drawing

would continue to coin in variations in the design for the

Agostino Carracci Amor vincit omnia

Two have echoes of Michelangelo, like the boy raising

to apply himself to the task in hand. The prevalence of

Agostino Carracci, Last Communion of St Jerome, 1592/97

We do not see evidence of Tacconi’s collaboration after

own when they arrived in Rome in 1601. Tacconi does

The principal reward of Agostino’s ardentissimo amore di

incredibly lively recreations presuppone che tu

Clovis WHITFIELD London April 2018

[2] C. Robertson & C. Whistler Drawings by the Carracci from British

[10] Canvas, 265 by 152, formerly at Bridgewater House, London, destroyed in

[11] Canvas, 277 by 187 cm