Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Here-and-now

Annibale Carracci
Youth pulling on sock
ca. 1585-90
drawing
British Museum

Annibale Carracci
Youth with lantern
ca. 1585
drawing
British Museum

Annibale Carracci
Angel playing violin
ca. 1585
drawing
British Museum

Annibale Carracci
Study after Correggio
16th century
drawing
British Museum

The three famous Carracci from Bologna (Annibale, Lodovico & Agostino) received wide praise all across Italy toward the end of the 16th century. They had bravely departed from the nefarious mainstream path of Mannerist exaggeration and "restored art" by turning back to nature (as in the drawing at top, where the darned sock thrust toward the viewer represents nature). At exactly the same time Caravaggio also was credited with "restoring art" by turning back to nature (the notorious bare peasant feet in Caravaggio's paintings corresponding with great neatness to the darned sock of Annibale). Both Caravaggio and the Carracci engendered separate schools of followers who continued faithfully reproducing the style-mannerisms of their founding masters throughout the 17th century. Until eventually somebody reformed them.    

Annibale Carracci
Landscape with Jacob sleeping
16th century
drawing
Metropolitan Museum

Annibale Carracci
Adoration of the Shepherds
ca. 1606
etching, engraving
British Museum

The Adoration of the Shepherds (above) is built in a surprising way around the tree-trunk pillar that holds up the roof of the stable. This pillar is planted in the utmost foreground all on its own, tenderly depicted with three-dimensional grain, and allowed to cut the picture into two separate units. Four large shepherds more than fill the narrow space on the left. Contained on the far side of the pillar, they are also confined behind a diagonal bank that runs from lower right to upper left. The manger scene  on the larger, right-hand side  appears flattened against the stable wall, like a two-dimensional frieze. There is a vacant block of air in front of it. The radically foreshortened infant is like an emblem on a coin. When the eye drifts back to the shepherds, their physical proximity has increased. They are the picture's protagonists, not the faraway actors in the pageant of the miraculous birth. And the tree-trunk pillar turns out to be the self-assertion of the here-and-now.  

Lodovico Carracci
 Oarsman from behind
1590s
drawing
British Museum

follower of Lodovico Carracci
Figure study, rear view
16th century
drawing
Prado

follower of Lodovico Carracci
Figure study, front view
16th century
drawing
Prado

Agostino Carracci
Portrait of Giovanni Gabrielli, called 'Il Sivello'
ca. 1599
engraving
British Museum

"The actor seen half-length, leaning on a ledge, and holding a theatrical mask," according to the catalog description. Giovanni Gabrielli was famous in the world of commedia dell'arte. He belonged to the same generation as many of Shakespeare's actors and Shakespeare himself, though the cultural gap between Italy and England was wide enough. Gabrielli's motto, as engraved on the plate, expressed his uniqueness, SOLUS INSTAR OMNIUM [alone, he equals all of them]. The actor's specialty was voices, foreigner's voices, women's voices, every state and condition of voice. "He would perform all the play alone, changing costume and voice, on and off stage." At least two generations of Il Sivello's descendants went on to similar success.

Agostino Carracci
Preparatory drawing for 'Il Sivello' engraving
ca. 1599
Chatsworth House, Derbyshire

Agostino Carracci
The Three Graces
ca. 1590-95
engraving
British Museum

Agostino Carracci
Sheet of studies
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Agostino Carracci
Christ and the woman at the well
1593-94
drawing
British Museum

The image below would NOT have been chosen as an example by those who believed the Carracci were leading the way back to nature. Curators at the British Museum believe this engraved headdress of plumes and scrolls and oval plaques would have been purchased  at least in some cases  for actual use, cut out and mounted to a stiff backing, probably then decorated with colors and attached to the head, perhaps as part of a carnival costume. The extra plaque-motifs supplied in the margin allowed for a selection of goddess-portraits and corresponding mythologies.

Agostino Carracci
Headpiece with plumes
1590s
engraving
British Museum