Ludovico
[Lodovico] Carracci
(b Bologna, bapt 19 April 1555; d Bologna, 13 or
14 Nov 1619).
Painter, draughtsman and etcher. His father, Vincenzo Carracci, was a
butcher, whose profession may be alluded to in Ludovico’s nickname ‘il
Bue’ (It.: ‘the Ox’), though this might also be a reference to the
artist’s own slowness. Ludovico’s style was less classical than that of
his younger cousins Agostino and Annibale, perhaps because of a mystical
turn of mind that gave his figures a sense of other-worldliness. Like
his cousins, he espoused the direct study of nature, especially through
figure drawing, and was inspired by the paintings of Correggio and the
Venetians. However, there survives in his work, more than in that of his
cousins, a residue of the Mannerist style that had dominated Bolognese
painting for most of the mid-16th century. Ludovico maintained a balance
between this Mannerist matrix, his innate religious piety and the
naturalism of the work of his cousins. With the exception of some
travels during his training and a brief visit to Rome in 1602,
Ludovico’s career was spent almost entirely in Bologna. In the first two
decades of the 17th century he lost touch with the activities of his
more up-to-date Bolognese compatriots—contemporaries and pupils
alike—who were then active in Rome, including his cousin Annibale.
Ludovico’s later work became overblown and eccentric. This curious
‘gigantism’ was first evidenced in paintings of the late 1590s, but the
tendency seems to have been reinforced by the monumental classicism of
Annibale’s ceiling of the Galleria Farnese in the Palazzo Farnese, Rome,
which Ludovico saw on his visit in 1602. In spite of his isolation in
Bologna, Ludovico strongly influenced the subsequent development of
painting in his native city and elsewhere, especially through his
pupils, who included Guido Reni, Giacomo Cavedone, Francesco Albani,
Domenichino and Alessandro Algardi.
