Antonio Carracci

Carracci was born in the parish of Santa Lucia in Venice, probably in 1583, the product of an affair with a courtesan called Isabella, occurring on his father's first visit to Venice. Giovanni Battista Agucchi, a friend and protégé of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese tells us in a 1609 letter (dated September 12) that Antonio was raised along with Sisto Badalocchio and a near contemporary to Domenichino and Lanfranco. The main Baroque artist biographers of his time, Baglione, Bellori and Malvasia, make some note of him. He first apprenticed with his father. Malvasia recalls his father admired a Madonna and Child that completed at the age of seventeen. His uncle Annibale's 1590s Portrait of a Boy (Uffizi 1668 E) resembles those in Malvasia's woodcut with 1678 Felsina Pittrice. He may also be the boy in the Brera portrait group, including Annibale's father Mastro Antonio. When his father died in 1602, Antonio moved to Rome to work under his uncle Annibale to whom he developed a deep affection. He likely worked on the frescoes of the Galleria Farnese, on the lunettes for the Palazzo Aldobrandini chapel, and probably in the Herrera Chapel. After his uncle's passing he received commissions in Rome from Cardinal Tonti and Cardinal Peretti-Montalto, including the Stanza del Diluvio in the Quirinal Palace, and major altarpieces like Madonna and Child with Saints (in Berlin) and the Galleria Corsini's Nativity.