Agostino Carracci Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

Agostino Carracci was an Italian painter and printmaker, the sibling of the more celebrated Annibale Carracci and cousin of Lodovico Carracci. He was one of the founders of the Accademia Degli Incamminati along with Annibale Carracci and Ludovico Carracci, a competing school to Caravaggio's.

Agostino Carracci trained at the workshop of the architect Domenico Tibaldi. Beginning from 1574 he functioned as a reproductive engraver, replicating works of sixteenth-century masters such as Federico Barocci, Tintoretto, Antonio Campi, Veronese, and Antonio da Correggio.

He traveled to Venice and Parma. Together with Annibale and Ludovico, he worked in Bologna on the fresco cycles in Palazzo Fava and Palazzo Magnani. In 1592 he also painted The Last Communion of St. Jerome, now in the Pinacoteca di Bologna and considered his masterwork. In 1598 Carracci joined his brother Annibale in Rome to work together on the design of the Gallery in Palazzo Farnese. In 1600 Duke Ranuccio I Farnese asked him to come to Parma to began the decoration of the Palazzo del Giardino, but he died before it was finished.

Agostino's son Antonio Carracci was also a painter and tried to compete with his dad's Academy. An engraving by Agostino Carracci of the painting Love in the Golden Age was the inspiration for Matisse's Le Bonheur de Vivre (Joy of Life).

Carracci also did a series of erotic prints reproduced from the originals, some of which are housed in the British Museum and one oil painting reproduction, not the original, made from his engraving print called The Satyr Mason, sold by Christie's in 1998 at auction for us$9,000.

Art Movement History: Baroque.
Artists Influencing Agostino Carracci: Federico Barocci, Tintoretto, Annibale Carracci.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.