Annibale Carracci, 1560 Bologna – 1609 Rom, zugeschrieben DOUBLE PORTRAIT OF LAUGHING BOYS Oil on paper on cardboard. 16.5 x 21.5 cm. Accompanied by an expertise by Federico Giannini, Pianella, and Claudio Strinati dated July 15, 2015, each in copy. Annibale Carracci was the most admired painter of his time and a decisive force in the development of the Baroque style. Together with his cousin Ludovico (1555-1619) and his older brother Agostino (1557-1602) - both outstanding artists - Annibale set out to transform Italian painting. The Carracci rejected the artificiality of Mannerist painting and saw themselves as heirs to a great artistic tradition. They consciously positioned themselves in the history of northern Italian painting and advocated a return to nature in conjunction with the study of the great northern Italian painters of the Renaissance, in particular Correggio, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. Her altarpieces and secular fresco cycles in Bologna re-emphasized the northern Italian emphasis on color, light and the study of nature, but with a new focus on emotional communication. Their success led to Annibale being invited to Rome in 1595 to work for the powerful Farnese family, while Ludovico remained in Bologna to lead the academy they had founded. Through the next generation of painters - Francesco Albani, Domenichino, Guido Reni, Giovanni Lanfranco and Guercino - Bolognese painting became the dominant force in 17th century art. In Rome, Annibale's painting was transformed by his direct encounter with classical antiquity and the art of Michelangelo and Raphael. Individual scenes from ancient mythology are surrounded by an elaborate illusionistic frame with fake statues, in front of which sit muscular naked figures, seemingly illuminated by the actual windows, as in the ceiling of the Farnese Gallery. The corners open up to painted views of the sky. When the ceiling was unveiled in 1600, it was immediately recognized as equal to any work of the past. By combining northern Italian naturalism with the idealism of Roman painting, Annibale created the foundation of Baroque art. His only challenger in Rome was Caravaggio, whose relationship with the past was combative rather than assimilative. Moreover, Caravaggio's art was unsuited to large compositions and fresco cycles, and by 1630 Caravaggist painting was in decline, while Annibale's art was being studied by a new generation of artists: Rubens, Poussin and Bernini were deeply indebted to Annibale. Both in his extensive corpus of drawings and in paintings held in museums and important private collections worldwide, Annibale Carracci explored the extremes of facial expression in the people around him. In fact, the term for the exaggeration of the characteristic features of the human face for amusement or moral criticism, caricatura, is often attributed specifically to Annibale Carracci. The word comes from the Italian "caricare", meaning "to load" or "to change", and seems to have first appeared in print in 1647. None of Annibale's caricatures can be attributed to an identifiable person. This type of work probably belongs to the early 1580s, around the time of the founding of the Accademia degli Incamminati. During this period, Annibale produced numerous heads in red chalk as well as in color, sometimes several on one sheet or canvas. The painted heads, like these, appear as pure studies of faces, while others include essential aspects of larger genre scenes. In both cases, the faces have many of the same qualities as in the present work: they are vaguely heart-shaped (he seems to have based the form on his own face, as is evident from the many surviving youthful self-portraits or quasi-self-portraits), have high foreheads and are very toothy. The teeth are prominent, irregularly spaced and very angular due to excessive wear and poor occlusion, factors indicative of coarse diet and poor oral hygiene. There are many comparable examples, including: "Laughing Fool" c. 1583/84 in the Galleria Borghese, Rome; and "Laughing Youth" in the Gazzoni Collection, Bologna, which also has the same feature of stretched flesh on the side of the young man's mouth seen in the present work, as well as the swollen eyes that appear to sit too high in the skull. Although these are small works, the spontaneity is exceptionally modern and anticipates the portraits of Bernini and Velázquez fifty years later. Carracci's interest in caricatures is well known, but here he tries to make the