1800 - ANNIBALE CARRACCI

ANNIBALE CARRACCI Study of Two Heads of an Old Man Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 28x43 cm This remarkable painting, unpublished until 2010, was unveiled during a public exhibition at the Cesena Art Gallery, sparking interest and debate among leading scholars, with uncertainty regarding its attribution divided between two distinguished artists: Annibale Carracci and Diego Velázquez. Over time, and with the reemergence of other sketches by Annibale, the conviction has taken hold that the Study of Two Heads of an Old Man is indeed his work and marks one of the pinnacles of his stylistic vision. An analysis of the characteristics of this magnificent sheet reveals that the impression of a fluidity already reminiscent of the Baroque stems from the artist’s swift brushwork and his intent to capture the essence of an expression—or, one might say, of the soul—in the posed figures. It is very likely that Annibale intended to depict the faces of some of the Apostles, to be included in one of his various Assumptions (in the version housed at the Prado, the resemblance can be seen in the Apostle gathering the shroud from the tomb, but a resemblance can also be noted with the figure carrying Christ’s body in the *Deposition* at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York). Finally, it should be emphasized that the practice of using sheets of paper, treated with oil and red chalk, to prepare suitable supports for the paint can be considered a typically Carracci-style innovation. This technique remained in use in Bologna throughout the 18th century but remained a sort of homage to the modus operandi of the Carracci Academy of the Incamminati. This work is accompanied by a critical study by Prof. Massimo Pulini (part of which is reproduced here), Prof. Donatella Biagi Maino, and a publication by Prof. Andrea Emiliani. Exhibitions: Private Collections of Great Antiquarians, Cesena, 2010 Between the Sacred and the Profane, National Museum of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, Vilnius, 2021 Bibliography: M. Pulini, Private Collections of Great Antique Dealers, FC, 2010, pp. 68–69 A. Emiliani, The Early Portraits of Annibale Carracci, 2012, pp. 29–32. Between the Sacred and the Profane, National Museum of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, Vilnius, 2021, with an entry by Paolo Carcano.