From April 10 to July 6, 2025, the Nationwide Gallery in London presents the exhibition “The Carracci Cartoons: Myths in the Making”.
Supply: Nationwide Gallery · Picture: Agostino Carracci, ‘A Woman borne off by a Sea God’, about 1599 © The Nationwide Gallery, London
It is a uncommon probability to see these works which, at practically 4 metres broad and two metres tall and within the delicate medium of charcoal and white chalk, should not usually displayed. The works got here into the Nationwide Gallery assortment in 1837 as a part of a present by Lord Francis Egerton. Previous to this they’d been owned by the artist Sir Thomas Lawrence.
These immense drawings had been made in preparation for the painted ceiling within the gallery of one in all Rome’s best Renaissance palaces, the Palazzo Farnese (now the location of the French Embassy in Rome). They had been created as a part of a fee by Odoardo Farnese (1573–1626), the youthful son of the duke of Parma who had been made cardinal on the age of 18 and was searching for to embellish the household palace he had inherited in 1592. To take action, he turned to the Carracci brothers, excellent artists from Bologna who came over the cardinal in 1594.
As soon as in Rome, Annibale and Agostino Carracci took inspiration from vintage sculptures and celebrated works of painters resembling Michelangelo and Raphael, creating an idealised picture of the classical world that celebrated the loves of the gods. The ‘Galleria Farnese’ because it got here to be referred to as was enormously influential on future generations of artists.
These two huge drawings are the work principally of Agostino, the older of the 2, however Annibale can also have performed an element of their execution. They present two scenes impressed by Ovid’s Metamorphoses. As cartoons they had been created as a part of the preparation for the frescoed ceiling within the Farnese Gallery and would have been used to switch the design to the moist plaster. Their survival is uncommon and as such speaks to the importance given to the drawings shortly after their creation. This presentation will supply a novel perception into each the strategies used to create monumental frescoes, and the Carracci brothers’ personal artistic means of design and refinement.
