Lombardo-Emilian School XVIIth century – suite of Annibale Carracci

Oil on canvas.
Our composition is a work of the Lombardo-Emilian naturalist school of the first half of the XVIIth century. It depicts, in a tight frame, two boys arguing to scrape the bottom of a copper cauldron containing the remains of a gourmet dish, a sweet compote. The eldest takes malicious pleasure in showing the youngest that he is harvesting the last spoon, which triggers the anger of the latter who cries hot tears.
The "raw" way both realistic and grotesque of painting the two protagonists undoubtedly leads to the Lombardo-Emilian naturalist school and one cannot help but compare it to the works of the Bolognese genius Annibale Carrache "Two children playing with a cat ”In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,“ The Monkey Man ”at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, or“ Two Laughing Boys ”at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples.

Our painting is soberly underlined by a gilded wood frame à la mecca with reparure and bullinato patterns.
Dimensions: 37,5 x 64 cm at sight - 56,5 x 83 cm with the frame
Sold with invoice and certificate of expertise

Annibale Carracci known as the Carracci (Bologna 3.11.1560 – Rome 15.07.1609) is a major painter of the Bolognese school. With his brother Agostino (1557-1602) and his cousin Ludovico Carracci (1555-1619), he founded the Accademia degli Incamminati in 1582 where he developed a style between classicism and baroque which considerably influenced the painting of the XVIIth century. The word Incamminati means “on the way to”, indicating an artistic path that takes new directions, towards new paths. This school, whose objective is to train cultivated artists, contributes to establishing a certain union between history and nature, leading to the coexistence of the landscape alongside the painting of the "high genre", history painting .
Annibale produces an image that is both pious and symbolic, an illustration of the Counter-Reformation, giving an impression of reality, by ordinary characters freed from the artifices of Mannerism. This naturalism first emerged in genre painting, then expresses itself quickly in an immediate nature producing an effect of plausibility. It was his fresco decorations (Palazzo Fava and Palazzo Magnani) which earned him a call to Rome where he settled in 1595. He returned to the service of the Farnese, for whom he would carry out the decorations of the Camerino and their Gallery. roman palace.
Guido Reni, Giovanni Lanfranco and Domenico Zampieri (the Dominicino) are his most illustrious students.