Carracci, who was in Rome from the late 1595 or early 1596, was commissioned this work by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese for the ceiling of his camerino in his family's palace. In 1662 it was moved to the Farnese ducal seat in Parma. The work is considered one of Carracci's masterworks[1] for its balanced rendering of a poetical ideal, graphically influenced by the artist's contact with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes and Rome's classical remains, such as the Farnese Hercules or the Laocoön group.
A vigorous and plastic Hercules is depicted with two women flanking him, who represent the opposite destinies which life could reserve him: to his right Virtue is calling him to the hardest path leading to glory through hardship, while on your left, a woman with worldly pleasures, the easier path, is enticing him to vice.
Behind Hercules is a palm, which, through the leaves and the branches (a symbol of military victory and fame), hints to Hercules' future heroic life. At the top of the hardest path is Hercules reward, Pegasus.
Agostino Carracci was an Italian painter, printmaker, tapestry designer, and art teacher. He was, together with his brother, Annibale Carracci, and cousin, Ludovico Carracci, one of the founders of the Accademia degli Incamminati in Bologna. Intended to devise alternatives to the Mannerist style favored in the preceding decades, this teaching academy helped propel painters of the School of Bologna to prominence.
Annibale Carracci was an Italian painter and instructor, active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brother and cousin, Annibale was one of the progenitors, if not founders of a leading strand of the Baroque style, borrowing from styles from both north and south of their native city, and aspiring for a return to classical monumentality, but adding a more vital dynamism. Painters working under Annibale at the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese would be highly influential in Roman painting for decades.
Palazzo Farnese or Farnese Palace is one of the most important High Renaissance palaces in Rome. Owned by the Italian Republic, it was given to the French government in 1936 for a period of 99 years, and currently serves as the French embassy in Italy.
The Farnese Hercules is an ancient statue of Hercules, probably an enlarged copy made in the early third century AD and signed by Glykon, who is otherwise unknown; he was an Athenian but he may have worked in Rome. Like many other Ancient Roman sculptures it is a copy or version of a much older Greek original that was well known, in this case a bronze by Lysippos that would have been made in the fourth century BC. This original survived for over 1500 years until it was melted down by Crusaders in 1205 during the Sack of Constantinople. The enlarged copy was made for the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, where the statue was recovered in 1546, and is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. The heroically-scaled Hercules is one of the most famous sculptures of antiquity, and has fixed the image of the mythic hero in the European imagination.
Domenico Zampieri, known by the diminutive Domenichino after his shortness, was an Italian Baroque painter of the Bolognese School of painters.
Odoardo Farnese was an Italian nobleman, the second son of Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Maria of Portugal, known for his patronage of the arts. He became a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church in 1591, and briefly acted as regent of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza for his nephew Odoardo from 1622 to 1626.
Giovanni Lanfranco was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.
The Loves of the Gods is a monumental fresco cycle, completed by the Bolognese artist Annibale Carracci and his studio, in the Farnese Gallery which is located in the west wing of the Palazzo Farnese, now the French Embassy, in Rome. The frescoes were greatly admired at the time, and were later considered to reflect a significant change in painting style away from sixteenth century Mannerism in anticipation of the development of Baroque and Classicism in Rome during the seventeenth century.
The Camerino Farnese is a Fresco cycle that emerged from the decision to paint the ceiling of the Camerino in Rome, before the summer of 1595. The Camerino is on the first, or principal, floor of the Palazzo Farnese, and measures slightly more than fifteen by thirty feet.
The classical sculptures in the Farnese Collection, one aspect of this large art collection, are one of the first collections of artistic items from Greco-Roman antiquity. It includes some of the most influential classical works, including the sculptures that were part of the Farnese Marbles, their collection of statuary, which includes world-famous works like the Farnese Hercules, Farnese Cup, Farnese Bull and the Farnese Atlas. These statues are now displayed in the Naples National Archaeological Museum in Italy with some in the British Museum in London.
Giovanni Battista Agucchi was an Italian churchman, Papal diplomat and writer on art theory. He was the nephew and brother of cardinals, and might have been one himself if he had lived longer. He served as secretary to the Papal Secretary of State, then the Pope himself, on whose death Agucchi was made a titular bishop and appointed as nuncio to Venice. He was an important figure in Roman art circles when he was in the city, promoting fellow-Bolognese artists, and was close to Domenichino in particular. As an art theorist he was rediscovered in the 20th century as having first expressed many of the views better known from the writings of Gian Pietro Bellori a generation later. He was also an amateur astronomer who corresponded with Galileo.
Pietà is a c. 1600 oil on canvas painting by Annibale Carracci, the earliest surviving work by him on the subject, which was commissioned by Odoardo Farnese. It moved from Rome to Parma to Naples as part of the Farnese collection and is now in the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples. It is one of many 16th century Bolognese paintings dedicated to the theme of the Pietà, and it is counted among Carracci's masterpieces.
Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine is a c.1520 oil on panel painting by Correggio, now in the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples.
Hercules at the crossroads, also known as the Choice of Hercules and the Judgement of Hercules, is an ancient Greek parable attributed to Prodicus and known from Xenophon. It concerns the young Heracles/Hercules who is offered a choice between Vice and Virtue—a life of pleasure or one of hardship and honour. In the early modern period it became a popular motif in Western art.
Christ in Glory with Saints and Odoardo Farnese or 'Christ in Glory with Odoardo Farnese and Saints Peter, John the Evangelist, Mary Magdalene, Hermenegild and Edward is a painting by Annibale Carracci. Placed in the Eremo di Camldoli either early in its life or straight after its creation, at the end of the 17th century Ferdinando II de' Medici moved it to the Galleria Palatina in Florence, where it still hangs.
The Palazzo Sampieri frescoes are a set of paintings by Annibale, Agostino and Ludovico Carracci in the Palazzo Sampieri in Bologna. They form the last surviving collection of works by the three artists.
The Death of Saint Francis is the probable subject of two lost paintings by Annibale Carracci, both possibly dating to 1597-1598. One is known solely through a print and the other through a series of painted copies.
Saint Margaret of Antioch is a 1599 oil on canvas painting by Annibale Carracci, showing Margaret of Antioch. It hangs in Santa Caterina dei Funari church in Rome.
Portrait of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese is a c. 1545 – 46 oil on canvas three-quarter-length portrait of Alessandro Farnese the Younger (1520–1589) by Titian, now in the Museo nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples.
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