The Old Masters and Their Pictures

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The Carracci included a group of painters, the founders of the later Bolognese School. Lodovico, the elder of the three, was born at Bologna, 1555. He was educated as a painter, and was so slow in his education, that he received from his fellow-scholars the nickname of 'Il Bue' (the ox). But his perseverance surmounted every obstacle. He visited the different Italian towns, and studied the works of art which contained, arriving at the conclusion that he might acquire and combine the excellences of each. This combination, which could only be a splendid patch-work without unity, was the great aim of his life, and was the origin of the term _eclectic_ applied to his school. Its whole tendency was to technical excellence, and in this tendency, however it might achieve its end, painting showed a marked decline. As an example of the motives and objects supplied by the school, I must borrow some lines from a sonnet of the period written by Agostino Carracci: 'Let him, who a good painter would be, Acquire the drawing of Rome, Venetian action, and Venetian shadow, And the dignified colouring of Lombardy, The terrible manner of Michael Angelo, Titian's truth and nature, The sovereign purity of Correggio's style, And the true symmetry of Raphael; * * * * *


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