Lot 1437 Dα

This hitherto unpublished painting has been examined and studied independently by Professor Andrea Emiliani, Professor Claudio Strinati and Doctor Nicholas Tuner, who unanimously agree in considering the piece an important addition to the oeuvre of Annibale Carracci.

Annibale Carracci painted self-portraits regularly throughout his entire career, and the works allow us to examine the artist´s existential development. Carracci regularly observed the transformation of his own appearance, noting the aging process and even the psychological decline that lead to his premature death.
The majority of self portraits are not linked to an official occasion and are more a record of the painter's own image and emotional condition: It is probably therefore no coincidence that he often preferred the technique of oil on paper, which allowed him to immediate capture reality in the painted media.

“The lively brushstroke and the energy of the handling in the highlights running down the bridge of the nose, and the beautiful modulation of the folds in the painter´s collar, show the painter at this best” (Turner, 2013): these stylistic elements suggest that the portrait was painted during Carraci's Roman sojourn at the apex of his career.

The artist developed his realistic psychological approach further in later self portraits (such as the examples now in the Uffizi and Hampton Court) and close parallels can be made between our portrait and the drawing now in the Getty Museum, dated 1600-1605. In the present work, as in the Getty sheet, the painter has decided to represent himself in an intimate posture, with the face half immersed in shadow and the melancholic gaze.
Another interesting comparison can be made with an engraved portrait of the artist published in 1672 by Aubert Clowuet derived from a lost original, executed close to Annibale's arrival in Rome (E. Borea, Il volto di Annibale Carracci nelle stampe (…), in Annibale Carracci e i suoi incisori, 1986, pp. 307-312). The existence of a lost self-portrait formerly in the collection of Francesco Angeloni (1787- 1652) and Bellori has lead Donatella Sparti to identify the lost one with the archetype for the print. (D.L. Sparti, Giovan Pietro Bellori and Annibale Carracci's Self Portraits, in “Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz”, XLV, 2001, 1-2 pp. 60-110).