The Carraccis were artists born and raised in Bologna between the mid-16th and early 17th centuries. Annibale, born in 1560, and Agostino, born in 1557, were brothers. They came from a local lower middle class family and devoted themselves to painting, training in the city environment that, in their youth, was dominated by artists of the local late-Mannerist tradition, such as Domenico Tibaldi, Prospero Fontana and Bartolomeo Passarotti. When the two brothers visited Rome in 1594, they received an important assignment: to decorate the rooms of a large palace in the heart of the eternal city, Palazzo Farnese, residence of an important local family, whose owner Odoardo Farnese, elected cardinal at the age of just 20, had inherited a large fortune. Two enormous charcoal drawings on paper tell us this story. These are preparatory drawings for the monumental fresco in the main hall of the palace that bear witness to a vital part of the creative process of Annibale and Agostino Carracci. Embellished with drawings of numerous mythical sea creatures, enriched by the presence of ancient divinities, splendid cherubs and wonderful sea waves that seem to break in the natural setting, the drawings of the cartoons tell of the influence that the two brothers had after discovering the classical art of Roman sculptures and the masterpieces created by other great artists such as Michelangelo and Raphael.
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