Perfect Deformity, Ideal Beauty, and the Imaginaire of Work: The Reception of Annibale Carracci's Arti di Bologna in 1646

Abstract

As a young man, Annibale Carracci drew a series of images depicting itinerant tradesmen and market workers, presumably while he was in Bologna during the late 1580s or early 1590s. The seventy-five original drawings have almost all disappeared, but are known today in the form of prints derived from Annibale's sheets, joined with five unrelated genre images and published together as a folio volume in Rome during 1646.1 The preface to this publication reveals some interesting contradictions between Annibale's drawings of workers and their later reception, raising questions concerning both the social world Annibale represented and the realm of art theory in which his images were received. There has been much debate surrounding Annibale Carracci, the Carracci academy in Bologna, and contemporary writings about their art. The notion of the Carracci's conscious 'eclectic-