The Cultural Ambitions of a Tailor in Late-Sixteenth-Century Bologna

According to his biographers, Agostino Carracci was interested in a diverse range of disciplines, including mathematics, philosophy, literature, and the mechanical arts, and was also at his ease among courtiers. His brother Annibale reputedly found him pretentious and exhorted him to remember that their father was a tailor; their older cousin Ludovico Carracci was the son of a butcher. Despite a perceived schism between the generations, however, recent scholarship has begun to recognise the intermediary role of the trio’s paternal uncle Carlo Carracci. Although a tailor, Carlo was also an amateur mathematician and published author, who in the late 1580s became involved in a fierce architectural debate in Bologna. The discovery of Carlo’s post-mortem estate inventory, published here for the first time, represents a significant new source for our understanding of the Carracci family, regarding the financial, social and intellectual contexts. Of particular interest are the contents of Carlo’s study, including his exceptional library, the first book list to come to light for a member of the Carracci. The inventory moreover has implications for the formative years of the Carracci painters and for the activities of their famous Accademia degli Incamminati, the contested nature of which is still to be resolved.