What Was Carracci's Art Style

Carraci’s genre paintings of the normal life style of people, were not always in his paintings but more so in his sketches, and sketch books that he would go out and draw in. The unique features of Carracci’s artwork, helped him craft his own art style when he started to journey into genre painting. Either it being his poses, sketches, or painting style, others that were under him took up his artwork and used it for later in commissions for different reasons. “Domenichino first assisted Annibale by painting some of the small scenes in the decoration of the walls beneath the Halleria vault after its completion in 1600-01 using drawings by Annibale” and for many years after, others used Carraci as visual reference in their artwork. Later artist …show more content…
Yet he does use the modern everyday life of Rome in his commissions, such as in Supper at Emmaus where he used the modern table setting, and people off the street you would find around Rome to pose and model for each person at the table. This example shows that while Caravaggio did not do the traditional genre painting and sketches like Carracci, he instead used genre painting to give a more realistic tone to his religious pieces and made them feel more down to Earth. Caravaggio would take his models and paint them first as they appear, then transform the world around them, into iconic figures in biblical stories. In Weils article about Caravaggio’s painting techniques, he would set up all his models as if they were still lives and sketch them directly on the canvas with oil paint, while also carving in light and shadow. Caravaggio was his own monster when it came to painting, he did not use bright saturated colors, instead created these dark, earth toned that gave everything in an almost monochromatic fashion. Weils also explains the process of Caravaggio’s painting style, and what he uses to create all his dynamic stories. Caravaggio also used live models, because it was believed that he finished paintings faster while he had someone pose for him. This statement might be true since with someone posing for an artist, they would just have to copy what they see and had artistic license after they captures the likens of the figure. Harris notable writes in his article that Caravaggio was accurate at capturing his models features, and other noticeable flaws that models, such as the one used in Bacchus had. He would use models off the streets, and ask for them to pose while he painted them into these mythological and religious