In The Loves of the Gods, how is the Legacy discussed?
Annibale Carracci's decorations in the Farnese Gallery demonstrated a new grand manner of monumental fresco painting. They exerted a powerful formative influence on both canvas and fresco painting in Rome during the seventeenth century. The dual classicizing and baroque tendencies in this work would fuel the debate by the next generation of fresco painters, between Sacchi and Pietro da Cortona, over the number of figures to be included in a painting. Carracci's treatment of the composition and the disposition and expression of the figures would influence painters such as Sacchi and Poussin, whereas his effervescent narrative manner influenced Cortona.Annibale Carracci, in his day, was seen as one of the key painters to revive the classical style. In contrast, a few years later, artists such as Caravaggio and his followers would rebel against representing spatial depth in colour and light, and introduce tenebrous dramatic realism into their art instead. But it would be inappropriate to view Annibale Carracci as solely the continuation of an inherited tradition; in his day, his vigorous and dynamic style, and that of his studio assistants, changed the pre-eminent style of painting in Rome. His work would have been seen as liberating for artists of his day, touching on pagan themes with an unconstrained joy. It could be said that while Mannerism had mastered the art of formal strained contraposto and contorsion; Annibale Carracci had depicted dance and joy.Later followers of Neoclassic formalism and severity frowned on the excesses of Annibale Carracci,  but in his day, he would have been seen as masterful in achieving the supreme approximation to classic beauty  in the tradition of Raphael and Giulio Romano's secular frescoes in the Loggia of the Villa Farnesina. Unlike Raphael, though, his figures can display a Michelangelo-esque muscularity, and depart from the often emotionless visages of High Renaissance painting.
Villa Farnesina Raphael Poussin Giulio Romano fresco contraposto Pietro da Cortona Annibale Carracci Caravaggio secular frescoes Michelangelo Mannerism Sacchi