Ludovico Carracci. Ludovico Carracci was an Italian, early-Baroque painter, etcher, and printmaker born in Bologna.
His works are characterized by a strong mood invoked by broad gestures and flickering light that create spiritual emotion and are credited with reinvigorating Italian art, especially fresco art, which was subsumed with formalistic Mannerism. He died in Bologna in 1619.
Ludovico apprenticed under Prospero Fontana in Bologna and traveled to Florence, Parma, and Venice, before returning to his hometown. Together with his cousins Annibale and Agostino Carracci, Ludovico worked in Bologna on the fresco cycles depicting Histories of Jason and Medea in Palazzo Fava, and the Histories of Romulus and Remus for the Palazzo Magnani.
Their individual contributions to these works are unclear, although Annibale, the younger than Ludovico by 5 years had gained fame as the best of the three. This led to Annibale's famed commission of the Loves of the Gods in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome.
Agostino joined Annibale there briefly. While Ludovico remained in Bologna, this does not mean that he was any less influential, the biography of Lanzi states that around 1585, Ludovico and his cousins had founded the so-called Eclectic Academy of painting. More recent conjectures are that there was no established Academy with curriculum, but that Ludovico tutored many in his studio. This studio however propelled a