“A likeness in the tomb”: Annibale’s Self-Portrait Drawing in the J. Paul Getty Museum

Author(s): Gail Feigenbaum

Source: Getty Research Journal , 2010, No. 2 (2010), pp. 19-38

Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the J. Paul Getty Trust

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/23005406

REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.com/stable/23005406?seq=1&cid=pdf- reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms

The University of Chicago Press and J. Paul Getty Trust are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Getty Research Journal

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

“A likeness in the tomb”:

Annibale’s Self-Portrait Drawing in the J. Paul Getty Museum

Gail Feigenbaum

He paid only so much attention to his beard and collar… Anmbaie s race was

imprinted with studious melancholy and it was somewhat olivaster in color

ing, with keen eyes, a generous brow, and a round nose. His hair tended toward

blondness; he did not shave but rounded his beard, allowing it to grow naturally.1

— Giovanni Pietro Bellori, 1672

A small pen drawing with an old attribution to Annibale Carracci (1550-1609; and

a traditional identification as his self-portrait was acquired by the Getty in 1996 (fig. 1).2

At a first glance this self-portrait seems to signal a readiness to “serve as the frontispiece

to some future biography,” but on closer inspection Annibale makes a sorry appearance,

slumped and staring wanly into space, overwhelmed by a niche framed with vaguely omi

nous fauna.3 Since it first came to light in 1993, the sheet has been published and exhibited

several times, but as is often the case in drawings scholarship, what little has been writ

ten about it is scattered among brief catalog entries and footnotes.4 The Getty drawing

has yet to be integrated into the small corpus of Annibale’s self-portraits; indeed, such

consideration would reinforce the notion that such a corpus—in the sense of a series of

explorations into the mind, identity, and representation of the man and the artist, in the

tradition of Diirer and in anticipation of Rembrandt and Poussin—exists.5

Only recently have scholars begun the work ot interpreting the seir-portraits and

constructing a view of Annibale as a self-conscious and reflective intellect.6 This repre

sents a process of recovery, for in doing so, scholars are working against a view of Anni

bale, put forth most influentially by Denis Mahon and Donald Posner in the middle of

the last century, as an artist motivated “by a quite uncomplicated desire for success and

by a passionate, but almost craftsmanlike, urge to perfect his art,” and as an artist who

did not possess “the intellectual or spiritual resources that enabled artists like Michel

angelo, Poussin, and Caravaggio to respond directly and profoundly to general cultural

trends of their times.”7 A current of resistance to “over-intellectualizing” Annibale can

still be sensed, despite a steady accumulation of evidence and argument to the contrary.

The explicit refutation of an Annibale lacking in intellectual depth and self-conscious

reflection began with Charles Dempsey’s reaction to Posner’s view (most fully expressed

in his monograph of 1977) and continued in Clare Robertson’s monograph of 2008. The

Getty Research Journal, no. 2 (2010): 19-38 © J. Paul Getty Trust

•y

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Fig. l. Annibale Carracci (Italian, 1550-1609). Self-Portrait, early 1580s, pen and brown ink

13.5 x 10.8 cm (5s/i6 x 4V4 in.). Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum (96.GA.323)

20 GETTY RESEARCH JOURNAL, NO. 2 (2010)

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

two scholars point out that we should now beware the danger or “underinterpretation

rather than “over-intellectualizing.”8

Scholars who have previously written about the Getty selr-portrait have remarked

on the impression of melancholy, noted the association of the imagery with death, and

even evoked the term parody, yet they have hesitated at the brink of a conclusion.9 Daniele

Benati’s brief observation takes the greatest risk: “it strikes as a self-portrait in death,

delirious and lost.”10 The analysis presented here pursues such implications and consid

ers the drawing in relation to other self-portraits by Annibale, recognizing in it the antici

pation of a theme realized more fully, if enigmatically, in his best-known self-portrait,

now in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (see fig. 3).11

Facts and History

Annibale was the youngest in a family ot three artists who began their careers in

Bologna around 1580 and who are credited with reinvigorating painting in Italy after a

decline that was perceived to have begun with the death of Michelangelo and his gen

eration.12 With his elder brother Agostino and cousin Ludovico, Annibale set up a work

shop and established an early academy wherein the study of theoryjoined the practice

of art. Drawing was emphasized in the Carracci circle, and Annibale, both today and in

his own time, has been considered among the most skilled and brilliant of draftsmen. In

the mid 1590s, Annibale struck out on his own and moved to Rome, where he worked on

projects for the powerful Farnese family and lived in the imposing Palazzo Farnese. Not

long after he finished the magnificent fresco of the loves of the gods on the vault of the

Galleria Farnese (1597-1605), Annibale left the Farnese’s service. Although his devoted

pupils stayed with him and tried to keep up his spirits, his productivity declined sharply.

Contemporary sources describe Annibale as ill, suffering from melancholy and, probably,

syphilis.13 Death must have been on Annibale’s mind: in 1602, he lost his brother Ago

stino, his collaborator for the Galleria decorations, and then participated in the elaborate

commemoration. He died in 1609, and the years between the completion of the Galleria

and his death were difficult ones by all accounts. It is likely that the Getty drawing dates

from this period of Annibale’s life.

Answers to some of the most basic questions about the drawing, including the

date and circumstances in which it was made, are uncertain or contested. At least the

identity of the sitter is known, confirmed by two undisputed visual touchstones for Anni

bale’s physical appearance: Self Portrait with a Hat, in the Galleria Nazionale in Parma

(fig. 2), and Self-Portrait on an Easel, in the Hermitage (fig. 3).14 The sitter’s penetrating

dark eyes, ears positioned a bit high on the skull, and spiky hair all conform to these two

firmly identified models.ls The likeness is also in accord with descriptions of Annibale’s

appearance by those who knew him.16

In his first publication of the drawing, Nicholas Turner dated it to the early 1580s

on the basis of its similarity to a preparatory study for a fresco in the Palazzo Fava in

Bologna (fig. 4). Later Turner fine-tuned the date to the mid-1580s, also on stylistic

Feigenbaum A likeness in the tomb 21

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Fig. 2. Annibale Carracci (Italian, 1550-1609). Self-Portrait with a Hat, 1593, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 cm

(9 V2 x 7% in.). Parma, Galleria Nazionale di Parma (Inv. no. 329). Su concessione Ministero per i Beni e

leAttivita-Culturali—Galleria Nazionale di Parma

22 GETTY RESEARCH JOURNAL, NO. 2 (2010)

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

$ ;|Sfc i

Fig. 3. Annibale Carracci (Italian, 1550-1609). Self-Portrait on an Easel, ca. 1604, oil on panel,42.5 x

30 cm (163A x u7/s in.). Saint Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum (Inv. no. GE-148). Photograph:

© The State Hermitage Museum

Feigenbaum “A likeness in the tomb” 23

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Fig. 4. Annibale Carracci (Italian, 1550-1609). The Rape ofEuropa, ca. 1584, pen, brown ink, watercolor

and red pencil, 14.1 x 2i.2cm(5s/s x 83/sin.). London, Collection Yvonne Tan Bunzl

grounds.17 Kate Ganz proposed a much later date, placing it around 1600.18 Subsequently,

Benati dated it still later, to around 1605.19 To see the drawing as a fully mature work in the

range of 1600 to 1605 is more convincing. Despite some affinities with the fresco study

invoked by Turner, the underlying structures in the Getty self-portrait are far more confi

dent and deftly implied.20 In contrast to the effervescent penwork that complicates Anni

bale’s charming drawings from the era of the Palazzo Fava fresco and sometimes seems to

linger on the surface of the page, the strong, efficient pen wielded without flourish in the

Getty sheet is more in the spirit of the preparatory studies for his Tazza Farnese (fig. 5) or

the Paniere Farnese, both dating circa 1600, or the studies for the Saint Gregory altarpiece,

which date around 1602.21 In works of this moment, Annibale plays almost recklessly with

a decisive technique in which hatching that models form is overlaid with hatching that

casts shadows over form.22 The later dating proposed by Ganz and Benati, and accepted

here, strengthens the interpretation presented below.23

Prints and Caricature

From its first publication, writers have pointed out the relationship of the Getty

drawing to portrait prints, suggesting that it might have been made to serve as a model

for an engraving. The conventions of contemporary engraved portraiture readily come

24 GETTY RESEARCH JOURNAL, NO. 2 (2010)

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Fig. 5. Annibale Carracci (Italian, 1550-1609). Drunken Silenus and Decorative Sketches (Studies for the

Tazza Farnese), 1599-1601, pen and iron gall ink with brush and brown wash on cream laid paper, edge

mounted to cream laid paper toned bluish gray on recto, 28.4 x 17.7 cm (11V4 x 7 in.). Chicago, Art Insti

tute of Chicago, the Regenstein Collection (1989.188R). Photography: © The Art Institute of Chicago

to mind: effigies of famous men usually represented en face in oval or round niches sur

rounded by all manner of ornament. Such prints were ubiquitous, often serving as head

pieces to printed biographies.24 Annibale himself was later immortalized in as many as a

dozen such prints, including the familiar ones that introduce his biographies in Giovanni

Pietro Bellori’s Vite and Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsinapittrice (fig. 6).25 Portrait prints

come in scores of variations, but one of the most common types inserts the imago clipeata

into a monument that is further embellished with attributes of fame and the accoutre

ments of the sitter’s profession. Laurel wreaths, trumpets, and eternal flames abound in

the genre, and when the subject is a painter, brushes and palettes are frequently attached

to the altarlike monument.

Feigenbaum “A likeness in the tomb” 25

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Annibale did follow the basic layout of the print portrait. He presents himself lean

ing a little bit over the bottom of the niche with his right elbow and left hand resting on

the frame and jutting forward. His body appears in three-quarters view, but his head turns

forward in a frontal gaze. Light curved hatching excavates the concavity of the niche, and

a deep shadow on the side of his face is created with vertical hatching of more decided

strokes that fascinatingly merge, and compete, with the lines that indicate hair and beard.

If a relationship to portrait prints is unmistakable, does it necessarily follow that

the Getty drawing was created in preparation for a print? No print based on the drawing is

known, and there is no external evidence to support the idea that one was planned. There

may have been occasions on which Annibale would have been asked to produce a model

for his portrait in print, but it is unlikely that the Getty drawing was made in such circum

stances. For example, in an attempt to raise their melancholic master’s spirits, Giovanni

Lanfranco and Sisto Badalocchio engraved scenes from Raphael’s loggie in the Vatican,

Fig. 6. Albert Clouet (Flemish, 1636-79). Annibale Carracci. From Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Levite de’

pittori, scultori etarchitetti moderni (Rome: Mascardi, 1672)

26 GETTY RESEARCH JOURNAL, NO. 2 (2010)

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

made a book of them, and dedicated it to Annibale. Such an homage might have called

for a portrait headpiece in the conventional print format. So might have a compendium

of artist biographies such as the one Giovanni Baglione had undertaken in these years.

But the abject self-presentation we see in the Getty drawing—the haunted expression

and slumped posture framed in a grim iconography—would not have translated into

the elevated, ennobling print considered appropriate for such honorific purposes.26 Also

unusual would have been the inclusion of the beads that are held in the jaws of an animal

skull projecting over the top of the niche. Although he depicted them in a cursory scrib

ble, Annibale was careful to count out ten beads on each side. Ganz recognized them as

rosary beads, which are not usually found in commemorative portrait prints; they make

reference to prayer, meditation, and penitence.27

If Annibale made the Getty drawing for a commemorative purpose, then he did

so in a spirit of bitter irony, mocking the decorum of the genre. The drawing invokes the

convention only to produce a portrait utterly unusable for the purpose. Turner astutely

raised the possibility that the drawing was conceived “as kind of a joke, a parody of the

formal language of the printed portrait,” but he considered this interpretation unlikely,

preferring the explanation that the drawing was a modello for an engraving. In fact, Turner

had difficulty judging the tone, distrusting his conflicting impulses in reading the draw

ing and even commenting that “as the inventor of caricature, [Annibale] certainly struck

a lighthearted note here.”28 To pin down Annibale’s tone and intention is not an easy

task. Is the drawing, in Turner’s words, a lighthearted parody not intended to be taken

too seriously? The particular words that Turner and others have used to characterize the

drawing—caricature, parody, lighthearted, serious, witty—are contingent and unstable.

In the early sources, Anmbale is credited with the invention or caricature, a visual

version of parody. Its definition and its form, as the Carracci developed it, were open

and multifarious, and it makes little sense to hold their pioneering caricatures to a strict

definition of either, since both term and form evolved over the centuries following their

invention. From the small handful of surviving examples and descriptions in the early

texts by Malvasia and Bellori, it emerges that the Carracci’s caricature was a conversion

of something seen into an image that resembles its subject, rendered in a witty or mock

ing spirit.29 For a caricature to be effective, the viewer must hold in his mind an image of

the subject that is the basis for the caricature so that the parodied likeness and its dis

tance from that original subject are asserted simultaneously. At first, the image seems

to be one thing, but then one quickly recognizes that it is both that thing and at the same

time something else. This approach is common to both the Getty drawing, in which the

familiar format of print portraiture was indispensable to Annibale’s conceit, and Bellori’s

description of Annibale’s personal manner: “Though by nature and at first he seemed

melancholy, he would then suddenly take to jesting, with such charm that those who

heard him felt both delight and amazement.”30 Shifts in tone are a distinguishing feature

of Annibale’s wit, and it appears that he cultivated confusion in his companions, and in

his viewers, to provoke a reaction of surprise and amazement. All Annibale’s surviving

Feigenbaum “A likeness in the tomb 27

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

caricatures—and the corpus is much disputed—are executed in a relatively spare, ellip

tical style with quick pen strokes, often with staccato hatching, and the Getty drawing’s

technique is not out of place in this genre. Although it cannot be proven, it is worth pro

posing that this self-portrait of the inventor of caricature may be, on some level, also a

caricature of the genre of honorific portraiture. That it is lighthearted does not neces

sarily follow.

Funerary Monuments

Although the formal arrangement of the Getty drawing invokes the portrait print,

the penwork insists on forms with a solid claim to depth and projection. Annibale was

a draftsman of surpassing skill, and it is characteristic of his work that this technical

facility was not an end in itself, but was employed in the service of other aims. As a rule,

portrait prints tend to maintain a graphic flatness that marks them as representations of

something that is not so much an illusion of a monument as an image of a monument. In

other words, such prints are assumed to represent an abstraction rather than an illusion

of immediacy, of a real, tangible monument. Annibale in contrast conjures the enframe

ment as an image of sculpture rather than as a design on a page. He uses his pen to convey

an emphatic impression of three-dimensionality.

The format of the drawing “resembles an epitaph to be used for a tomb or sculp

tural monument,” as Ganz noted, and the implications of this observation are worth

exploring.31 The figure is placed firmly inside the niche, with the left shoulder pressed

back and cut off by the oval frame and the right arm jutting out beyond it, casting a

strongly marked shadow where it overhangs the frame. It is not uncommon to see figures

in sculpted monuments of this period projecting from their niches, their hands occupied

with prayer or the pages of a devotional book. The majority of such monuments are funer

ary effigies that can be surprisingly “lifelike” in their sentient presence, although it must

be said that the “liveliness” increases significantly in later decades and that Annibale’s

work seems to anticipate the trend. The thick, crowded ornaments and heavy volutes in

the Getty drawing are, however, typical of many funerary portraits around the turn of the

century. When Annibale visited Santa Maria del Popolo to see his own altarpiece flanked

by Caravaggio’s new canvases, just such effigies of the Cerasi, his patrons, would have

been looking over his shoulder at the entrance to the chapel (fig. 7).32

While cognate motifs can be found in Roman funerary sculpture for most of the

ornament in the Getty drawing, its particular constellation of deathly imagery—skull,

rosary, dolphins, and skeletal creatures—is not in fact typical of these contemporary

funerary monuments, which tend toward a more generic commemorative iconography

rather than such a morbid scheme. In Roman churches, Annibale would have encountered

a large population of effigies with thick, substantial decoration in stucco or carved stone

and an array of motifs like those included in the Getty drawing, such as prominent volutes,

wings, hybrid creatures, and the occasional skull. But other motifs were even more com

mon: putti and cherub heads, heraldic motifs, vegetal garlands, extinguished torches.33

28 GETTY RESEARCH JOURNAL, NO. 2 (2010)

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Fig. 7. Tomb ofStefano Cerasi, d. 1575, marble. Rome, Santa Maria del Popolo, Cappella Cerasi.

Photographer unknown. Courtesy Ugo Bozzi Editore

The elaborate frame in the Getty drawing, teeming with natural and hybrid crea

tures, embraces the niche.34 At first glance, the decoration seems festive and animated,

but on closer examination it is macabre. Much of the fauna is bizarre and ambiguous. In

the lower corners, two dolphins, a symmetrical pair, rest their snouts on the lower mar

gin of the sheet. Their tails writhe upward to terminate in or merge into volute-like forms

that curl over the frame of the niche, echoing the form of Annibale’s protruding ears.

Flanking the upper part of the niche are strange beaked creatures, crested or horned with

skeletal corkscrew bodies, that resemble birds or dragons, but it is not clear whether they

Feigenbaum “A likeness in the tomb” 29

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

are physically attached to the winglike forms that crown the niche. Reaching over them

are what might be hands, or paws with talons. This drawing harbors a grim iconography;

the flanking creatures are not so much guardians as creepy and menacing beings. By exag

gerating the death imagery, Annibale strengthened the reference, if not the resemblance,

to a tomb effigy.

The question arises of how far, and in what way, one should take the formal visual

association of the Getty self-portrait with sculpted funerary effigies. Annibale certainly

put his effigy firmly inside the niche, where it is held in the embrace of macabre forms.

The disturbing conclusion proposed here is that the Getty drawing is a self-portrait of the

artist in his own funerary monument. It must be emphasized that this kind of thinking is

in no way alien to the mentality of seicento Italy. In fact, his biographer Bellori provides

a vivid example in his coda to the inscription carved on Annibale’s tomb in the Pantheon:

“Because thou wast able to fashion the living features of men, Annibale, alas, jealous

death seized thee quickly. Hadst thou but fashioned thyself, then death, deceived, would

have closed a likeness in the tomb, and thou still wouldst live.”35 Regardless of the import

of Bellori’s lines, the conceit of enclosing a portrait of Annibale in his tomb belongs to a

mode of thought no less characteristic of the creator of visual images than the creator

of verse. The notion that death might be cheated by an artful likeness of Annibale—the

artist’s self-portrait—explicitly puts into play the same themes of death, immortality,

and artistic achievement that Annibale explores in the Getty drawing and related self

portraits.

The Getty drawing calls up the codes of commemorative portraiture only to

negate or ironize them. It raises certain expectations only to overturn them. It carica

tures by invoking and then undermining the honorific form of the print portrait and by

assimilating itself to a funerary monument, designed and executed by its living occupant.

Identifying the work as sardonic would be the least painful interpretation of its tone.36

Annibale depicted himself as a miserable figure unable or unwilling to rise to the decorum

of the occasion. He is very much alive, if hollow eyed, and stares unfocused not at, but

past, any onlooker, no longer seeing the things of this world—the things that were the

subject of his artistic achievement. He is physically slack, hunched over, beyond caring.

The head in a typical imago clipeata tends to completely fill the niche, and it often projects

rather aggressively from the frame. Annibale is small and low, overwhelmed by the niche,

filling neither the space nor the role. He has failed to muster his inner resources to make a

proper self-presentation. Disheveled, the collar open and awry, his messy clothes convey

dejection. A pitiful man inserted into a format designed for commemoration and tribute

sets up a troubling oscillation of tone.

It is difficult to read the position of Annibale’s hands, which are confusingly indi

cated, as if the artist had explored different options and made no definitive choice. His

proper right hand seems to be tucked into the left armpit, with his left hand propped on

the frame in the center, but an alternate position for one of the hands may be indicated by

the tangle of unresolved strokes just above the crook of the right arm. Brushes, among the

30 GETTY RESEARCH JOURNAL, NO. 2 (2010)

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

most common of attributes in portraits of painters, are expected in an honorific portrait,

a convention that reinforces the reading of the long horizontal strokes as paintbrushes

lightly held in the hand.37 Assuming that the later dating of the drawing is correct, con

temporary accounts report that Annibale was debilitated, suffering so severely from

melancholy (a condition akin to depression in modern terms) that he could not work,

as Bellori observes: “Now because Annibale was by nature melancholic and apprehen

sive, he grew so much worse thinking of his misfortune that he was never again able to

be cheerful; and he fell into a state of not painting any more, and when he wanted to he

could not, and was forced to abandon the brushes that melancholy took from his hand.”38

In the Getty drawing, Annibale’s hands and brushes are in a state of dissolution. This

self-portrait embodies a state of living death, a portrait of a painter who had to give up his

brushes and could no longer work.

Shared Themes in the Self-Portraits

However powerful its imagery, the Getty drawing is a modest object that required

little investment of time or materials, which made it a good site for experimentation. A

radical idea can be tried out in a sketch on paper, and a caricature depends on lightness

of execution and indeterminacy to carry its weight of a double meaning. Such an image

translated into the heavy materiality of painting is difficult to imagine. Annibale had other

ideas for painted self-portraits, and the Getty sheet may hint at early thoughts for the

most famous and complex, Self-Portrait on an Easel (see fig. 3).

The Hermitage picture is a small canvas depicting the artist’s studio. In the fore

ground is an easel, upon which rests a painted portrait of the artist. In the background,

against a window, is the silhouette of a vague sculptured form, usually interpreted as

a terminus sculpture—an armless male figure. Annibale tested some elements of this

painting in a preparatory drawing, now at Windsor Castle (fig. 8), that contains two ideas

for a composition, one stacked above the other, plus a bust of a man to the right. The

upper composition shows the painter almost in profile, his shoulders and arms wrapped

in a cloak. The same figure, roughly sketched, appears in a circular mirror (which is

replaced by the window in the Hermitage painting). When compared with the composi

tion below, as Victor Stoichita observed, this drawing bears witness to the transition from

self-portrait to a representation of self-portrait.39 The lower sketch proposes the idea

of the studio and the easeled portrait. The artist in this portrait turns awkwardly back

toward the spectator, a rather excessive bunch of brushes poking from the crook of his

arm.40 It is presumably also the artist who appears in the window frame as a generic figure

whose pose, while not identical to that in the Getty self-portrait, certainly recalls it. This

figure disappears in the painting, and in its place is the terminus sculpture, silhouetted

against the empty window, which is rendered as a glowing rectangle of light.

Enigmatic, indistinct, and seen controluce, the terminus figure is the key to Mat

thias Winner’s interpretation of the painting.41 Terminus is the Roman god of boundaries

and b s, and terms—armless herms—are the stones used to mark the line where

Feigenbaum “A likeness in the tomb” 31

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Fig. 8. Annibale Carracci (Italian, 1550-1609). Study for the Self-Portrait with Easel, ca. 1603-4, pen and

brown ink on paper, 24.5 x 18 cm (9V4 x 7 Vs in.). Windsor, Windsor Castle, Royal Library (inv. rl 1984).

The Royal Collection © 2009, Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II

a boundary is crossed. Winner’s brilliant argument evokes a play on the word termini,

which is not only the name for the armless sculptures but also the Italian word for bound

aries, and the artist’s concern with outlines, which in the Carracci’s time also were called

termini. Pliny famously accounted for the origin of artistic representation in the act of

drawing outlines, or termini, around a shadow. The inscription, “Mors ultima linea rerum

est”—words of Horace (Epistles 1.16.79) that are connected with Terminus—also makes

32 GETTY RESEARCH JOURNAL, NO. 2 (2010)

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

an explicit association with death, the ultimate boundary. 2 In antiquity, the function

of the god Terminus and stone terms was to mark the limits of place and space. In the

Hermitage composition, the place and space are the painter’s studio. The most extraor

dinary feature of this self-portrait is the absence of the artist. The place—the world in

which the artist dwelled—is established, but so is the fact that the artist is gone from it.

Having crossed the boundary into a space beyond—represented by the radiance outside

the window—the painter has left behind his painting of himself, which sits on the easel.

The naked (unframed) painting points to three temporal stages: the moment of the active

creation of this object, in which the painter’s brush moves paint from the palette along

the surface of the canvas; the moment after, when the painter has just departed from

the studio, leaving the canvas on the easel not yet framed; and, finally, the long duree,

an address to a future wherein the painting of the self-portrait on the easel survives to

be contemplated in the centuries after the artist’s death.43 The paint that could still be

wet on the palette and the sprightly dog who minutes ago was looking at his master, and

who now eyes the spectator-visitor to the studio, lend an air of recent inhabitation. But

the darkness within and the terminus silhouetted against a luminous beyond mark the

boundary of death, defining the limits of a studio and suggesting a longer view. Centuries

after painting the Hermitage self-portrait, Annibale is of course still absent, yet he is pres

ent in the form of his work. Returning to the Getty drawing, one sees how Annibale fore

shadowed these themes. First, the artist explored the idea of self-commemoration in the

liminal state between living and dead. Second, he chose to portray himself in the form of

a commemorative portrait and, probably, a funerary monument. The drawing embodies

a meditation on the themes of self, work, mortality, and immortality that finds brilliant

and unstable expression in the Hermitage painting.

A loaded palette hangs prominently on the easel in the Hermitage painting,

almost touching the corner of the unframed canvas with the portrait of the artist. The

colors and materials of the painter are portrayed and put on display in the same way

as the artist is portrayed and put on display. Painter merging into painting is a heavy

visual metaphor that warrants further attention. Annibale’s ambition as a painter

was great but particular: he took pride in his artisanal identity and had no interest in

wealth or in elevating his social status. Rather, he was ambitious for the art of painting

and a champion of painting’s capacity to achieve certain extraordinary feats: to con

quer time and space by making present that which is absent, to bring what is dead to

life, to counterfeit nature, to make two dimensions seem to be three, to make what is

still seem to move. He advocated for the technical proficiency and knowledge specific

to painting, for the skill necessary to wield the techniques and materials that transform

the ideas in this world, past and present, into vivid expressions that surpass all other

arts and means. Annibale the painter was himself the instrument of the art of paint

ing. The painting in the Hermitage composition stands in for the painter, manifesting

a merger of self and art. The prominently displayed palette holds the raw materials of

this transubstantiation and calls to mind another self-portrait that is lost and known

Feigenbaum “A likeness in the tomb” 33

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

only from descriptions. Thanks to the research of Donatella Sparti, we now know that

in the mid-seventeenth century Richard Symonds reported that “a small Ritratto 5 or

6 inches long done by Annibal Caraccio of himselfe, most rare,” painted on a palette, was

in the hands of Francesco Angeloni, a devoted admirer of Annibale. Angeloni, who was

the tutor of Annibale’s biographer, Bellori, probably gave his pupil the self-portrait.44 Any

painting on a palette is unusual, but to paint a self-portrait on one’s palette is a distinctive

gesture. Rearranging the colors on his palette into his likeness, Annibale collapsed pig

ment and representation, image and object, painter and instrument, techne and episteme,

self and portrait into something too dense to be parsed. Angeloni and Bellori regarded

the deceased Annibale as something like a saint, even a martyr, of the art of painting. For

them, the likeness Annibale painted of himself on his own palette must have held the sta

tus not only of art and document but also of a touch relic and holy image.45

It has been the aim of this essay to bring out the complex associations of the Getty

self-portrait, to make sense of this little sketch of a wretched artist in a danse macabre

of a frame. The drawing, a direct and spontaneous record of the artist’s thought and

touch—so fragile, and intimate rather than public—was the perfect vehicle for fleet

ing, witty, disturbing, transgressive reflection. Recent scholarship on Annibale’s self

portraits offers new directions for exploring the artist’s meditations on art and self. These

interpretations both argue for and depend on an acceptance of Annibale as a painter

of a reflective disposition. They allow us to see Annibale differently, as an artist self

conscious of his role and cognizant of the nature of his achievement, urgently aware of his

mortality and immortality, like Caravaggio or Poussin. It is into such a corpus of images,

self-portraits rich in possible new readings, that the small but daring Getty drawing can

now be integrated.

Gail Feigenbaum is the associate director of the Getty Research Institute and a scholar of early

modern European art. Her current research interests include the Carracci, artistic collabora

tion, techne, the nature of the painter’s knowledge, and display of art in baroque Roman palaces.

Notes Notes 1. Giovan Pietro Bellori, The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. Alice

Sedgwick Wohl (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), 99; Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le vite de’pittori,

scultori, ed architetti moderni (Rome: Mascardi, 1672), 79: “Non badava piu che tanto alia barba ed al col

lare… Era il volto d’Annibale impresso di studiosa malinconia, e di colore alquanto olivastro, con gli occhi

intenti, la fronte magnifica, e ‘1 naso rotondo. Li peli suoi tiravano al biondo; non si radeva, ma si attondava

la barba, lasciandola crescere naturalmente.”

2. See Nicholas Turner, European Drawings 4: Catalogue of the Collections (Los Angeles: Getty

Publications, 2001), 35-37.1 would like to thank Julian Brooks and Galina Tirnanic for their help on this

project.

3. This phrase is borrowed from Joseph Koerner’s description of Albrecht Durer’s Self Portrait

of 1500 in Joseph Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago: Univ. of

Chicago Press, 1996), xv.

4. Nicholas Turner, “The Gabburri/Rogers Series of Drawn Self-Portraits and Portraits of Art

” Journal of the History of Collections 5, no. 2 (1993): 179-216, especially 210; Nicholas Turner, “Oxford

34 GETTY RESEARCH JOURNAL, NO. 2 (2010)

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Carracci Drawings,” Burlington Magazine 139, no. 1128 (1997): 209-11, especially 204-6; Donatella Livia

Sparti, “Giovan Pietro Bellori and Annibale Carracci’s Self-Portraits: From the Vite to the Artist’s Funerary

Monument,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 45, no. 1/2 (2001): 60-101, especially 90

n. 56; Daniele Benati et al., eds., The Drawings of Annibale Carracci, exh. cat. (Washington: National Gallery

of Art, 1999), 243 (no. 75; entry by Kate Ganz); Turner, European Drawings (note 2), 35-37; Babette Bohn,

“Female Self-Portraiture in Early Modern Bologna,” Renaissance Studies 18, no. 2 (2004): 239-86, espe

cially 246; and Daniele Benati and Eugenio Riccomini, eds., Annibale Carracci, exh. cat. (Milan: Mondadori

Electa, 2006), 84 (no. I.5; entry by Daniele Benati).

5. Annibale’s self-portraits have not been considered as a group, except in a brief catalog essay

by Benati in Benati and Riccomini, Annibale Carracci (note 4), 72-75, and such a treatment cannot be

attempted here. The number is not large, especially as several are contested attributions, but those paint

ings with the firmest attributions are Self-Portrait with a Hat (Parma, Galleria Nazional); Self-Portrait on

an Easel (Saint Petersburg, Hermitage State Museum); Self-Portrait with other Figures (Milan, Pinocoteca

di Brera), the attribution of which has been warmly debated; and Self-Portrait in the Galleria degli Uffizi

(Florence), which was recently and convincingly added by Sparti.

6. See especially Roberto Zapperi, Annibale Carracci: Ritratto di artista dagiovane (Turin: Einaudi,

1989); Matthias Winner, “Annibale Carracci’s Self-Portraits and the Paragone Debate,” in Irving Lavin,

ed., World Art: Themes of Unity in Diversity: Acts of the Twenty-Sixth International Congress of the History of

Art, vol. 2 (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1989), 509-15; Victor Stoichita, The Self-Aware

Image (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997), 212-16; and Benati and Riccomini, Annibale Carracci

(note 4), 72-75.

7- Donald Posner, Annibale Carracci: A Study in the Reform of Painting around 1590 (London:

Phaidon, 1971); and Denis Mahon, Studies in Seicento Art and Theory (London: Warburg Institute, 1947)

8. Charles Dempsey, Annibale Carracci and the Beginnings of Baroque Style (Glueckstadt:

J. J. Augustin, 1977); and Clare Robertson, The Invention of Annibale Carracci (Milan: Silvana, 2008). There

has been much debate about this. In his largely sympathetic review of Dempsey’s book, Anton Boschloo

warned against taking too far the characterization of an Annibale motived by theoretical concerns.

A. W. A. Boschloo, review of Charles Dempsey’s Annibale Carracci and the Beginnings of Baroque Style, Simio

lusn, no. 1 (1980): 50-54. It is a fact that a skeptical position, an admonition against over-interpretation,

is frequently found in scholarship on Annibale, whereas such caution is rarely invoked in the case of art

ists such as Diirer, Rembrandt, or Poussin, who are assumed to have a more theoretical, philosophical, or

intellectual cast of mind.

9. Turner, European Drawings (note 2), 37; Benati et al., Drawings (note 4), 243, Benati and Ric

comini, Annibale Carracci (note 4), 84.

io. Benati and Riccomini, Annibale Carracci (note 4), 72: “suona come un autoritratto in mortem,

allucinato e perso.”

ii. To a viewer in Annibale’s own time the drawing would have presented a set of obvious, even

shocking, associations, which are slower to surface for a modern observer.

12. See Robertson, Invention (note 8), for the most recent and comprehensive monograph with

full bibliography. On the early years of the Carracci, see H. Keazor, “11 vero modo”: Die Malereireform der

Carracci (Berlin: Mann, 2007).

13. Bellori, Vite (note 1), 86: “ogni giorno piu veniva eglia travagliato dalla malinconia, languendo

insieme col corpo e con gli spiriti.”

14- The association of the Getty sheet with the name Carracci—specifically that of Anni

bale—goes back at least to the eighteenth century, when the drawing was laid down on a backing with

decorative b s in ink, wash, and watercolor. Below the drawing is a central finial across which a thin

strip of paper has been pasted down and inscribed in ink: “Caracci.” The backing with its b s, together

Feigenbaum A likeness in the tomb” 35

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

with the later collector’s mark of Charles Rogers, which has been stamped obtrusively on the back of the

artist’s hand, led Nicholas Turner to identify and publish the sheet as the one described in the inventory

of Francesco Maria Niccolo Gabburri (1676-1742). Gabburri was a Florentine nobleman, painter, and

collector, who compiled a “Vite dei pittori” that was never published. He assembled a large collection of

“portraits of painters, sculptors, and architects, all originals, and all done by their own hand.” Most likely

these portraits were acquired to accompany the artists’ lives in the publication he intended. Turner traced

the history of Gabburri’s collection, and its sale first to William Kent in 1766/67 and then to Charles Rog

ers, in Turner, “Gabburri/Rogers Series” (note 4), and he transcribed the relevant entry in the inventory

in Turner, European Drawings (note 2), 35: “Annibale Caracci, a penna in Ovato con alcuni/ornati pure a

pennadi suamano. Per alto [Braccio fiorentino] [sic] 4i/2.1argo B[racciofiorentino][sic] 3 i/2riportato

in mezzo a certe/Grottesche a penna e acquer[ella] di Gasparo Redi—3 [ruspi].” At an unknown later

moment Redi’s elaborate decoration was cut down severely, leaving minimal b s on the sides and a

larger remnant of rectilinear bands and b s below.

15. In his few securely identified portraits and self-portraits, Annibale’s hair is shown combed

down over the forehead in a short fringe, and where it is exposed to view it sticks up on top of his head,

sometimes with a little cowlick toward the back. So it is in the Getty drawing, where quick staccato pen

strokes indicate a sparse scattering of unruly hair falling forward while the hair on the crown sticks up.

16. Such as Bellori, Vite (note 1).

17. He gives no further explanation.

i8. See Ganz’s catalog entry for the major exhibition of Annibale’s drawings at the National Gal

lery of Art: Benati et al., Drawings (note 4), 243. She does not elaborate her reasons.

19. Turner, “Gabburri/Rogers Series” (note 4), 204; Turner, European Drawings (note 2), 37. The

date is acceptedby Bohn, “Female Self-Portraiture” (note 4), 246; Benati et al., Drawings (note 4), 243; and

Benati and Riccomini, Annibale Carracci (note 4), 84. Sparti suggests that more research needs to be done

on the drawing’s dating and status, and in Sparti, “Giovan Pietro Bellori” (note 4), 89 n. 56, that “there is a

case for considering it in relation to the print by Domenico Santi of Annibale’s Parma self portrait” which

also has a skull at the top of the decorative frame. It is not clear whether Sparti means to question Ganz’s

dating or the autograph status of the Getty drawing which, she seems to imply, might instead derive from

Santi’s posthumous print; for this see Anna Ottani Cavina, “Annibale Carracci e la lupa del fregio Mag

nani,” in Les Carrache et les decors profanes (Rome: Ecole Francaise de Rome, 1988), 22.

20. Dates for Annibale’s drawings can be extremely difficult to pin down, particularly for his

informal pen studies. If the very earliest and the very latest of his pen drawings are apt to betray particu

lar stylistic quirks, those in between tend toward a comparatively stable consistency of skill and style; in

Annibale’s chalk drawings, by contrast, an arc of development is much more marked. Regarding the date

of the Getty self-portrait, in light of the wide spread of two decades that has been put forward by three

leading experts on Carracci drawings, who all base their opinions on stylistic grounds, it seems a little

disingenuous to insist, yet again on stylistic grounds, that the Getty sheet is a rather late drawing. With

this caveat in mind, however, the challenge of dating it must still be attempted. Extensive bibliography on

Annibale’s drawings is found in Catherine Loisel, Musee du Louvre, Inventairegeneral des dessins italiens, VII,

Ludovtco Agostino, Annibale Carracci (Paris: Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 2004).

21. Tazza Farnese is an engraved silver vessel, and the Paniere Farnese a silver bread plate engraved

by Francesco Villamena after Annibale’s design; Benati et al., Drawings (note 4), 44 (fig. 1), 217 (pi. 66), 254

(pi. 80).

22. One might think that the Getty drawing could be dated on the basis of the sitter’s age, but to

gauge this with any accuracy in a figure drawn in such a spare and abstract technique has proven a refrac

tory problem. For Turner, Annibale looks like a very young man in the drawing; he appears to this writer

to be older.

3° GETTY RESEARCH JOURNAL, NO. 2 (ZOIO)

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

23. If the date were earlier for the drawing, the basis for the analysis would not be affected, only

the claim for specific biographic resonance.

24. Annibale’s brother Agostino Carracci made many engravings of this type, such as the por

trait of the artist Bernardino Campi. For Agostino’s engraving, see Diane De Grazia, Le stampe dei Carracci

(Bologna: Edizioni Alfa, 1984), 135 (cat. no. 127).

25. Sparti, “Giovan Pietro Bellori,, (note 4), 60-101; Bellori, Vite (note 1); Carlo Cesare Malvasia,

Felsinapittrice: Vite de’pittori bolognesi (Bologna: D. Barbieri, 1678).

26. Benati questioned the hypothesis; see Benati and Riccomini, Annibale Carraca (note 4), 84.

27. Ganz noted the Farnese’s collection of very beautiful rosary beads in semi-precious stones;

La collezioneFarnese, vol. 3, Le artidecorative (Naples: Electa, 1996), 199 (6.100-6.122), reproduced at 192.

28. Turner, European Drawings (note 2), 37. Turner, “Gabburri/Rogers Series” (note 4),” 206,

noted: “The drawing gives the appearance of itself having been intended for engraving, but no such print

survives. On the other hand, the figurative language of the formal printed portrait may simply have been

borrowed, somewhat mockingly, for a self-portrait drawing that was not intended to be taken too seri

ously. A light-hearted purpose is certainly suggested by the skeletons of the two hybrid beasts…yet con

tradicting this satirical vein is Annibale’s haunted, almost persecuted expression.”

29. Malvasia, Felsina pittrice (note 25), 277-78, and 335. See also Anne Summerscale’s perceptive

notes on caricature: Malvasia’s Life of the Carracci: Commentary and Translation (University Park: Pennsyl

vania State Univ. Press, 2000), 121 n. 83,122 n. 84,123 n. 85,269 n. 424,270 n. 425.

30. Bellori, Lives (note l), 95; Bellori, Vite (note l), 81: “Onde sebbene naturalmente e da principio

egli sembrava malinconico, subito poi con tanta grazia si accommodava al motteggiare, che color, li quali

l’udivano, col diletto ne prendevano maraviglia.”

31. Benati et al., Drawings (note 4), 243. Benati doubted that this sketch could have had a celebra

tory intent; see Benati and Riccomini, Annibale Carracci (see note 4), 84.

32. Oreste Ferrari and Serenita Papaldo, Le sculture del Seicento a Roma (Rome: Ugo Bozzi, 1999),

313

33- For funeral sculpture of this type, including copious reproductions, see Sylvia Pressouyre,

Nicolas Cordier: Recherches sur la sculpture a Rome autour dei6oo (Rome: Ecole Francaise de Rome, 1984);

and Ferrari and Papaldo, he sculture (note 32), 70,168,257,282,313.

34- Executed in pen and brown ink on buff paper, the drawing is very small and the ink a little

pale. It has not been noted that the margins of the original drawing were trimmed at least slightly on all

sides. Because it is so physically slight, which is not always evident in reproductions but striking in the

original, the remnants of extra framing from the old Gabburri mount definitely change the impression

it makes. The increased size and geometry of the inked b s impart a more formal and substantial

appearance to the object. Also, the bands have the effect of containing, and taming a little, the wild fauna

that straggles over the edges of Annibale’s original sheet. Reading away the later additions, Annibale’s

page seems even more dominated by the large oval niche with a plain banded b and by the overgrown

tangle of ornament. The ink is a little faded, probably a consequence of once having been displayed in a

frame, as noted in Turner, European Drawings (note 2), 35. Tense, active penwork brings the ornament

surrounding the niche to life as it projects forward and around the frame as if grasping the imago clipeata

in its embrace.

35- Bellori, Lives (note 1), 99; Bellori, Vite (note 1), 88:

QUOD POTERAS HOMINUM VIVOS EFFIGERE VULTUS

ANNIBAL HEU CITO MORS INVIDA TE RAPUIT

FINXIS ES UVTINAM TE MORS DECEPTA SEPULCRO

CLAUDERET EFFIGIEM VIVUS ET IPSE FORES.

36. Satirical is the word Turner uses, but this suggests ridicule. Sardonic, with its tone of bitter

Feigenbaum “A likeness in the tomb” 37

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

mockery, seems more in the spirit of the drawing.

37- Stamped on the hand, is the rather intrusive “cr” of Charles Rogers’s collectors mark; see Frits

Lugt, Les marques de collections de dessins etd’estampe (Amsterdam: Vereenigde Drukkerijen, 1921), no. 624.

38. Bellori, Lives (note 1), 93; Bellori, Vite (note 1), 75: “Ma per essere Annibale di natura malin

conico ed apprensivo molto, si aggravo tanto nel pensiero della sua disgrazia, che non si pote mai piu ral

legrare; e cadde in umore di non piu dipingere, e volendo non poteva, necessitato lasciare i pennelli, che

quella malinconia gli toglieva da mano.”

39- Stoichita, Self-Aware Image (note 6), 212-15.

4o. Or rather toward the implied mirror in which he would have been observing himself. Benati

identifies the cloaked figure in profile at the right as Michelangelo; see Benati and Riccomini, Annibale

Carracci (note 4), 82 (cat. no. 1.4).

41. Winner, “Annibale Carracci’s Self-Portraits” (note 6),509-15.

42. Annibale earlier had given some thought to this theme in a drawing of a young man who con

templates a statue of Terminus and who can be understood to be meditating about the end of his own life.

Winner, “Annibale Carracci’s Self-Portraits” (note 6), fig. 9.1 am indebted to Christopher Faraone for help

interpreting the Terminus theme.

43- Stoichita, Self-Aware Image (note 6), 213, emphasizes only the second of these temporalities,

“A moment earlier the real painter had been standing in front of his easel but he has now disappeared.”

Yet all three seem insistently present in the composition.

44- It must have been the picture seen in Bellori’s collection in 1665 and described by another

English traveler, Philip Skippon, as a “picture of Annibal Carvaggio drawn by himself on his pallet.” Sparti,

“Giovan Pietro Bellori” (note 4), 66,85 n. 3,87 nn.19,48, including bibliography on Symonds and Skippon.

Sparti points out that Skippon makes a lot of slips in his text, and Caravaggio for Carracci seems to another

such.

45- Sparti, Giovan Pietro Bellori” (note 4), 66, stresses the fact that Bellori refused to part with

the portrait even when the prospective buyer was Leopoldo de’Medici.

38 GETTY RESEARCH JOURNAL, NO. 2 (2010)

This content downloaded from ��������������129.49.5.35 on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 14:56:13 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms