"This refreshingly original study dares to reinterpret a canonical painter. If any book can bring Annibale Carracci out of the shadows cast by Caravaggio’s celebrity as the great Baroque genius, this one is it. F. M. Gage takes Annibale’s visual jokes, pranks with props and verbal caricatures seriously with novel results.

Philip Sohm, University of Toronto

“This lively account retrieves the life and career of Annibale Carracci, an innovative but elusive painter who shared baroque Rome with Caravaggio. Alongside reconstruction of the artist’s varied oeuvre, a rich reading of verbal texts builds a portrait of a distinctive man whose work featured invention, naturalism, family collaboration, and succinct moral authority.”

Elizabeth S. Cohen, professor emerita of history, York University, Toronto

“In this lively and deeply researched volume that melds biography and historiography, Gage brilliantly evokes the life and work of the ‘universal’ painter Annibale Carracci. Foregrounding, through the writings of contemporaries and biographers, the artist’s independence, intelligence, and ingenuity, Gage perceptively discusses the joys and rivalries of Annibale’s ambient in both Bologna and Rome, and skillfully documents the evolution of the critical fortune of one of Italy’s most significant artists.”

Andria Derstine, Virginia N. and Randall J. Barbato Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Cleveland Museum of Art, and coauthor of "Masters of Italian Baroque Painting: The Detroit Institute of Arts"

“This refreshingly original study dares to reinterpret a canonical painter. If any book can bring Annibale Carracci out of the shadows cast by Caravaggio’s celebrity as the great Baroque genius, this one is it. Gage takes Annibale’s visual jokes, pranks with props, and verbal caricatures seriously with novel results.”

Philip Sohm, professor of art history, University of Toronto