In an earlier volume I briefly sketched the development of this pernicious mannerism, which now deluged the arts of Italy.  Only one painter, outside Venice, seems to have carried on a fairly good tradition.  This was Federigo Baroccio (1528-1612), who feebly continued the style of Correggio, with a certain hectic originality, infusing sentimental pietism into that great master’s pagan sensuousness.  The mixture is disagreeable; and when one is obliged to mention Baroccio as the best in a bad period, this accentuates the badness of his contemporaries.  He has however, historical value from another point of view, inasmuch as nothing more strongly characterizes the eclecticism of the Caracci than their partiality for Correggio.[217] Though I have no reason to suppose that Baroccio, living chiefly as he did at Urbino, directly influenced their style, the similarity between his ideal and theirs is certainly striking.  It seems to point at something inevitable in the direction taken by the Eclectics.

[Footnote 215:  I of course except Venice, for reasons which I have sufficiently set forth in Renaissance in Italy, vol. iii. p. 347.  Long after other schools of Italy the Venetian was still only adolescent.]

[Footnote 216:  I have not thought it worth while to write down more than a very few names of the Mannerists.  Notice how often they worked in whole families and indistinguishable coteries.]

[Footnote 217:  Everyone familiar with European picture-galleries will remember cabinet pieces by the Caracci, especially Ecce Homos, Pietas, Agonies in the Garden, which look like copies from Correggio with a dash of added sentimentalism.]

Such was the state of art in Italy when Lodovico Caracci, the son of a Bolognese butcher, conceived his plan of replacing it upon a sounder system.[218] Instinct led him to Venice, where painting was still alive.  The veteran Tintoretto warned him that he had no vocation.  But Lodovico obstinately resolved to win by industry what nature seemed to have denied him.  He studied diligently at Florence, Parma, Mantua, and Venice, founding his style upon those of Andrea del Sarto, Correggio, Titian, Parmigiano, Giulio Romano, and Primaticcio.  When he again settled at Bologna, he induced his two cousins, Agostino and Annibale, the sons of a tailor, to join him in the serious pursuit of art.  Agostino was a goldsmith by trade, already expert in the use of the burin, which he afterwards employed more frequently than the brush.[219] Of the three Caracci he was the most versatile, and perhaps the most gifted.  There is a note of distinction and attainment in his work.  Annibale, the youngest, was a rough, wild, hasty, and hot-tempered lad, of robust build and vigorous intellect, but boorish in his manners, fond of low society, and eaten up with jealousy.  They called him the ragazzaccio, or ‘lout of a boy,’ when he began to make his mark at Bologna.  Agostino presented a strong contrast to his brother, being an accomplished musician, an excellent dancer, a fair poet, fit to converse with noblemen, and possessed of very considerable culture.  Lodovico, the eldest of the cousins, acted as mentor and instructor to the others.  He pacified their quarrels, when Annibale’s jealousy burst out; set them upon the right methods of study, and passed judgment on their paintings.