In 1594, three years after their fellow Lombard contemporary Caravaggio went to Rome, Annibale and Agostino Carracci, from a Bologna family of painters, also sought their fortune in the Papal City. Having collaborated with their older cousin, Ludovico, to found an academy of art in their native city (the first of its kind in Western art) they had become fully established artists, well versed in both Classical and Renaissance traditions and experienced in the study of anatomy and life drawing. They also brought with them their home region’s particular sensibility for the natural and the real. Annibale’s paintings became known for their divergent yet compatible combination of realism and idealism and influenced artists and their patrons throughout Europe for the next two centuries. Explore the northern Lombard background and influences on works by the three Carracci cousins, their struggles and triumphs and their long and wide-ranging influence.