This photogravure is from Bruce Watlings private collection. He discovered it in London, it was part of a collection in a leather bound book. The whole book was to big and heavy to bring back to Australia so he chose this piece to purchase......ANNIBALE CARRACCI (Earl of Carlisles Collection) This picture was one of 25 by the same master that belonged to the Orleans gallery, most of which came to England at very high prices for their day. Then the works of this artist enjoyed a far higher reputation, relatively to those of earlier and other schools, than they have enjoyed since or are ever likely again to reach. This picture was the best of the Orleans group, and may be regarded as the finest of its painter’s works. The declamatory passion of it seemed in the highest degree praiseworthy to amateurs of the eighteenth century. Today it leaves us cold. It is easier now to fall into the opposite extreme of error, and deny the really masterly qualities which such a picture actually possesses. An able modern critic has called it “probably the highest and most thoroughly successful example of eclecticism existing.” Granted that the passion is insincere, it is yet ably acted. If the composition is artificial, it is none the less good. The drawing may be academic, but it is generally fine. The painter manifests great dexterity of hand, “prodigious power with the brush”. Better artists lacked half his skill. Let no superior person imagine that to paint thus was ever easy. The style was the outcome of the day. Only a great master could raise it to this pitch of elevation. We should probably find much to offend us in the acting of the famous actors of the past; but they were none the less great actors. Similarly the Carracci were great painters. They took their art very seriously indeed. There was nothing hasty about their design, nor trivial in their compositions. If they did not always find, they at any rate sought for grandeur. Their fancy dwelt in a dignified world, where beings of noble form behaved themselves nobly. It was a fine ideal in its own way. Perhaps we have traveled too far from it in an opposite direction.