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 lo