Pietro Faccini
1602 · Papal States · Baroque, Mannerism
The story
Carlo Cesare Malvasia, the 17th-century biographer of Bologna's painters, tells how Pietro Faccini first walked into the Carracci studio as an outsider, a man from trade who came only out of curiosity. The students laughed at him. He picked up a piece of charcoal and drew their profiles, so cleverly distorted that they hailed him as a master instead of a beginner, and Annibale Carracci urged him to take up painting for good.
The friendship ended with another joke. Faccini liked to stay late drawing from a skeleton, and Annibale moved it in secret to give him a fright. Around 1593 Faccini left and opened a school of his own in opposition to the Carracci academy, although his taste was already drifting toward the warm colour of painting in Venice and Parma.
In 1599 the painters' company of Bologna elected him one of its 15 councillors, together with Guido Reni and Francesco Albani, both later famous. He died in Bologna in April 1602.
