Crucificação e santos

When a cleaning in the 1920s uncovered a date on this canvas, it settled something. The year read 1583, which makes it the earliest surviving work of Annibale Carracci, painted when he was twenty-three and just starting out in Bologna. Around the cross he set mourners and three saints, among them Petronius, the patron of the city. To us it looks sober and direct. To some painters of his own day it looked almost crude, too plain, short on the elegant artifice that Bolognese taste still expected. The commission went well for him even so, and more followed. Its first home, a chapel in the neighbouring church of San Nicolo, was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War, which is how the altarpiece came to Santa Maria della Carita.