Pietà, or the Christ of Caprarola

This is Annibale’s first print following his resettlement in Rome. The word Caprarola next to his signature is the name of a town about 50 miles outside the city, perhaps the place where he made the etching. In any case, the inscription suggests that Annibale visited the magnificent Villa Farnese located there, probably to study the spectacular frescoes painted on its walls, since the Farnese family had just hired him to paint major frescoes in their palace in Rome. It had been a few years since Annibale had made an etching, and here he no longer had his Bologna studio mates for technical support. The result was a web of lines in the sky due to an accident during the etching process. Could he have considered this a happy accident? Afterall, he published the plate and may have appreciated the emotional resonance between the frazzled sky and the emotions of Jesus’s mourners.