Pietro Faccini

Although another Bologna-born artist, and trained in the Carracci academy, Pietro Faccini (1562-1602) definitely marched to a different drummer. Instead of following in the cool Carracci classicist manner, Faccini went off and started an academy of his own. In his own work, he gradually developed a distinctive personal style. Prized among his contemporaries for his drawing skills, Faccini eschewed the wiry, precise line of the Carracci for a softer, freer, more intimate approach; critics consider him an interesting outlier in the art of his day, and a bridge from Mannerism to the Baroque.

Faccini died relatively young and much of his best work has disappeared, but many of the survivors are in and around Bologna: in the Pinacoteca, altarpieces in San Domenico and San Giovanni in Monte, and minor works in Castel San Pietro, Budrio (Santa Maria del Borgo) and in Quarto Inferiore.