A pair of huge, rarely seen drawings are on view at The National Gallery in London until July 2025. What is the story of these massive pieces of paper that have survived intact for centuries?

At four metres wide and two metres tall, the Carracci brothers' immense sketches were preparatory work for the masterpiece fresco cycle, The Loves of the Gods, decorating the ceiling of the Palazzo Farnese Gallery in Rome. These drawings, now known as the Carracci Cartoons, have a rich history.

'The Loves of the Gods' on the vault of the Farnese Gallery

The Loves of the Gods is an exploration of love told through scenes from classical mythology. The barrel-vaulted ceiling was steeply curved, so Agostino and Annibale Carracci employed trompe l'oeils and stucco work to create the illusion of three-dimensional ornamentation. The cycle draws on Michelangelo's sculptural ignudi in the Sistine Chapel and Raphael's richly coloured frescoes in the Villa Farnesina. It is an elaborate visual spectacle. The preparatory sketches for these scenes are known as the Carracci Cartoons.

Cephalus carried off by Aurora in her Chariot

To truly tell the story of these works, we must start at the very beginning with Odoardo Farnese, the Italian nobleman known for his patronage of the arts, who commissioned the Carracci family to create murals in his ancestral home. Today, the Palazzo is home to the French Embassy, but in 1594 it was the private residence of the House of Farnese. Aged 18, Odoardo was a newly elected Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, an inheritor of vast wealth and the owner of the Palazzo.

Odoardo began negotiations for Bolognese artist Annibale Carracci to create frescoes in the Camerino, the Cardinal's private study within the Palazzo. The Carracci family had established an academy in Bologna with the guiding pedagogical principle of naturalism and idealised realism as the foundation for artistic practice. It was led by Annibale, his brother Agostino and their cousin Ludovico.

Portrait of Annibale, Ludovico and Agostino Carracci

When the Camerino was completed in 1597, Annibale was given the commission for what would become his pièce de résistance, the monumental frescoes of the Galleria Farnese.

Though the Cardinal had originally floated the thematic concept of his father's life for the Galleria panels, this was eventually replaced by the theme of classical mythology – namely Ovid's Metamorphoses. Annibale was well practised in Biblical scenes, but a mythological cycle of this scale presented a fresh challenge.

The Dead Christ Mourned ('The Three Maries')

As luck would have it, these ancient tales were fresh in the mind of the artist – Annibale's frescoes in the Camerino had also been distinctly mythological. The centrepiece of the ceiling was a large rectangular depiction of The Choice of Hercules, contiguous with two additional Herculean frescoes.

But before paintbrush could touch plaster in the Galleria, there was extensive planning to be done. This began with the Carraccis' compositional studies and intricate drafting of sculptural grisaille figures and decorative details.

Following this, 45 sheets of overlapping handmade paper (made from off-white and blue linen rags) were joined by adhesive with 31 pieces of 12-centimetre border paper to create a full-scale canvas upon which the Carraccis produced their preparatory cartoons. Though the Galleria is attributed chiefly to the most prominent Carracci, Annibale, these seminal sketches were, in fact, the work of his older brother Agostino.

Two of the three surviving cartoons reside in The National Gallery's collection. Cephalus carried off by Aurora in her Chariot portrays love's absolute dominion, even over the rhythms of nature itself. Aurora, goddess of the dawn, has fallen so desperately in love with the mortal hunter Cephalus that she neglects her duty of leading Apollo and the sun across the morning sky. Much to Aurora's sorrow, Cephalus is already in love with another.

A Woman borne off by a Sea God (?), meanwhile, is curious. A muscular and winged sea god carries off a naked woman, perhaps Venus, surrounded by a host of divinities and cherubs, including Cupid, who artfully aims his arrow at the pair.

The huge cartoons are works of art in their own right – detailed drawings of sea creatures, putti, and gods and goddesses with facial expressions conveying visceral emotion, suspended on buoyant clouds not dissimilar to the saintly billows of the Carraccis' religious work.

The Virgin and Child in the Clouds (Madonna of Bologna)

The juxtaposition of mythological themes with humanistic detail demonstrates that such studies were not just functional tools – they were profound explorations of anatomy, expression and narrative.

Both cartoons reflect the ambition of the Carraccis' mythological storytelling and capture the dynamism, skill and emotional intensity of the monumental fresco cycle to come.

Beyond representing their skill and vision, these sketches neatly suggest the Carraccis' influences, with discernible likeness to antique sculpture and the paradoxical ethereal realism in the works of predecessors Michelangelo and Raphael.

Unlike the ensuing frescoes, the Carracci Cartoons were fluid, dynamic and practical artworks, intended for purposeful use – to transfer their design to the ceiling. This could be in whole or by cutting the paper into sections.

To do so, a member of the workshop was tasked with inserting copious pinpricks along the outlines of the drawing, turning the cartoon into a stencil through which chalk powder could be shaken, or by using a stylus to leave linear indentations in the intonaco (the fresh, smooth plaster). Given that either method would leave the delicate paper cartoons damaged, their survival insists the Carraccis had other ideas.

Writing in volume 16 of The National Gallery Technical Bulletin in 1995, conservators wrote of their discovery that The Woman borne off by a Sea God (?) had been pricked for transfer and remained whole, rather than cut into manageable sections:

'...it must be supposed that the design was transferred by means of a substitute (or intermediary) cartoon. A separate sheet of paper would have been placed behind the cartoon and both would have been perforated during the pricking procedure... The advantage of using this method was that the original cartoon was preserved intact.'

Perhaps, then, the Carraccis knew to keep a little back for themselves of a masterpiece otherwise affixed to an immovable canvas.

Still, these cartoons might have been overlooked as practice runs. After all, what makes a cartoon more than a preliminary sketch? A modern equivalent might be the current mode for musicians releasing demos as additional content for fans of their music. Does the peek behind the curtain add value to the final product? This question resonates through the Renaissance and Baroque eras.

Modelli – preparatory studies – have told similar back stories across art history for centuries. Comparably, unfinished works can shed light on methodology. Michelangelo's abandoned The Virgin and Child with Saint John and Angels, known as 'The Manchester Madonna', famously demonstrates the technique of painting in egg tempera.

The Virgin and Child with Saint John and Angels ('The Manchester Madonna')

In the case of the Carracci Cartoons, however, the appeal is not just in their use as a window to the process. Far more than a mere template, there are several significant differences between A Woman borne off by a Sea God (?) and the finished fresco.

The conch-blowing Triton is facing outward in the cartoon. By the time he appears in the fresco, his torso is turned away from the spectator. Similarly, a Nereid is made to look down instead of up. Other figures so painstakingly pricked in the cartoons, such as the young boy, are omitted entirely from the final fresco.

The significance of such decisions is inconclusive – do Annibale's revisions to Agostino's designs indicate fraternal tension? Regardless, the existence of the cartoons undoubtedly illuminates the artistic process, revealing the meticulous process behind the frescoes that have defined Baroque art.

The Galleria was the defining project of Annibale Carracci's life and work. When the project was finished, the artist was paid a diminutive sum, and his disappointment led to a disenchantment which would mark the beginning of the end of his creative life.

Threads of myth, innovation and artistry weave together the Carraccis' legacy. Their story is one of enduring influence and unmatched creativity, encapsulated by these revolutionary cartoons which blurred the boundaries between preparatory work and finished masterpiece. The 1995 National Gallery technical report announced that as a result of the restoration project, the Carracci Cartoons 'have recovered their status as fine works of art instead of remaining merely interesting art-historical documents.'

It is true, the Carracci Cartoons are remarkable survivors of art in motion, and their presentation at The National Gallery in spring 2025 is something of a celebration of the process before the product – of frescoes in flux and of myths in the making.

Olivia Jordan, journalist

This content was funded by the Bridget Riley Art Foundation

The free exhibition 'The Carracci Cartoons: Myths in the Making' is on at The National Gallery, London, from 10th April to 6th July 2025

Further reading

Charles Dempsey, Annibale Carracci, George Braziller, New York, 1995

Gabriele Finaldi, Eric Harding and June Wallis, 'The Conservation of the Carracci Cartoons in the National Gallery' in National Gallery Technical Bulletin, Vol. 16, pp.30–46