Although highly accomplished as a painter, Agostino Carracci is best known as one of the leading printmakers of his generation. He executed reproductive engravings of exceptional quality after the works of many past and contemporary painters, notably Veronese and Tintoretto, as well as numerous plates of his own invention. Along with his younger brother Annibale and their cousin Ludovico, these three artists were jointly responsible for a far-reaching revitalisation of Italian painting towards the end of the sixteenth century. This was in part effected through the informal academy which they established in Bologna around 1580. Agostino’s career was cut short by his premature death in 1602.
A form of printmaking in which a metal plate is covered with a substance called a 'ground', usually wax, into which an image is drawn with a needle. Acid is applied, eroding the areas of the plate exposed but not the areas covered by wax. The action of the acid creates lines in the metal plate that hold the ink from which a print is made when the plate is pressed against paper under pressure.