On account of this work he is ranked by Mengs next after the three leading masters in the fourth degree, and even esteemed supereminent in regard to the form of his virile figures. Poussin asserts, that after Raffaello there were no better compositions than these, and he prefers the decorative heads and figures already mentioned, with the other naked forms, in which the artist was said to have surpassed himself, even to his fables so beautifully painted. To him Baglione refers the method of colouring from nature, which was nearly lost, as well as the true art of landscape-painting, afterwards imitated by the Flemish. To these might likewise be added the use of caricatures, which no one better than he knew how to copy from nature, and to increase with ideal power. In the Roman galleries many of Annibal's pictures are to be met with, conducted in this new style; and there is one in the Lancellotti palace, small, and painted _a colla_,[26] rivalling, I had almost said, the best pieces of Ercolani. It is a Pan teaching Apollo to play upon the pipe; figures at once designed, coloured, and disposed with the hand of a great master. They are so finely expressive, that we see in the countenance of the youth, humility, and apprehension of committing an error; and in that of the old man, turning another way, peculiar attention to the sound, his pleasure in possessing such a pupil, and his anxiety to conceal from him his real opinion, lest he might happen to grow vain.[27]
Footnote 26: In colours, of which yolk of egg, or a kind of glue, is the vehicle.
Footnote 27: See the _Dissertazione su la Pittura_, by the Canon Lazzarini, in the Catalogue of Pictures at Pesaro, p. 118.
No other pieces so exquisitely finished are found by his hand at Bologna, where there prevails the same strong party, commenced in the time of the Caracci, and which prefers Lodovico to Annibal. When we reflect that Annibal, in addition to the patrimony left by his school, conferred upon it the riches which the genius of the Greeks, throughout many ages and many places had collected to adorn their style; when we reflect on the progress, which, on observing his new style at Rome, was made by Domenichino, Guido, Albano, Lanfranco, with the new light which it afforded to Algardi, according to the supposition of Passeri, in respect to sculpture, and the improvement which by his means took place in the very pleasing and attractive painting of Flanders and of Holland, we feel inclined to coincide with the general sentiment entertained beyond the limits of Bologna, that Annibal was the most eminent artist of his family. At the same time we may allow, that Agostino was the greater genius, and Lodovico, to whom we are indebted for both, the greater teacher of these three. As such, too, the learned Ab. Magnani, librarian and lecturer upon eloquence to the institution, assigns to him the office of teacher, in an able oration upon the fine arts, printed at Parma by Bodoni, along with others by the same author.