Landscape with a Fortified Town in the Distance

During a study trip in northern Italy, Annibale Carracci became fascinated by the landscape drawings and prints of Domenico Campagnola. Like Campagnola, Carracci created panoramic landscapes with swift, deft pen lines and parallel hatching. In them, he included telling observations of everyday life, as in this drawing of a resting peasant family with sheep in the foreground and figures under the loggia of a house with a smoking chimney.