Ludovico apprenticed under Prospero Fontana in Bologna and traveled to Florence, Parma, and Venice, before returning to his hometown.

Their individual contributions to these works are unclear, although Annibale, the younger than Ludovico by 5 years had gained fame as the best of the three.

This led to Annibale's famed commission of the Loves of the Gods in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome.

This studio however propelled a number of Emilian artists to pre-eminence in Rome and elsewhere, and singularly helped encourage the so-called Bolognese School of the late 16th century, which included Albani, Guercino, Sacchi, Reni, Lanfranco and Domenichino.

In 2009, Carracci's painting of St. Jerome (c. 1595) was restituted to the heirs of Max Stern, a German Jewish art dealer persecuted and looted by the Nazis[2][3]