The occasion for the present article is the new attribution of a painting on copper with the 'Adoration of the Shepherds' to the early activity of Ludovico Carracci, patriarch of the so-called Carraccesque reform. The painting had very recently appeared on the European art market with a rather vague attribution to an anonymous Bolognese artist of the 17th century. The new attribution finds a great deal of supporting evidence in other paintings of the mid-1580s, the crucial years of that radical renewal of Italian painting of which the three Bolognese artists would be progenitors, in a single bound almost overriding the now languishing late Maniera and ushering in the new century, the Seicento. On which they left their mark, both inside and outside Italy. The addition nonetheless allows us to reflect again on the enlivening influence exerted by the art of a great predecessor like Correggio, not only on the young Annibale, but also on Ludovico Carracci, who transposes that legacy in a different and original way compared to his cousin.