Protagonist of idealist and symbolist Italian art between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, De Carolis had a decisive influence in the formative development of floral taste, operating equally in the fields of illustration, painting and photography.
Since 1901 he has been teaching ornate in the academy in Florence of the Renaissance masters, of the "terrible" Michelangelo, of the Böcklin of the Isle of the dead. He began to decorate books for D'Annunzio and Pascoli and from 1903 he worked on friezes and articles for the magazine "Leonardo" founded with Papini and Prezzolini.
De Carolis has collaborated with great writers, illustrating with drawings and woodcuts works by Gabriele D'Annunzio and Giovanni Pascoli, with an unmistakable graphic manner, decoratively organic both to the typographic architecture and to the contents.
