Domenichino

(Domenico Zampieri; 1581-1641)

   Domenichino was a member of the Carracci School. He first studied with the Flemish artist Denis Calvaert in Bologna, transferring to the Carracci Academy in c. 1595 to train with Ludovico and Agostino Carracci. In 1602, he went to Rome where he became one of Annibale Carracci's most important assistants. There he befriended Monsignor Giovanni Battista Agucchi, who promoted his career and with whom he may have collaborated on a treatise on painting.

   Domenichino's Christ at the Column (1603; private collection) he rendered soon before moving into Agucchi's home. It shows Christ after the Flagellation without his tormentors—an idealized iconic image exemplary of Domenichino's classical decorum. In 1609, Domenichino worked alongside Guido Reni in the Oratory of Sant' Andrea, Rome, painting the Martyrdom of St. Andrew. His first signed altarpiece is the Last Communion of St. Jerome (1614; Vatican, Pinacoteca), painted for the Congregation of San Girolamo (Jerome) della Carità, an image based on Agostino Carracci's famed painting of the same subject that Domenichino must have seen in 1612 when he briefly returned to Bologna. Having completed his own version, Giovanni Lanfranco accused him of plagiarism. In these same years, he also decorated the Polet Chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome (1612-1614), for Pierre Polet with scenes from the life of St. Cecilia. St. Cecilia was also the subject of his c. 1617 painting (Paris, Louvre) of the saint playing a viola while a putto holds her music score.

   Domenichino was also an accomplished portraitist and landscapist. Remarkable examples of his portraiture are Monsignor Giovanni Battista Agucchi (early 1620s; York, Art Gallery) and Pope Gregory XV and Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi (1621-1623; Béziers, Musée des Beaux-Arts). Among his landscapes are the scenes from the legend of Apollo in the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati (1616-1618) and Diana at the Hunt (1617; Rome, Galleria Borghese) commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese. Domenichino moved to Naples in 1631 to work in the Cappella del Tesoro in the Church of San Genaro, a commission that was to occupy him for about a decade. He died in Naples in 1641, believed to have been poisoned by local artists who, out of jealousy, had threatened his life and reputation.