Domenico Zampieri was born on 21 October in 1581 in Bologna, Italy, where he became one of the most distinguished pupils of the Carracci Academy. In 1602 he went to Rome to assist Annibale Carracci with the frescoes of the Palazzo Farnese, and he lived there for almost 30 years.
Domenico became one of the most distinguished pupils of the Carracci Academy.
In 1602 Domenico went to Rome to assist Annibale Carracci with the frescoes of the Palazzo Farnese, and he lived there for almost 30 years. In his early work Domenichino maintained a rigid classicism, as in the Scourging of St. Andrew (Church of San Gregorio Magno); painted in 1608, this fresco displays carefully balanced groups before antique temples and columns. His masterpiece, the Last Communion of St. Jerome (1614), in the Vatican, was based on a picture by Agostino Carracci at the Pinacoteca in Bologna, but it thoroughly transforms the original through its simplification. Domenichino was greatly admired by Nicolas Poussin, and the classic simplicity of his landscapes anticipates the French school. After about 1625, perhaps under the influence of Lanfranco's cupola in Sant' Andrea Della Valle, Domenichino modified his classic style to a more baroque idiom--for example, the frescoes in the apse of that church and the monumental Evangelists in the spandrels of the cupola. Nevertheless, his basic style derived from Raphael and Correggio and counteracted the full baroque manner of Lanfranco and Pietro da Cortona. He treated figures as statues arranged in successive planes before architectural prospects. His work is remarkable for clear design, soft light and refined color, and grace, symmetry, and solidity of form. Domenichino also painted portraits and an idealized type of female saint such as the St. Cecilia in the Louvre. His principal claim to fame, however, lies in his architectural landscapes with figures.
