Domenichino (1581-1641)

Italian baroque painter and architect, active in Bologna, Naples, and Rome. He began as an assistant to the Carracci family of painters and continued the early baroque style in, for example, frescoes 1624-28 in the choir of the church of S Andrea della Valle, Rome. He is considered one of the pioneers of landscape painting in the baroque period.

His landscapes had a great impact on the development of the genre, influencing Claude Lorrain directly. The English painter John Constable regarded his Landscape with a Fortified Building (private collection) as ‘of the highest order’. A good example is Landscape with Tobias and Angel about 1615 (National Gallery, London).

Domenichino went to Rome 1602 and assisted Annibale Caracci at the Farnese Gallery, painting the frescoes The Death of Adonis and, over the entrance door, Maiden with the Unicorn. He also painted frescoes for cardinals Scipione Borghese (1576-1633) and Pietro Aldobrandini (1571-1621). Domenichino was Annibale's favourite and best pupil and, basing his style on his master's and that of Raphael, he became the leading painter in Rome in the 1610s, gaining many important commissions. Among his finest frescoes, noted for their dignified and powerful classicism, are those illustrating scenes from the life of St Cecilia in the church of San Luigi de' Francesi, Rome 1611-14 and those for the Basilian abbey of Grottaferrata. His oil paintings were also highly prized in his own day, Nicolas Poussin claiming that his Last Communion of St Jerome 1614 was the best in Rome next to Raphael's Transfiguration. After working in Rome and Bologna, Domenichino went to Naples 1630 to decorate the Cappella del Tesoro in the cathedral, though the jealous and sinister factions of Neapolitan art conspired to persecute him and drive him away. He was forced to leave but returned to Naples and died there (of poison, it was suspected).