_Domenichino_ (Eclectic-Bologna, 1581-1641).
Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino for his small stature,
was born at Bologna, the son of a shoemaker. He entered the
school of the Carracci, and afterwards was invited to Rome
by Albani, in whose house he lived. Here he soon acquired
a great reputation, and was taken by Annibale Carracci as
assistant in the execution of the frescoes of the Farnese
Palace. The Cardinals Borghese and Aldobrandini were also among
his patrons. In 1617 he revisited Bologna, where he married.
In 1621 he was recalled to Rome by the Pope Gregory XV., who
appointed him principal painter and architect to the pontifical
palace. Some of the villas at Frascati were designed by him.
In 1630 he was invited to Naples to decorate the Cappella del
Tesoro of the Duomo, a commission which Guido Reni sought in
vain. Here Domenichino incurred the hostility of the Neapolitan
painters, and the machinations of the notorious triumvirate,
the "Cabal of Naples," were suspected of causing his death.
At Rome also he had been much persecuted by rival artists.
Accusations of plagiarism were levelled at him, and his more
pushing competitors "decried him to such a degree that he
was long destitute of all commissions." It is interesting
to contrast the conditions of (literally) "cut-throat
competition," under which the Italian painters of the decadence
worked, with the Guild System of the Flemish and the honourable
time and piece-work of the earlier Italians.
The varying fortunes of Domenichino's fame form a curious
chapter in the history of taste. In his own time and down to
the end of the eighteenth century he was ranked among the
greatest masters. Poussin placed him next to Raphael. Bellori
attributed to him "the same wand which belongs to the poetical
enchanters." Sir Joshua Reynolds speaks of him with high
respect, and Lanzi describes him as the admiration of all
professors, and records the enormous price which his pictures
still fetched (1809). Against these panegyrics we may set
Ruskin's invectives. "I once supposed," he says, "that there
was some life in the landscape of Domenichino, but in this I
must have been wrong. The man who painted the 'Madonna del
Rosario' and 'Martyrdom of St. Agnes' in the gallery of Bologna
is palpably incapable of doing anything good, great, or right,
in any field, way, or kind whatsoever.... Whatever appears
good in any of the doings of such a painter must be deceptive,
and we may be assured that our taste is corrupted and false
whenever we feel disposed to admire him.... I am prepared to
support this position, however uncharitable it may seem; a
man may be tempted into a gross sin by passion and forgiven,
and yet there are some kinds of sins into which only men of
a certain kind can be tempted, and which cannot be forgiven.
It should be added, however, that the artistical qualities
of these pictures are in every way worthy of the conceptions
they realise; I do not recollect any instance of colour or
execution so coarse and feelingless." Domenichino and the
Carraccis were, says Ruskin elsewhere, mere "art-weeds." "Their
landscape, which may in few words be accurately described as
'scum of Titian,' possesses no single merit, nor any ground
for the forgiveness of demerit." "The flight of Domenichino's
angels is a sprawl paralysed." "They are peculiarly offensive,
studies of bare-legged children howling and kicking in volumes
of smoke" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch.
vii. § 13; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. v. § 17; vol. iii.
pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 20; _Stones of Venice_, travellers'
edition, vol. ii. ch. vi.; _On the Old Road_, vol. i. § 91).
Ruskin's estimate, "though expressed with such a clangour of
emphasis," yet fairly represents, as Mr. Symonds says, the
feeling of modern students. Perhaps, however, the reaction
against the once worshipped pictures of Domenichino has gone
too far. His celebrated "Diana and her Nymphs" in the Borghese
Gallery is "a charming picture," says Morelli, "worthy of a
purer period of art. Full of cheerful animation and naïve
and delightful details, it cannot fail to please" (_Roman
Galleries_, p. 228). Of the moral obliquity which Ruskin seems
to impute, Domenichino must be acquitted. He appears to have
been a simple, modest, painstaking, and virtuous person. "He
was misled by his dramatic bias, and also by the prevalent
religious temper of his age. That he belonged to a school which
was essentially vulgar in its choice of type, to a city never
distinguished for delicacy of taste, and to a generation which
was rapidly losing the sense of artistic reserve, suffices
to explain the crude brutality of the conceptions which he
formed of tragic episodes" (Symonds, _Renaissance_, vii. 220).
Lanzi says with truth that Domenichino's style of painting
is "almost theatrical." He tears the passion of his figures
to tatters--"exaggerated action destroying," as Ruskin says,
"all appearance of intense feeling." An interesting tale is
told of the way in which the artist worked himself up. He was
engaged on a scene of martyrdom, and "in painting one of the
executioners he actually threw himself into a passion, using
threatening words and actions. Annibale Carracci, surprising
him at that moment, embraced him, exclaiming with joy, 'To-day,
my Domenichino, thou art teaching me.'"
Tobias, directed by the angel, is drawing out of the water the fish
that attacked him. _See_ the Book of Tobit, ch. vi. 4, 5, and the note
on No. 781.