The reputation which Domenichino had justly acquired at Rome had excited
the jealousy of some of his cotemporaries, and the applause bestowed
upon his Communion of St. Jerome, only served to increase it. The Cav.
Lanfranco in particular, one of his most inveterate enemies, asserted
that the Communion of St. Jerome was little more than a copy of the same
subject by Agostino Caracci, at the Certosa at Bologna, and he employed
Perrier, one of his pupils, to make an etching from the picture by
Agostino. But this stratagem, instead of confirming the plagiarism,
discovered the calumny, as it proved that there was no more resemblance
between the two works than must necessarily result in two artists
treating the same subject, and that every essential part, and all that
was admired was entirely his own. If it had been possible for modest
merit to have repelled the shafts of slander, the work which he executed
immediately afterwards in the church of S. Lodovico, representing the
life of St. Cecilia, would have silenced the attacks of envy and
malevolence; but they only tended to increase the alarm of his
competitors, and excite them to redoubled injustice and malignity.
Disgusted with these continued cabals, Domenichino quitted Rome, and
returned to Bologna, where he resided several years in the quiet
practice of his profession, and executed some of his most admired works,
particularly the Martyrdom of St. Agnes for the church of that Saint,
and the Madonna del Rosario, both of which were engraved by Gerard
Audran, and taken to Paris and placed in the Louvre by order of
Napoleon. The fame of Domenichino was now so well established that
intrigue and malice could not suppress it, and Pope Gregory XV. invited
him back to Rome, and appointed him principal painter, and architect to
the pontifical palace.