Domenichino

Domenichino came out of the most important art school of his day, the academy the Carracci family ran in Bologna, where young painters were taught to draw from life and from the antique. He carried that calm, classical grounding to Rome and became one of the leading painters of the early 17th century.

His altarpiece of the Last Communion of Saint Jerome, a frail old saint taking the sacrament, was long ranked among the greatest paintings in Rome, spoken of in the same breath as Raphael. It also brought him grief. A rival, Giovanni Lanfranco, publicly accused him of copying the composition from an earlier work, and the feud followed Domenichino for years.

He was a slow, anxious worker in a fast, showy age, and the looser Baroque drama of painters like Lanfranco gradually pushed his careful style out of fashion. He spent his last years in Naples on a huge chapel commission, harassed by jealous local painters, and died there in 1641 with the work unfinished.