DOMENICHINO (or DOMENICO), ZAMPIERI (1581 1641), Italian painter, was born at Bologna, on Oct. 21, 1581, and died at Naples on April 15, 1641. He was a pupil in the Academy of the Caracci, under Agostino. Towards the beginning of the I7th century he went to Rome to study under Annibale Caracci, and there obtained employment from Cardinals Borg hese, Farnese, and Aldobrandini, for all of whom he painted works in fresco. His success excited the envy of some of his contemporaries, who accused him of plagiarism. Disgusted with these cabals, he left Rome for Bologna, where he remained until he was recalled by Pope Gregory XV., who appointed him princi pal painter and architect to the pontifical palace. He designed in great part the Villa di Belvedere at Frascati, and the whole of the Villa Ludovisi, and some other edifices. From 163o on wards Domenichino was engaged in Naples, chiefly on a series of frescoes (never wholly completed) of the life of St. Januarius in the Cappella del Tesoro. He settled in that city with his family, and opened a school. There the so-called "Cabal of Naples"— the painters Corenzio, Ribera and Caracciolo—leagued together as they were to exclude all alien competition, annoyed the Bolognese artist in all possible ways; for instance, on re turning in the morning to his fresco work, he would find not infrequently that someone had rubbed out the performance of the previous day. He died in Naples, after two days' illness, on April 15, 1641.
Domenichino is esteemed the most distinguished disciple of the Caracci, or second only to Guido Reni. Algarotti preferred him to the greatest masters; and Nicolas Poussin considered the painter of the "Communion of St. Jerome" to be the first after Raphael. His pictures of "Adam and Eve," and the "Martyrdom of St. Agnes," in the Gallery of Bologna, are amongst his leading works. Others of interest are his first known picture, a fresco of the "Death of Adonis," in the Loggia of the Giardino Farnese, Rome ; the "Martyrdom of St. Sebastian," in Santa Maria degli Angeli; the "Four Evangelists," in Sant' Andrea della Valle; "Diana and her Nymphs," in the Borghese gallery; the "Assump tion of the Virgin," in Santa Maria in Trastevere; and frescoes in the neighbouring abbey of Grotta Ferrata, lives of SS. Nilus and Bartholomew. His portraits are also highly reputed. It is admitted that in his compositions he often borrowed figures and arrangements from previous painters. Domenichino also excelled in landscape painting.
See C. Landon, Works of Domenichino, with a Memoir (1823) ; Bolognini, Life of Domenichino (1839) .