DOMENICHI'NO. D031ENPC0 ZAMPIERI, called DOMENI CHINO, was born at Bologna, in 1581, of poor parents. According to some authorities, his first master was Denis Calvert; but Bellori gives him Enflaming° for his first teacher. Fiammingo, entertaining a jealous dislike (says the biographer) to the Caracci, beat his pupil, end turned him out of doors, because he found the boy copying a design by .Annibale. On the occasion of his dismissal being made known to Agostino Caracci, he was admitted to the school of tho Caracci, and he soon gained one of the prizes which Lodovico cus tomarily distributed, much to the surprise of his fellow.student.s, who hod expected little from a youth of his retiring awkward mauners. After visiting Parma, Domenichino went to Rome, where he studied and worked for some time under Annibale Caracci. He afterwards obtained the patronage of Cardinal Gieronimo Agucchi, and while be lived in his house painted many pictures for him. Besides painting, he studied architecture, end was appointed architect to the apostolic palace by Gregory XV. After the death of that pontiff, finding him self somewhat reduced in circumstances, and receiving an invitation to Naples, ho removed thither with his wife and children. lie died at Naples, April 15, 1611. During his life he was much respected. He formed a particularly strict friendship with Albano, in whose house he lived for two years when ho first arrived in Rome.
Domenichino was so slow in his early progress as to disappoint many of his Mende, and he had the appellation of Hue (ox) among his fellow-students ; but Annibale Camel, who perceived in him the marks of that genius which he afterwards developed, told the jeerers that their nickname was only applicable to the patience and fruitful industry of the laborious student. Ho retained the utmost delibe ration in his mode of working to the last; though when after long reflection he once began to work at his picture lie did not leave it until he had completed it. It is said that he had many maxims which justified Lis slowness, such as, that no line was worthy of an artist which was not iu his mind before it was traced by his hand.
He was so entirely devoted to his art that he only left his retired study to make eketehes and observations upon expression in active life; much of his time was however spent in reading history and poetry.
Domenichino was profoundly studied in Lis drawing, rich and natural in his colouring, and, above all, correct and life-like in his expression. Annibale Caracci is said to have been decided in hie judgment between two pictures of the 'Scourging of St. Andrew,' painted in competition by Domenichino and Agostino Camel, by hearing an old woman point out with much earnestness the beauties of Domenichino's to is little child, describing every part of it as if it were a living scene, while she paned the other over in silence. To the graver design of the Bolognese school Domenichino added some thing of the ornamental manner of the Venetian, his pictures being rich in the &cm-swim of architecture and costume. His genius how ever Is not characterised by great invention ; he has been accused of borrowing too directly from the works of others, and his draperies are regarded as harsh and too scanty in the folds. Nevertheless, ho has been esteemed by the best judges (and among them are the Camcci and Nicholas Pousein) as one of the first of painters, and by some second only to Itaffaelle. Such however he will never be thought by the world at large.
Domenichino excelled also in landscape, and was famous for his admirable execution of the figures with which he enlivened them. His principal works are at Rome and Naples ; among them the ' Com minden of St. Jerome,' now placed opposite Itaffaellu'a 'Transfigura tion,' in tba Vatican, and the • Martyrdom of St. Agnes,' are the most celebrated. There are three or four of Domeniclaino's pictures in the National Gallery, Lon Ion, but neither of them is of any remarkable merit.