Giovanni Lanfranco - Return To Rome

Return To Rome

After his return to Rome by 1612, Lanfranco and competed with other Carracci students and assistants—including Reni, Albani, and Domenichino—for Roman patronage. Reni, however, was soon to depart for Naples and then Bologna. During the following decades in Rome, through the 1620s, Lanfranco and Domenichino engaged in a rivalry for the main fresco commissions. A measure of the competition can be gauged from Lanfranco's public accusation, not wholly without merit, that Domenichino had plagiarized Agostino Carracci in his painting of the Confession of St. Jerome, now in the Vatican.

Unlike Domenichino, Lanfranco was fairly eclectic in terms of style but preferred a visionary, theatrical approach suitable for the ceiling paintings gaining currency in the early 17th century. His works suggest some influence from the late work of Ludovico Carracci, a cousin of Agostino and Annibale, and possibly from Caravaggio (as, for example, in the altarpiece depicting the Inspiration of Saint Luke at Piacenza(1611)), though the stylistic importance of Caravaggio to Lanfranco has been disputed. In other works, he assimilated and adapted the style of his compatriot and predecessor of the 16th century, Antonio Correggio, as in his Adoration of the Shepherds painted before 1608 for the Marchese Clemente Sannesi and his brother the Cardinal Jacopo.

In the 'teens, Lanfranco's studio became quite active, painting frescoes in the Palazzo Mattei and decorating the Buongiovanni Chapel in Sant'Agostino (1616), which includes a Correggesque Assumption, along with easel paintings. His Annunciation (1615) in San Carlo ai Catinari in regarded as one of his best works. Soon, Lanfranco became the pre-eminent painter of circle of Pope Paul V. He painted frescoes for the Palazzo Costaguti and a large ceiling fresco in quadratura at the Villa Borghese, The Gods of Olympus.

In the following year, Lanfranco together with Agostino Tassi and Carlo Saraceni decorated the Sala de' Corazzieri and Sala Regia of the Palazzo del Quirinale. His formal Presentation at the Temple has the sunlit Carraci-like style . In 1622, he painted the Ectasy of Saint Margaret of Cortona (Galleria Platina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence) as an altarpiece for Santa Maria Nuova in Cortona, where Margaret live and died. The painting could well have inspired the pose in Bernini's famous St Theresa in ecstasy. In 1623-1624, he decorated the Sacchetti Chapel in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in Rome.

While Paul V's successor, Gregory XV, preferred works by Guercino and Domenichino, Lanfranco won commissions for the Crucifix Chapel in Santa Maria in Vallicella. Lanfranco's crowning masterpiece, however, and one of the major church fresco decoration of the late 1620s, was his Assumption of the Virgin frescoed on the dome of Sant'Andrea della Valle. Completed in 1627 in sotto in su perspective, the crowded array of figures is a landmark in Baroque painting with bright golden coloration and energy. Lanfranco was influenced by Correggio's pioneering decoration of the Duomo di Parma.

Urban VIII commissioned him a large fresco portraying St. Peter Walking on Waters (1628, now fragmentary), for which Lanfranco gained the title of Knight of the Order of Christ. In 1631, Lanfranco was named Prince (Principe) of the Academy of Saint Luke, the artist's guild in Rome. There is also a fresco by Giovanni Lanfranco above the monument of Pope Clement VIII in Santa Maria Maggiore in (Rome).

From 1634 to 1646, Lanfranco began decorating the dome and pendentives of the Jesuit church of the Gesù Nuovo in Naples in 1634-1637. In 1637-1638, he frescoed the nave and choir of the Certosa of San Martino. This was followed by the decoration of Santi Apostoli in 1638-1646 and the dome of the Cappella of San Gennaro in the Cathedral of Naples. These works would invigorate the efforts of the grand manner Napolitan painters of the second half of the 17th century: Preti, Giordano and Solimena. He died in Rome in 1647, where his last work was apse of San Carlo ai Catinari.