When Accusations Start Conversations

By Gillian Casey

ARTH330 Section 0101

May 3, 2017
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Artists have long used other works of art as sources of inspiration. Rosalind Krauss, in her

1986 book The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, even suggests that

originality and repetition are often interdependent of and intertwined with one another (160).

Focusing more directly on Baroque artwork, “[r]epetition played an important role in the

formulation of both Baroque practice and theory” (Loh, 477). In many cases, repetition of another

artist’s style, theme or figures led others to question the originality of a piece, often labeling it a

“copy.” One such case is Giovanni Lanfranco’s accusation that Domenichino’s The Last

Communion of St Jerome (Fig. 1) copied Agostino Carracci’s The Last Communion of St Jerome

(Fig. 2). To better understand how imitation is differentiated from copying, this paper will examine

Lanfranco’s accusation, how others responded to this claim and both the similarities and

differences of the pieces regarding style and context.

Around 1624, Lanfranco accused Domenichino of stealing Agostino Carracci’s The Last

Communion of St Jerome. Lanfranco did not just accuse Domenichino of copying Agostino

Carracci, but he also “ordered one of his own pupils, Francois Perrier, to go to Bologna to etch a

copy after Agostino's painting so that all of Rome could see the theft” (Loh, 495). There are even

some accounts that Lanfranco “threw dirty water at his rival,” Domenichino (Carr, 38).

Speculation suggests that Lanfranco accused Domenichino of copying Agostino Carracci because

he saw Domenichino as his competition and sought to harm Domenichino’s career (Spear, 52).

Regardless of Lanfranco’s motives, his accusation “represents a seminal moment in the history of

art, when for the first time a painter was accused of stealing the invention of another and passing

it off as his own” (Rice, 779). Examining how others responded to this first-ever accusation

suggests where the line between imitation and theft is drawn.

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After hearing Lanfranco’s accusations, many scholars began to study Domenichino’s

career in the context of imitation. Robert Spear, in The Early Drawings of Domenichino at Windsor

Castle and Some Drawings by Carracci, found that Domenichino looked to the Carracci family

for assistance and “took compositional ideas, a method of borrowing he reverted to throughout the

remainder of his life” (53). Similarly, Elizabeth Cropper in her 2005 book The Domenichino

Affair: Novelty, Imitation, and Theft in Seventeenth-century Rome suggests that Domenichino

“formed his mature style on the basis of studying the Roman works of Annibale Carracci” (9).

These findings seem plausible, as Domenichino studied in the Carracci Academy.

However, even given Domenichino’s background, some found no reason to believe

Lanfranco’s claim had any founding, and many came to Domenichino’s defense at the time of the

accusation. Both Giovanni Pietro Bellori and Nicolas Poussin played important roles in defending

Domenichino from Lanfranco’s attack (Cropper, “New Documents” 150). Bellori, in Le vite de'

pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, wrote, “non merita nome di furto, ma di lodevole imitation”

(309). That is to say, Domenichino’s painting does not deserve the name of theft but of admirable

imitation. Some people, like the poet Giovanni Battista Marino, believed that while an imitator

borrows ideas, a thief takes ideas with the intention of passing them off as their own invention

(Rice, 780-81). However, this raises the question of whether Domenichino’s The Last Communion

of St Jerome is merely an imitation of Agostino Carracci’s earlier work or an outright copy.

The compositional style of Domenichino’s The Last Communion of St Jerome suggests that

Lanfranco’s claim has some basis. Furthermore, when Lanfranco had his pupil etch a copy of

Agostino Carracci’s painting (Fig. 3), the reflected etch more closely resembled Domenichino’s

1614 piece. There were some commonalities in the composition, however, even before Perrier

mirrored Agostino Carracci’s painting. Both subjects depict “St. Jerome receiving the Eucharist
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right before his death” (Zirpolo). In addition, putti hover above the figures in each piece, and

atmospheric perspective can be seen past a round arch behind the figures. The figures are also

arranged very similarly, as the mourners surrounding St. Jerome are placed at the front of the

composition and crowd together on each side of St. Jerome. Furthermore, revealing St. Jerome’s

frail body, a vivid, red clock wraps him in each piece, presenting more similarities between the

two paintings. The way both Agostino Carracci and Domenichino depicted St. Jerome is

comparable as well; St. Jerome’s stomach appears to fold inwards to reveal his emaciated body

reduced to its knees.

In addition to the compositional arrangement, both Agostino Carracci and Domenichino

rendered their scenes of The Last Communion of St Jerome very similarly, and their paintings

differ from earlier works depicting St. Jerome’s communion. The “scene, described by St.

Eusebius in his writings, is supposed to have taken place in St. Jerome's humble cell, which is how

Botticelli rendered it. Agostino, on the other hand, placed the event in a classical, upscale setting”

(Zirpolo). Supporting Lanfranco’s claims that Domenichino copied Agostino Carracci,

Domenichino’s piece also depicted the Eucharist not in St. Jerome’s cell but in an area where

pillars and arches enclose a more classically focused room.

While the compositional style may indicate Domenichino looked at Agostino Carracci’s

earlier work, contextual differences in the paintings suggest otherwise. Agostino Carracci created

The Last Communion of St Jerome for the Certosa in Bolo (Loh, 495). Domenichino, however,

“unveiled his Saint Jerome altarpiece in the Roman church of S. Girolamo della Cari” (Loh, 495).

While Agostino Carracci was creating his piece for a monastic order, Domenichino created his

piece for not a “religious order but to a lay confraternity of men and women who came together to

participate in devotional and charitable activities” (Rice, 780). The differences in the paintings’
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contexts suggest plausible reasoning behind the variances in how each artist rendered the subject

of St. Jerome’s Last Communion. For example, Domenichino’s painting does not include

references to monks, while Agostino Carracci’s piece does; Domenichino’s piece has secular

mourners gathered around St. Jerome, while Agostino Carracci depicted monks, indicated by their

brown religious habits, surrounding St. Jerome. Additionally, the patronage influenced

Domenichino’s work in ways that cannot be seen in Agostino Carracci’s piece. Domenichino

makes the Eucharist prominent by having a large, gold plate extended to St. Jerome, as giving

bread to the poor each Sunday was one of “the confraternity's charitable activities” (Rice, 780).

There are a few more distinctions between the paintings, suggesting Lanfranco’s claim to

be false. While Domenichino included a female mourner in the lower right of his painting, a

woman cannot be discerned in Agostino Carracci’s piece. Furthermore, although there are putti in

each painting, only two hover over St. Jerome in Agostino Carracci’s painting, whereas four fly

above the figures in Domenichino’s piece. In addition, while there are similarities in the settings,

Domenichino’s piece does not emphasize the classicizing elements of the interior nearly as much

as Agostino Carracci does. Clear, Corinthian columns can be seen in Agostino Carracci’s The Last

Communion of St Jerome, but the columns in Domenichino’s painting are further behind the

figures and are not accentuated to the same extent.

While the commonalities between Domenichino’s The Last Communion of St Jerome and

Agostino Carracci’s earlier piece reveal the Carracci Academy’s influence on Domenichino,

Domenichino’s 1614 painting exhibits various dissimilarities that suggest his piece was not a copy

of Agostino Carracci’s earlier painting but a new interpretation of it. Regardless of whether one

finds Lanfranco’s accusation to be true, the various similarities and differences in style and context

between both Domenichino’s and Agostino Carracci’s The Last Communion of St Jerome have led
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many scholars to discuss when imitation becomes theft. The exploration of claims disputing the

novelty of works of art will continue to be relevant for years to come.

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Works Cited

Bellori, Giovanni Pietro. Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, Rome: n.p., 1672.
Getty Research Institute. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

Carr, Sophie. “Review of The Domenichino Affair: Novelty, Imitation, and Theft in Seventeenth
Century Rome by Elizabeth Cropper.” The Art Book. 13.3 (2006): 38-9. Wiley Online
Library. Web. 19 April 2017.

Cropper, Elizabeth. "New Documents concerning Domenichino's 'Last Communion of St

Jerome'." The Burlington Magazine 126.972 (1984): 149-51. JSTOR. Web. 1 Apr. 2017.

Cropper, Elizabeth. The Domenichino Affair: Novelty, Imitation, and Theft in Seventeenth-
century Rome. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005. Print.

Krauss, Rosalind. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 1986. Print.

Loh, Maria H. "New and Improved: Repetition as Originality in Italian Baroque Practice and
Theory." The Art Bulletin 86.3 (2004): 477. Taylor & Francis. Web. 1 Apr. 2017.

Rice, Louise. “Review of The Domenichino Affair: Novelty, Imitation, and Theft in Seventeenth
Century Rome by Elizabeth Cropper.” The Art Bulletin 88.4 (2006): 779-781. JSTOR.
Web. 19 April 2017.

Spear, Richard E. "The Early Drawings of Domenichino at Windsor Castle and Some Drawings
by the Carracci." The Art Bulletin 49.1 (1967): 52. JSTOR. Web. 1 Apr. 2017.

Zirpolo, Lilian H. "Last Communion of St. Jerome." Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias.
Academic, 2008. Web. 01 Apr. 2017.
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Figure 1

Domenichino, The Last Communion of St Jerome, 1614, Vatican

Museums, Vatican City
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Figure 2

Agostino Carracci, The Last Communion of St Jerome, c1589,

Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna
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Figure 3

François Perrier after Agostino Carracci, The Last Communion of St Jerome,

1584–1650, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY