| The Last Communion of Saint Jerome | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Agostino Carracci |
| Year | c. 1592-1597 |
| Medium | oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 376 cm× 224 cm(148 in× 88 in) |
| Location | Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, Bologna |
The Last Communion of Saint Jerome or The Communion of Saint Jerome is an oil on canvas painting by Italian painter Agostino Carracci, created c. 1592-1597. It was produced for San Girolamo alla Certosa church in Bologna and it is now held in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna.
Last Communion originally hung in San Girolamo opposite the 1592 The Preaching of Saint John the Baptist by Agostino's cousin Ludovico, now also in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. It is thought Agostino's work was painted around the same time, with both works forming part of a redecoration of the church. A drawing of the same subject by Ludovico (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art) has very similar figures of the saint and the priest administering the sacrament, perhaps meaning Ludovico assisted Agostino in producing Last Communion [1] The work is praised in a lengthy passage of Giovanni Pietro Bellori's Lives of the Artists (1672), calling it Agostino's masterpiece.
Carlo Cesare Malvasia's Felsina Pittrice (1678) states that Agostino severely delayed completion of the work, only working on it occasionally and completely abandoning it for long periods, even considering returning the advance fee on the work to free himself from the commission until he was finally convinced to complete it via efforts of Orazio Spinola, papal vice-legate in Bologna. Spinola received that post in 1597 meaning that - if Malvasia's story is believed - the work was only completed very shortly after that date, after which Agostino is recorded as following his brother Annibale to Rome. This would mean the work took five years. The large number of figures in a closed space suggests a later date to some art historians. [2]
A few decades after the completion of Communion, it was the subject of a dispute between Domenichino and Lanfranco, both trained by the Carracci. In 1614 Domenichino finished a painting on the same subject for the church of San Girolamo alla Carità in Rome, with several similarities to Agostino's treatment. [3] A few years later, when Domenichino and Lanfranco were competing for important commissions in Rome, the latter accused the former of plagiarising Agostino's work. Lanfranco even had his student François Perrier create a print of Agostino's painting to prove his point, since it was less well known in Rome than in Bologna. [4] The episode did little damage to Domenichino and Bellori "acquitted" him of plagiarism and called his version of the subject a "praiseworthy imitation" of Agostino's treatment. [5]
The work was seized by French troops in 1796 and taken to Paris. It was returned in 1817 after the Congress of Vienna restored it to the Papal States, of which Bologna was then a part.
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Agostino Carracci was an Italian painter, printmaker, tapestry designer, and art teacher. He was, together with his brother, Annibale Carracci, and cousin, Ludovico Carracci, one of the founders of the Accademia degli Incamminati in Bologna. Intended to devise alternatives to the Mannerist style favored in the preceding decades, this teaching academy helped propel painters of the School of Bologna to prominence.
Annibale Carracci was an Italian painter and instructor, active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brother and cousin, Annibale was one of the progenitors, if not founders of a leading strand of the Baroque style, borrowing from styles from both north and south of their native city, and aspiring for a return to classical monumentality, but adding a more vital dynamism. Painters working under Annibale at the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese would be highly influential in Roman painting for decades.
Guido Reni was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, although his works showed a classical manner, similar to Simon Vouet, Nicolas Poussin, and Philippe de Champaigne. He painted primarily religious works, but also mythological and allegorical subjects. Active in Rome, Naples, and his native Bologna, he became the dominant figure in the Bolognese School that emerged under the influence of the Carracci.
LudovicoCarracci was an Italian, early-Baroque painter, etcher, and printmaker born in Bologna. His works are characterized by a strong mood invoked by broad gestures and flickering light that create spiritual emotion and are credited with reinvigorating Italian art, especially fresco art, which was subsumed with formalistic Mannerism. He died in Bologna in 1619.
Domenico Zampieri, known by the diminutive Domenichino after his shortness, was an Italian Baroque painter of the Bolognese School of painters.
Francesco Albani or Albano was an Italian Baroque painter who was active in Bologna (1591–1600), Rome (1600–1609), Bologna (1609), Viterbo (1609–1610), Bologna (1610), Rome (1610–1617), Bologna (1618–1660), Mantova (1621–1622), Roma (1623–1625) and Florence (1633).
Antonio Marziale Carracci was an Italian painter. He was the natural son of Agostino Carracci.
Giovanni Lanfranco was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.
The Accademia di San Luca is an Italian academy of artists in Rome. The establishment of the Accademia de i Pittori e Scultori di Roma was approved by papal brief in 1577, and in 1593 Federico Zuccari became its first principe or director; the statutes were ratified in 1607. Other founders included Girolamo Muziano and Pietro Olivieri. The Academy was named for Luke the Evangelist, the patron saint of painters.
The Bolognese School of painting, also known as the School of Bologna, flourished between the 16th and 17th centuries in Bologna, which rivalled Florence and Rome as the center of painting in Italy. Its most important representatives include the Carracci family, including Ludovico Carracci and his two cousins, the brothers Agostino and Annibale Carracci. Later, it included other Baroque painters: Domenichino and Lanfranco, active mostly in Rome, eventually Guercino and Guido Reni, and Accademia degli Incamminati in Bologna, which was run by Lodovico Carracci. Certain artistic conventions, which over time became traditionalist, had been developed in Rome during the first decades of the 16th century. As time passed, some artists sought new approaches to their work that no longer reflected only the Roman manner. The Carracci studio sought innovation or invention, seeking new ways to break away from traditional modes of painting while continuing to look for inspiration from their literary contemporaries; the studio formulated a style that was distinguished from the recognized manners of art in their time. This style was seen as both systematic and imitative, borrowing particular motifs from the past Roman schools of art and innovating a modernistic approach.
Leonello Spada was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active in Rome and his native city of Bologna, where he became known as one of the followers of Caravaggio.
Giovanni Pietro Bellori, also known as Giovan Pietro Bellori or Gian Pietro Bellori, was an Italian art theorist, painter and antiquarian, who is best known for his work Lives of the Artists, considered the seventeenth-century equivalent to Vasari's Vite. His Vite de' Pittori, Scultori et Architetti Moderni, published in 1672, was influential in consolidating and promoting the theoretical case for classical idealism in art. As an art historical biographer, he favoured classicising artists rather than Baroque artists to the extent of omitting some of the key artistic figures of 17th-century art altogether.
Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616–1693) was an Italian scholar and art historian from Bologna, best known for his biographies of Baroque artists titled Felsina pittrice, published in 1678. Together with his contemporary Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Malvasia is considered "among the best informed and most intelligent historians and critics of art who ever lived."
The Last Communion of Saint Jerome is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, finished around 1494–1495. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City.
The Carracci were a Bolognese family of artists that played an instrumental role in bringing forth the Baroque style in painting. Brothers Annibale (1560–1609) and Agostino (1557–1602) along with their cousin Ludovico (1555–1619) worked collaboratively. The Carracci family left their legacy in art theory by starting a school for artists in 1582. The school was called the Accademia degli Incamminati, and its main focus was to oppose and challenge Mannerist artistic practices and principles in order to create a renewed art of naturalism and expressive persuasion.
Giovanni Battista Agucchi was an Italian churchman, Papal diplomat and writer on art theory. He was the nephew and brother of cardinals, and might have been one himself if he had lived longer. He served as secretary to the Papal Secretary of State, then the Pope himself, on whose death Agucchi was made a titular bishop and appointed as nuncio to Venice. He was an important figure in Roman art circles when he was in the city, promoting fellow-Bolognese artists, and was close to Domenichino in particular. As an art theorist he was rediscovered in the 20th century as having first expressed many of the views better known from the writings of Gian Pietro Bellori a generation later. He was also an amateur astronomer who corresponded with Galileo.
The Last Communion of St. Jerome is a 1614 oil-on-canvas painting by the Italian artist Domenichino. It was commissioned for the church of San Girolamo della Carità in Rome in 1612 and is now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana. The composition is very similar to a painting of the same subject by Agostino Carracci. Domenichino's rival, Giovanni Lanfranco, accused Domenichino of plagiarism due to the similarities.
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