Lanfranco, Giovanni

LANFRANCO, GIOVANNI. - Painter, b. in Parma on 26 Jan. 1582, d. in Rome on 30 Nov. 1647. He was a pupil of Agostino Carracci but subsequently came under the influence of the latter's brother Annibale, with whom he worked in his youth in Rome. After a brief stay in Bologna, which brought him numerous commissions in the religious field, also for the churches of Parma and Piacenza, L. returned, around 1612, to Rome, where he worked intensively until 1631, executing among other things the altarpiece of the high altar in S. Giuseppe a Capo le Case, the frescoes of the Bongiovanni chapel in S. Agostino (1616), the friezes of the Sala Paolina at the Quirinale, the decoration of the dome of S. Andrea della Valle, the scenes of the Passion in the Sacchetti chapel at S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, and the frescoes of the chapel of the Crucifix in the basilica of S. Pietro.

Having moved to Naples around 1633, he left a notable mark there with the frescoes in the charterhouse of S. Martino and in the church of the same name, and with those of the dome of the Tesoro di S. Gennaro in the Cathedral, already begun by Domenichino. Having returned to Rome in 1646, he completed his last decoration with the Glory of Paradise, in the apse of S. Carlo ai Catinari (1647). To L. belongs the title of the greatest Baroque exponent of the school of the Carracci, inasmuch as more than any other Emilian painter he knew how to set Correggio's manner within the climate of seventeenth-century Rome, exploiting space, especially in works in fresco, for showy and theatrical effects of colour and chiaroscuro, not without a somewhat external perspectival dynamism, rarely prompted by genuine lyrical impulses. Despite his prevailing figurative technicality, the Parmesan master sometimes displays, in easel works, the ability to assimilate with free fluency the spirit of Correggio, as can be seen in the lower part of the canvas Il Paradiso (Pinacoteca of Parma) and in the Angeli musicanti of the church of the Cappuccini, in Rome, fragments of a burned altarpiece. - See pl. LIV.

Alberto Neppi