Italian Baroque painter. He was born near
Parma, where he was a pupil of Agostino Carracci, and was also much
influenced by the domes by Correggio. He was in Rome in 1612, and about
1616 decorated the ceiling of the Casino Borghese in a manner derived
entirely from the Farnese Gallery. He developed Correggio’s sotto in sù
type of illusionism to an extravagant point, and painted several domes
and apses in Roman and Neapolitan churches in this manner. To him
Domenichino lost part of the commission for the decoration of S. Andrea
della Valle in Rome, a slight he resented so bitterly that – so the
story goes – he weakened part of the scaffolding, hoping that Lanfranco
would break his neck. Lanfranco completed the dome with an Assumption,
Correggiesque in inspiration, between 1625-27, and such was its success
that he was then employed at St Peter’s until 1631.
From 1633/34 to 1646 he
was in Naples, and in 1641-43 painted the dome of the S. Gennaro chapel
in the Cathedral, which by its more up-to-date illusionism and greater
showiness appealed far more to local tastes than Domenichino’s works
there. His dome is based on Correggio’s type of illusionism and replaces
one actually begun by Domenichino. He died in Rome, where his last work
was the apse of S. Carlo ai Catinari. Apart from Rome and Naples, there
are works in Amsterdam Berlin, Dublin, Florence (Pitti), London (Coram
Foundation), Lyons, Madrid (Prado), Marseilles, Oxford (Ashmolean),
Paris (Louvre), Parma, St Petersburg, Versailles and Vienna.
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