Domenichino fully subscribed to the classical notion that painting was like silent poetry and required a stylized expressive vocabulary to be properly understood and deciphered.

Together with his fellow northern Italian painters, Guido Reni (1575-1642), Francesco Albani (1578-1660), Giovanni Lanfranco (1582-1647), and Guercino (1591-1666), Domenico Zampieri—known after his small stature as Domenichino (little Domenico)—is one of the towering figures of seventeenth-century painting. Indeed, until the mid-nineteenth century, his reputation stood second only to that of Raphael, and his influence far outstripped that of Caravaggio, with whose work his own was often contrasted.

Domenichino was trained in Bologna, where he joined th...