Giovanni Lanfranco
/1582-1647/
Giovanni was an Italian painter and a prominent member of the Bolognese school, was born in Parma, Italy. He studied under Agostino Carracci in Parma from 1600 to 1602 and later continued his education in Rome under Annibale Carracci. However, it was the dynamic illusionism of Correggio's dome paintings in Parma that had the most significant impact on his work. Lanfranco translated Correggio's 16th-century style into a Roman Baroque style.
In Rome, Lanfranco painted frescoes on the ceiling of the Palazzo Mattei in 1615, including Joseph Explaining the Dreams of His Fellow Prisoners and Joseph and Potiphar's Wife. These frescoes combined techniques and styles he learned from Annibale Carracci, as well as from his own study of Correggio and Caravaggio. He also painted in the dome of San Andrea della Valle in Rome from 1621 to 1625, which featured vigorously posed figures floating in the clouds over the spectator's head, a style directly derived from Correggio. From 1633/34 to 1646, Lanfranco worked in Naples, where he painted the dome of the chapel of San Gennaro in the cathedral from 1641 to 1646. He was a fierce rival of Domenichino, both in Rome and later in Naples.