The Last Communion of Saint Jerome

Housed in the Pinacoteca Vaticana (Vatican Museums), "The Last Communion of Saint Jerome" is universally acknowledged as Domenichino’s absolute masterpiece. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was considered so flawless that legendary critics like Giovanni Pietro Bellori ranked it alongside Raphael’s Transfiguration as one of the greatest paintings in human history. Evidently, Domenichino spent years executing assiduous, painstaking preparatory sketches for this single canvas. The rigorous classical geometry, the crisp lines, and the balanced architecture framing the background became a structural blueprint for the entire French Classical Baroque movement (heavily influencing Poussin and Charles Le Brun). The emotional core of the canvas relies on the heartbreaking depiction of the emaciated, ninety-year-old saint, who painfully drags his failing body forward to receive his final sacrament. Domenichino showcases his brilliant mastery of affetti— the calculated use of physical gestures and facial expressions to broadcast inner psychological states— seen in the somber devotion of the priest and the weeping sorrow of Saint Paula. Beyond its formal beauty, the painting is famous for sparking one of art history’s most bitter scandals. Years after its completion, Domenichino’s fierce rival, Giovanni Lanfranco, accused him of blatantly plagiarizing an altarpiece of the exact same subject painted by their mutual teacher, Agostino Carracci. Lanfranco even went so far as to print and distribute etchings of Agostino’s earlier work to the public to prove the visual similarities. However, masters like Nicolas Poussin and critics like Bellori passionately defended Domenichino, arguing that he significantly improved upon Carracci's composition, thereby sparking a massive, foundational debate in Baroque art theory regarding the boundary between plagiarism and "noble imitation" ('imitatio').