whom he painted works in fresco. The distinguished reputation which he had acquired excited the envy of some of his contemporaries. Lanfranco in particular, one of his most inveterate enemies, asserted that his celebrated Com munion of St Jerome (painted for the church of La Carita towards 1614, for a pittance of about ten guineas, now in the Vatican Gallery, and ordinarily, but most irrationally, spoken of as the second or third best oil picture in the world) was an imitation from Agostino Caracci ; and he procured an engraving of this master s picture of the same subject (now in the Gallery of Bologna), copies of which were circulated for the purpose of showing up Domenichino as a plagiarist. There is in truth a very considerable resemblance between the two compositions. The pictures which Zampieri painted immediately afterwards, represent ing subjects from the life of St Cecilia, only increased the alarm of his competitors, and redoubled their injustice and malignity. Disgusted with these cabals, he left Rome for Bologna, where he remained until he was recalled by Pope Gregory XV., who appointed him principal painter and architect to the pontifical palace. In this architectural post he seems to have done little or nothing, although he was not inexpert in the art. He designed in great part the Villa di Belvedere at Frascati, and the whole of the Villa Ludovisi, and some other edifices. From 1630 onwards Domenichino was engaged in Naples, chiefly on a series of frescoes (never wholly completed) of the life of St Januarius in the Cappella del Tesoro. He settled in that city with his family, and opened a school. There the persecution against him became far more shameful than in any previous instance. The notorious so-called " Cabal of Naples " the painters Corenzio, Ribera, and Caracciolo, leagued together as they were to exclude all alien competition, plagued and decried the Bolognese artist in all possible ways ; for instance, on returning in the morning to his fresco-work, he would find not unfrequently that some one had rubbed out the performance of the previous day. Perpetual worry is believed to have brought the life of Domenichino to a close ; contemporary suspicion did not scruple to speak broadly of poison, but this has remained unconfirmed. He died in Naples, after two days illness,
on 15th April 1641.Domenichino, in correctness of design, expression of the passions, and simplicity and variety in the airs of his heads, has been considered little inferior to Raphael ; but in fact there is the greatest gulf fixed between the two. Critics of the last century adulated the Bolognese beyond all reason or toleration ; he is now regarded as commonplace in mind and invention, lacking any innate ideality, though undoubtedly a forcible, resolute, and learned executant. " We must," says Lanzi, " despair to find paintings ex hibiting richer or more varied draperies, details of costume more beautifully adapted, or more majestic mantles. The figures are finely disposed both in place and action, con ducing to the general effect ; whilst a light pervades the whole which seems to rejoice the spirit, growing brighter and brighter in the aspect of the best countenances, whence they first attract the eye and heart of the beholder. The persons delineated could not tell their tale to the ear more plainly than they speak it to the eye. The Scourging of St Andrew, which he executed in competition with Guido at Rome [a fresco in the church of San Gregorio], is a powerful illustration of this truthful expression. Of the two works of these masters, Annibale Caracci preferred that of Domenichino. It is said that in painting one of the executioners the artist actually wrought himself into a passion, using threatening words and actions, and that Annibale Caracci, surprising him at that moment, embraced him, exclaiming with joy, To-day, my dear Domenichino, thou art teaching me. So novel, and at the same time so natural, it appeared to him that the artist, like the orator, should feel within himself all that he is representing to others." Domenichino is esteemed the most distinguished disciple of the Caracci, or second only to Guido. Algarotti preferred him to the greatest masters ; and Nicolo Poussin considered the painter of the Communion of St Jerome to be the first after Raphael. His pictures of Adam and Eve, and the Martyrdom of St Agnes, in the Gallery of Bologna, are amongst his leading works. Others of superior interest are his first known picture, a fresco of the Death of Adonis, in the Loggia of the Giardino Farnese, Rome ; the Martyrdom of St Sebastian, in Santa Maria degli Angeli ; the Four Evangelists, in Sant Andrea della Valle ; Diana and her Nymphs, in the Borghese Gallery ; and the Assumption of the Virgin, in Santa Maria di Trastevere. His portraits are also highly reputed. It is admitted that in his compositions he often borrowed figures and arrange ments from previous painters. Domenichino was potent in fresco. He excelled also in landscape painting. In that style (in which he was one of the earliest practitioners) the natural elegance of his scenery, his trees, his well- broken grounds, the character and expression of his figures, gained him as much public admiration as any of his other performances.
DOMESDAY BOOK, or simply Domesday, is, in its commonest use, the name applied to the Liber de Win- tonia, or Exchequer Domesday, a very ancient record containing a survey of all the lands of England, made in the time of William the Conqueror. It consists of two volumes a greater and a less. The first is a large folio, written on 382 double pages of vellum, in a small but plain character, each page having a double column. Some of the capital letters and principal passages are touched with red ink, and some have strokes of red ink run across them, as if scratched out. This volume contains the description of the following counties : Kent, Sussex, Surrey, South ampton, Berks, Wilts, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Middlesex, Hereford, Bucks, Oxford, Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Northampton, Leicester, Warwick, Stafford, Salop, Cheshire, Derby, Notts, York, and Lincoln, together with the anomalous districts of Rutland and the land " inter Ripan et Mer- sham." The second volume is in quarto, written upon 450 double pages of vellum, but in a single column, and in a large but very fair character. It contains the counties of Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. This second volume, together with the Exon Domesday, which contains the fuller reports of the western counties, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon shire, and Cornwall, and the Inquisitio Eliensis, which relates to the lands of the abbey of Ely, seems to be the original record of the survey itself, which appears in the first volume of the Exchequer Domesday in an abridged form. " In both volumes of the Exchequer Domesday," writes Mr Freeman in his History of the Norman Conquest, "each shire is commonly headed with a list of the chief landowners in it. The king comes first, then the great ecclesiastical, and then the great temporal proprietors, followed in many cases by the smaller pro prietors lumped in classes servientes regis, taini regis, eleemosynarii regis, and the like, the list being num bered, and forming an index to the survey itself, which follows. Lastly, in several shires come the Clamores, the records of lands which were said to be held unjustly, and to which other men laid claim." Then follows the survey itself. The lands of the king or other landowner are arranged under the hundreds in which they were placed, and the necessary particulars of which the survey was to be a record are put down under each manor or other holding.
