DOMENICHINO, Domenico Zampieri (Bologna, 1581 - Naples, 1641), attributed."Mercury" and "Venus", ca. 1620.Sketches for pendentives.Pair of drawings in sanguine on paper.One of them signed.Size: 28,5 x 23,5 cm (drawings); 40,5 x 29,5 cm (frames).Domenichino was one of the most sought-after and prestigious painters in the Carracci circle. He was a prodigious draughtsman, which earned him important commissions. The present pair of sanguine drawings are representative of his ability to construct bodies on paper as if they were sculptures, thus establishing the renaissance of the Roman-Bolognese "beautiful ideal". They were sketches for paintings to cover the pendentives of the domes of Roman churches. Numerous studies on paper by the artist for architectural pendentives have survived, such as the allegories of Justice and Prudence for San Carlo ai Catinari in Rome. The Museo del Prado also has several preparatory drawings for Roman frescoes. In this pair of drawings, depicting Mercury (the Greek Hermes) and Venus (Aphrodite), the modelling of the anatomies reveals the mastery of this outstanding exponent of Baroque classicism inherited from Annibale Carraci, but developed with his own inventiveness. They are powerful anatomies, perfectly studied to be seen from a low point of view ("di sotto in sú"), which in the definitive works (as seen in the frescoes of San Andrea della Valle) manifests itself in the form of effective foreshortenings. The agile figure of Mercury, wearing winged sandals and carrying his caduceus, seems to rise before our eyes, with the drapery billowing around his stocky Greek forms. The beauty and the canon of Venus, on the other hand, are of Raphaelesque roots.Domenichino began his training as a painter in Bologna in the studio of the Flemish Denis Calvaert, but around 1595 he entered the Accademia degli Incamminati of the Carracci family, alongside Francesco Albani and Guido Reni. In 1602 he went to Rome as assistant to Annibale Carracci on the frescoes in the Galleria of the Palazzo Farnese and in the Herrera Chapel in the church of Santiago degli Spagnoli. It is the style of Annibale's Roman years that is evident in the work of Domenichino, who better than any of his pupils was able to capture the serene classicism and grandeur of his master's compositions. His independent youthful works begin with the frescoes of the Villa Belvedere, in Frascati, from 1606 to 1608, and those of the Abbey of Grottaferrata, 1608-1610, culminating in his most notable work, the frescoes with 'Stories of Saint Cecilia' in the Roman church of San Luigi dei Francesi, which he completed in 1616 and which, together with the 'Communion of Saint Jerome' of 1614, now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, definitively established the artist's fame in Rome. In 1617 Domenichino returned to Bologna until 1621, when Pope Gregory XV Ludovisi called him back to Rome on the advice of the Bolognese Monsignor Agucchi, a famous theorist of classicism. The frescoes on the pendentives of the dome of Sant'Andrea della Valle date from the 1620s, where the classicist conception of his painting reached its peak, from which he moved away in the following years to adapt to the more exuberant and decorative innovations of Lanfranco, as reflected in the frescoes in the chapel of the Treasury in the cathedral of Naples, where the artist had arrived in 1631. Domenichino began by fervently following the Carracci family's teachings on the careful study of the masters of the past, especially the supreme example of Raphael, while contrasting it with the experience of nature. Furthermore, his commitment was complemented by the theories of the classical ideal in painting written by Giovanni Battista Agucchi, in collaboration with Domenichino himself, which were essential elements in the later development of Giovanni Pietro Bellori's Idea.