Gio. Lanfranco, one of those distinguished disciples of the Caracci who followed Annibal to Rome, was born at Parma. He was early employed by the Conti Scotti in Piacenza, where, for mere pastime, drawing some figures in charcoal upon a wall, his rare genius shone forth, and was assigned to the cultivation of Agostino Caracci. Frequent mention of him is made in the course of this work. At Parma the reader finds him a pupil to Agostino, and on his death under the care of Lodovico, after which he pursued his studies under Annibal at Rome. Both there and in Naples we have seen him celebrated as a professor and preceptor in both schools. The character of his genius was sought, conceitedly perhaps, but still with truth, by Bellori, in his name; and doubtless it would be difficult to find an artist more bold and striking, alike in conception and in execution. He had formed a peculiar manner, which both in design and expression partakes of the Caracci's, while the composition is drawn from Coreggio. It is a manner at once easy, and elevated by the dignity of the countenances and actions, by the ample and well disposed masses of light and shade, by the nobleness of the drapery and its imposing folds, broad and wholly novel in the art. For this precise reason its grandeur is without that last finish which adds to the worth of other artists, but would in him diminish it. In such a style he was enabled to be less exact without displeasing us, possessing so many admirable qualities, rare conceptions, colours wonderfully harmonized, if not animated; very beautiful foreshortening; contrasts of parts and figures, which have served as models, as is observed by Mengs, for the tasteful style of the moderns.
He adopted this style in a number of pictures for private ornament, both for the Dukes Farnesi, in whose palace at Rome he first began to paint, and for other noblemen. His Polyphemus, conducted for the Casa Borghese in that city, is highly extolled, as well as his scriptural histories at S. Callisto. There are many pictures also from his hand; his St. Andrea Avellino at Rome, enriched with splendid architecture, boasts singular merit; his Dead Christ at Foligno, with the "Padre Eterno," a figure, which though in human form, nevertheless impresses us with grand ideas of the Divine Being; the Transit of our Lady, in Macerata; the S. Rocco, and the S. Corrado, in Piacenza; perhaps the most finished among Lanfranco's productions, and deservedly the most celebrated. But he exhibited this style still more fully in cupolas and other scenes on a grand scale, according to Coreggio's example. When young, he executed a small coloured model of the cupola of the cathedral at Parma, emulating his whole style, in particular that grace of motion, of all by far the most difficult. He imitated it too at S. Andrea della Valle at Rome, and in his picture availed himself of the example afforded by Michelangiolo in architecture, when unable to execute a more beautiful cupola than Brunelleschi's, and desirous of differing from it, he worked from a new design, and succeeded to admiration. This production forms an epoch in the art, inasmuch "as he was the first," says Passeri, "to irradiate the opening of a celestial glory with a splendour of light, of which there was formerly seen no example." ... "Lanfranco's cupola remains a solitary specimen in the way of glories; because, in respect to its celestial idea, in the opinion of the most dispassionate judges, he has attained the highest degree, as well in the harmony of the whole, its chief object, as in the distribution of the colours, in the parts, and in force of chiaroscuro," &c. Nor was this, on which he spent four years, the sole example he left of a fecundity of idea and rare elevation of mind, of which we meet with no account in any other artist, even among the ancient painters. Add to this, the cupolas at the Gesù, and at the Tesoro of S. Gennaro at Naples, where he succeeded Domenichino, with various tribunes and chapels in Rome and Naples, adorned with equal majesty, and which have given to Lower Italy the most genuine examples in this kind, of which the art can boast. From him it was that the Machinists acquired the power of gratifying the eye at larger distances, painting only in part, and in part leaving the work, as he was accustomed to express it, for the air to paint. In the two schools above-mentioned we have embraced his best disciples: to the Bolognese he gave no pupils, as far as I learn, any more than to Romagna and its dependencies; if we except Gio. Francesco Mengucci, of Pesaro, who assisted him in the cupola of St. Andrea; a painter, I believe, for collections, who has been much extolled by Malvasia.