Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino,[92] (1581–1641) is a far more serious figure. We see him best not in the sentimental sibyls which he multiplied nor even in the studied emotionalism of his most famous altar-piece, the Last Communion of St. Jerome, in the Vatican, Figure 324, but, rather in such decorations as those in S. Andrea della Valle, and in the monastic church of Grotta Ferrata. Here we find a heavy and simple emphasis, a great clarity both of figure construction and of composition. For his personal awkwardness, patience and quietism his comrades mockingly called him the Ox. It took character to play the ox amid the febrile sprightliness of the Catholic Reaction. His gravity is marked also in his color. He forsakes the old decorative conventions of the Renaissance and works in olive and silvery tones which suggest in a generalizing way the coolness and freshness of nature. Above all he is not facile like most of his contemporaries, but studious, dilatory, and considerate. At times he yields to the prevailing sentimentality, but usually he is both spontaneous and reticent. He seldom insists, but candidly lets the picture be seen. All these qualities appear in the modestly hoydenish masterpiece, Diana and her Nymphs, in the Borghese Gallery, Figure 325. It is completely captivating for its element of surprise, its manly wholesomeness, its winsome setting of lithe girlish bodies amid verdure under a gray sky. This unaffected mood in mythology has rarely been recaptured. We have it in Vermeer’s little Diana at the Hague and, only yesterday, in the Nausicaa of Lucien Simon. Such qualities of lucidity, reserve, and simple nobility made Domenichino the natural model for Nicholas Poussin. We can trace the influence through Poussin’s masterpieces, and had France been wise enough to understand her greatest painter, her academic tradition, which was promoted in Poussin’s name, might have taken a much more fruitful course than it actually did. [Illustration: FIG. 325. Domenichino. Diana and her Nymphs.—_Borghese, Rome._ ] An ill fate finally took Domenichino to Naples. There he found the ruffianly local painters banded against every foreigner, and in particular he met the systematic animosity of the truculent Spaniard, Ribera. Outright terrorism alternated with petty persecution. They defaced his work and tampered with his materials. Soon they broke his delicate and timid spirit, even turned him against the wife with whom he had lived on terms of ideal affection. Today it remains uncertain whether he died of shattered nerves or was actually poisoned. Presumably the barbarous Neapolitans would have done about the same to any visiting artist, but doubtless they turned the screw a shade harder upon a gentle idealist who brought into their realistic stews some afterglow of the quietistic dignity of a Montagna or a Cima.