Caravaggio, in Bamboccianti e lo scontro fra Domenichino e Ribera: una rilettura della nascita delle Vite di Bellori

The article aims to show that Bellori conceived the project of writing the Lives in the 1630s when the success of the Bamboccianti was rising. He judged those painters as followers of Caravaggio, and van Dyck was included in the Lives because he was a flemish painter completely different from the Bamboccianti. In the same years Domenichino, a very good friend of Bellori, was fighting in Naples with another follower of Caravaggio, Ribera: therefore Caravaggio was the main critical target of all the Lives published in 1672.