Chapter 8

But neither form nor colour alone could satisfy his eye; the uninterrupted habit of nocturnal study discovered to him what Venice had not yet seen, not even in Giorgione, if we may form an opinion from what remains of him—the powers of that ideal chiaroscuro which gave motion to action, raised the charms of light, and balanced or invigorated effect by dark and lucid masses opposed to each other.

The first essays of this complicated system, in single figures, are probably the frescoes of the palace Gussoni;[150]and in numerous composition,the Last Judgement, and its counterpart, the Adoration of the Golden Calf, in the church of Sta. Maria dell' Orfo.

It is evident that the spirit of Michael Angelo domineered over the fancy of Tintoretto in the arrangement of the Last Judgement, though not over its design; but grant some indulgence to that, and the storm in which the whole fluctuates, the awful division of light and darkness into enormous masses, the living motion of the agents, notwithstanding their frequent aberrations from their centre of gravity,[151]and the harmony that rules the whirlwind of that tremendous moment, must for ever place it among the most astonishing productions of art. Its sublimity as a whole triumphs even over the hypercriticisms of Vasari, who thus describes it:—"Tintoretto has paintedthe Last Judgement with an extravagant invention, which, indeed, has something awful and terrible, inasmuch as he has united in groups a multitudinous assemblage of figures of each sex and every age, interspersed with distant views of the blessed and condemned souls. You see likewise the boat of Charon, but in a manner as novel and uncommon as highly interesting. Had this fantastic conception been executed with a correct and regular design, had the painter estimated its individual parts with the attention which he bestowed on the whole, so expressive of the confusion and the tumult of that day, it would be the most admirable of pictures. Hence he who casts his eye only on the whole, remains astonished, whilst to him who examines the parts it appears to have been painted in jest."

In the Adoration of the Golden Calf, the counterpart in size of the Last Judgement, Tintoretto has given full reins to his invention; and here, as in the former, though their scanty width does not very amicably correspond with their height, which is fifty feet, he has filled the whole so dexterously that the dimensionappears to be the result of the composition. Here too, as in the Transfiguration of Raffaelle, some short-sighted sophist may pretend to discover two separate subjects and a double action; for Moses receives the tables of the decalogue in the upper part, whilst the idolatrous ceremony occupies the lower; but the unity of the subject may be proved by the same argument which defended and justified the choice of Sanzio. Both actions are not only the offspring of the same moment, but so essentially relate to each other that, by omitting either, neither could with sufficient evidence have told the story. Who can pretend to assert, that the artist who has found the secret of representing together two inseparable moments of an event divided only by place, has impaired the unity of the subject?

Nowhere, however, does the genius of Tintoretto flash more irresistibly than in the Schools of S. Marco and S. Rocco, where the greater part of the former and almost the whole of the latter are his work, and exhibit in numerous specimens, and on the largest scale, every excellence and every fault that exalts or debases his pencil: equal sublimity and extravagance of conception;purity of style and ruthless manner; bravura of hand with mental dereliction; celestial or palpitating hues tacked to clayey, raw, or frigid masses; a despotism of chiaroscuro which sometimes exalts, sometimes eclipses, often absorbs subject and actors. Such is the catalogue of beauties and defects which characterize the Slave delivered by St. Marc; the Body of the Saint landed; the Visitation of the Virgin; the Massacre of the Innocents; Christ tempted in the Desert; the Miraculous Feeding of the Crowd; the Resurrection of the Saviour; and though last, first, that prodigy which in itself sums up the whole of Tintoretto, and by its anomaly equals or surpasses the most legitimate offsprings of art, the Crucifixion.[152]

It is singular that the most finished and best preserved work of Tintoretto should be one which he had least time allowed him to terminate—the Apotheosis of S. Rocco in the principal ceiling-piece of the Schola, conceived, executed, and presented, instead of the sketch which he had been commissioned with the rest of the concurrent artists to produce for the examination of the fraternity: a work which equally strikes by loftiness of conception, a style of design as correct as bold, and a suavity of colour which entrances the eye. Though constructed on the principles of thatsotto in su, then ruling the platfonds and cupolas of upper Italy, unknown to or rejected by M. Angelo, its figures recede more gradually, yet with more evidence, than the groups of Correggio, whose ostentatious foreshortenings generally sacrifice the actor to his posture.

That Tintoretto acquired, during his stay with or after his dismissal from the study of Tiziano's principles, the power of representing the surface and the texture of bodily substance with a truthbordering on illusion, is proved with more irresistible because more copious evidence, in the picture of the Angelic Salutation; though it cannot be denied that the admiration due to the magic touch of the paraphernalia is extorted at the expense of the essential parts: Gabriel and Maria are little more than foils of her husband's tools; for their display, the artist's caprice has turned the solemn approach of the awful messenger into boisterous irruption, the silent recess of the mysterious mother into a public dismantled shed, and herself into a vulgar female. Nowhere would the superiority of refined over vulgar art, of taste and judgment over unbridled fancy, have appeared more irresistibly than in thesopraportaby Tiziano on the same subject and in the same place, had that exquisite master been inspired more by the sanctity of the subject than the lures of courtly or the ostentatious bigotry of monastic devotion. If Maria was to be rescued from the brutal hand that had travestied her to the mate of a common labourer, it was not to be transformed to a young abbess, elegantly devout, submitting to canonization, amongst her delicate lambs; if the angel was not torush through a shattered casement on a timid female with a whirlwind's blast, the waving grace and calm dignity of his gesture and attitude, ought to have been above the assistance of theatrical ornament; nor should Palladio have been consulted to construct classic avenues for the humble abode of pious meditation. It must however be owned that we become reconciled to this mass of factitious embellishments by a tone which seems to have been inspired by Piety itself; the message whispers in a celestial atmosphere,

Θειη ἀμφεχυτ' ὀμφη—

and so forcibly appears its magic effect to have influenced Tintoretto himself, ever ready to rush from one extreme to another, that he imitated it in the Annunciata of the Arimani Palace:[153]not without success, but far below the mannerless unambitious purity of tone that pervades the effusion of his master, and of which he himself gave a blazing proof in the Resurrection of the Saviour,—a work in which sublimity of conception, beauty anddignity of form, velocity and propriety of motion, irresistible flash, mellowness and freshness of colour, tones inspired by the subject, and magic chiaroscuro, less for "mastery strive," than relieve each other and entrance the absorbed eye.

FOOTNOTES[134]Thus in an order of the Justiziarii we read: "Mcccxxii.Indicion Sexta die primo de Octub. Ordenado e fermado fo per Misier Piero Veniero & per Miser Marco da Mugla Justixieri Vieri, lo terzo compagno vacante. Ordenado fo che da mo in avanti alguna persona si venedega come forestiera non osa vender in Venexia alcunaAnchonaimpenta, salvo li empentori, sotto pena, &c. Salvo da la sensa, che alora sia licito a zaschun de vinderanchoneinfin chel durerà la festa," &c.Anda picture in the church of S. Donato at Murano, has the following inscription: "CorendoMcccx. indicionviii. in tempo de lo nobele homo Miser Donato Memo honorando Podestà facta fo questaAnchonade Miser S. Donato."[135]In the church at Cassello di Sesto, which has an abbey founded in 762, there are pictures of the ninth century.[136]Gelasio di Nicolo della Masuada di S. Giorgio, was of Ferrara, and flourished about 1242.Vid. Historia almi Ferrariensis Gymnasii, Ferraria, 1735.[137]At that time he painted in the palace ofCari della Scalaat Verona, and at Padoua a chapel in the church 'del Sarto;' he repeated his visit in the latter years of his life to both places. Of what he did at Verona no traces remain, but at Padoua the compartments of Gospel histories round the Oratorio of theNunziata all' Arena, by the freshness of the fresco and that blended grace and grandeur peculiar to Giotto, still surprise.[138]Fiorillo has confounded this questionable name with the real one of Luigi, who painted about 1490.—See Fiorillo Geschichte, ii. p. 11.[139]In S. Giorgio Maggiore is a St. Stephen and Sebastian, with the inscription:1445.Johannes de Alemaniaet Antonius de Muriano.P.from which, another picture at Padova, inscribed "Antonio de Muran e Zohan Alamanus pinxit," and some traces of foreign style where his name occurs, Lanzi suspects that the inscription in S. Pantaleone, "Zuane, e Antonio da Muran, pense1444," on which the existence of Giovanni is founded, means no other than the German partner of Antonio.[140]In no instance seems Vasari to have given a more decisive proof of his attachment to the Florentine school, than by building the fame of Pisano on having been the pupil of Andrea del Castagno, and having been allowed to terminate the works which he had left unfinished behind him about 1480; an anachronism the more absurd as the Commendator del Pozzo was possessed of a picture by Pisano, inscribed 'Opera di Vittor Pisanello de San V. Veronese,mccccvi.' a period at which probably Castagno was not born. The truth is, that Vasari, whose rage for dispatch and credulity kept pace with each other, composed the first part of Pisano's life nearly without materials, and the second from hearsay.[141]What Vasari says of the dog of S. Eustachio and the horse of St. Giorgio, though on the authority of Frà Marco de' Medici, warrants the assertion; and still more the foreshortened horse on the reverse of a medal struck in 1419, in honour and with the head of John Palæologus. The horse, like that of M. Antoninus, has an attitude of parallel motion. The medal has been published by Ducange in the appendix to his Latin Glossary, by Padre Banduri, Gori and Maffei.[142]See their lists inDescrizione delle Architetture, Pitture e Sculture di Vicenza con alcune osservazioni, &c.Vicenza, 1779, 8vo. p. I. II.[143]Ridolfi, i. 68. Vasari, who treats his art with contempt, calls him Jacopo; and Orlandi, afraid of choosing between them, used both, and made two different artists.[144]Vasari dates his birth 1480.[145]Liruti, Notizie de' Letterati del Friuli, t. ii. p. 285.[146]Sebastiano Zuccati of Trevigo, flourished about 1490. He had two sons, Valerio and Francesco, celebrated for mosaic about and beyond the middle of the sixteenth century. Flaminio Zuccati, the son of Valerio, who inherited his father's talent and fame, flourished about 1585. See Zanetti.[147]See Ridolfi. The original went to Dresden; but Italy abounds in copies of it. Lanzi mentions one which he saw at S. Saverio in Rimini, with Tiziano's name written on the fillet of the Pharisee, a performance of great beauty, and by many considered less a copy than a duplicate. The most celebrated copy, that of Flaminio Torre, is preserved at Dresden with the original.[148]"Si può quasi dire, che il vizio sia la virtù della Scuola Veneziana, poichè fa pompa della sollecitudine nel dipingere; e perciò fa stima di Tintoretto, che non avea altro merito."Mengs, Opere, t. i. p. 175. ed. Parm.[149]It has supplanted, was probably perpetuated in allusion to his rapidity of execution, and remains familiar to ears that never heard of Robusti.[150]SeeVarie Pitture a fresco de' principali Maestri Veneziani, &c. Venez. fol. 1760. Tab. 8, 9, p. viii.Noone who has seen the original figures of the Aurora and Creposcolo in S. Lorenzo, can mistake their imitation, or rather transcripts, in these.[151]The frequent want of equilibration found in Tintoretto's figures, even where no violence of action can palliate or account for it, has not without probability been ascribed to his method of studying foreshortening from models loosely suspended and playing in the air; to which he at last became so used that he sometimes employed it even for figures resting on firm ground, and fondly sacrificed solidity and firmness to the affected graces of undulation.[152]It would be mere waste of time to recapitulate what has been said on the efficient beauties of this astonishing work in the lectures on colour and chiaroscuro, and in the article of Tintoretto, in the last edition of Pilkington's Dictionary. It has been engraved on a large scale by Agostino Carracci, if that can be called engraving which contents itself with the mere enumeration of the parts, totally neglecting the medium of that tremendous twilight which hovers over the whole and transposes us to Golgotha. If what Ridolfi says be true, that Tintoretto embraced the engraver when he presented the drawing to him, he must have had still more deplorable moments of dereliction as a man than as an Artist, or the drawing of Agostino, must have differed totally from the print.[153]It is engraved by Pietro Monaco, as that of Tiziano, by Le Fevre, but in a manner which makes us lament the lot of those who have no means to see the original.

FOOTNOTES

[134]Thus in an order of the Justiziarii we read: "Mcccxxii.Indicion Sexta die primo de Octub. Ordenado e fermado fo per Misier Piero Veniero & per Miser Marco da Mugla Justixieri Vieri, lo terzo compagno vacante. Ordenado fo che da mo in avanti alguna persona si venedega come forestiera non osa vender in Venexia alcunaAnchonaimpenta, salvo li empentori, sotto pena, &c. Salvo da la sensa, che alora sia licito a zaschun de vinderanchoneinfin chel durerà la festa," &c.Anda picture in the church of S. Donato at Murano, has the following inscription: "CorendoMcccx. indicionviii. in tempo de lo nobele homo Miser Donato Memo honorando Podestà facta fo questaAnchonade Miser S. Donato."

[135]In the church at Cassello di Sesto, which has an abbey founded in 762, there are pictures of the ninth century.

[136]Gelasio di Nicolo della Masuada di S. Giorgio, was of Ferrara, and flourished about 1242.Vid. Historia almi Ferrariensis Gymnasii, Ferraria, 1735.

[137]At that time he painted in the palace ofCari della Scalaat Verona, and at Padoua a chapel in the church 'del Sarto;' he repeated his visit in the latter years of his life to both places. Of what he did at Verona no traces remain, but at Padoua the compartments of Gospel histories round the Oratorio of theNunziata all' Arena, by the freshness of the fresco and that blended grace and grandeur peculiar to Giotto, still surprise.

[138]Fiorillo has confounded this questionable name with the real one of Luigi, who painted about 1490.—See Fiorillo Geschichte, ii. p. 11.

[139]In S. Giorgio Maggiore is a St. Stephen and Sebastian, with the inscription:1445.Johannes de Alemaniaet Antonius de Muriano.P.from which, another picture at Padova, inscribed "Antonio de Muran e Zohan Alamanus pinxit," and some traces of foreign style where his name occurs, Lanzi suspects that the inscription in S. Pantaleone, "Zuane, e Antonio da Muran, pense1444," on which the existence of Giovanni is founded, means no other than the German partner of Antonio.

[139]In S. Giorgio Maggiore is a St. Stephen and Sebastian, with the inscription:

1445.Johannes de Alemaniaet Antonius de Muriano.P.

from which, another picture at Padova, inscribed "Antonio de Muran e Zohan Alamanus pinxit," and some traces of foreign style where his name occurs, Lanzi suspects that the inscription in S. Pantaleone, "Zuane, e Antonio da Muran, pense1444," on which the existence of Giovanni is founded, means no other than the German partner of Antonio.

[140]In no instance seems Vasari to have given a more decisive proof of his attachment to the Florentine school, than by building the fame of Pisano on having been the pupil of Andrea del Castagno, and having been allowed to terminate the works which he had left unfinished behind him about 1480; an anachronism the more absurd as the Commendator del Pozzo was possessed of a picture by Pisano, inscribed 'Opera di Vittor Pisanello de San V. Veronese,mccccvi.' a period at which probably Castagno was not born. The truth is, that Vasari, whose rage for dispatch and credulity kept pace with each other, composed the first part of Pisano's life nearly without materials, and the second from hearsay.

[141]What Vasari says of the dog of S. Eustachio and the horse of St. Giorgio, though on the authority of Frà Marco de' Medici, warrants the assertion; and still more the foreshortened horse on the reverse of a medal struck in 1419, in honour and with the head of John Palæologus. The horse, like that of M. Antoninus, has an attitude of parallel motion. The medal has been published by Ducange in the appendix to his Latin Glossary, by Padre Banduri, Gori and Maffei.

[142]See their lists inDescrizione delle Architetture, Pitture e Sculture di Vicenza con alcune osservazioni, &c.Vicenza, 1779, 8vo. p. I. II.

[143]Ridolfi, i. 68. Vasari, who treats his art with contempt, calls him Jacopo; and Orlandi, afraid of choosing between them, used both, and made two different artists.

[144]Vasari dates his birth 1480.

[145]Liruti, Notizie de' Letterati del Friuli, t. ii. p. 285.

[146]Sebastiano Zuccati of Trevigo, flourished about 1490. He had two sons, Valerio and Francesco, celebrated for mosaic about and beyond the middle of the sixteenth century. Flaminio Zuccati, the son of Valerio, who inherited his father's talent and fame, flourished about 1585. See Zanetti.

[147]See Ridolfi. The original went to Dresden; but Italy abounds in copies of it. Lanzi mentions one which he saw at S. Saverio in Rimini, with Tiziano's name written on the fillet of the Pharisee, a performance of great beauty, and by many considered less a copy than a duplicate. The most celebrated copy, that of Flaminio Torre, is preserved at Dresden with the original.

[148]"Si può quasi dire, che il vizio sia la virtù della Scuola Veneziana, poichè fa pompa della sollecitudine nel dipingere; e perciò fa stima di Tintoretto, che non avea altro merito."Mengs, Opere, t. i. p. 175. ed. Parm.

[149]It has supplanted, was probably perpetuated in allusion to his rapidity of execution, and remains familiar to ears that never heard of Robusti.

[150]SeeVarie Pitture a fresco de' principali Maestri Veneziani, &c. Venez. fol. 1760. Tab. 8, 9, p. viii.Noone who has seen the original figures of the Aurora and Creposcolo in S. Lorenzo, can mistake their imitation, or rather transcripts, in these.

[151]The frequent want of equilibration found in Tintoretto's figures, even where no violence of action can palliate or account for it, has not without probability been ascribed to his method of studying foreshortening from models loosely suspended and playing in the air; to which he at last became so used that he sometimes employed it even for figures resting on firm ground, and fondly sacrificed solidity and firmness to the affected graces of undulation.

[152]It would be mere waste of time to recapitulate what has been said on the efficient beauties of this astonishing work in the lectures on colour and chiaroscuro, and in the article of Tintoretto, in the last edition of Pilkington's Dictionary. It has been engraved on a large scale by Agostino Carracci, if that can be called engraving which contents itself with the mere enumeration of the parts, totally neglecting the medium of that tremendous twilight which hovers over the whole and transposes us to Golgotha. If what Ridolfi says be true, that Tintoretto embraced the engraver when he presented the drawing to him, he must have had still more deplorable moments of dereliction as a man than as an Artist, or the drawing of Agostino, must have differed totally from the print.

[153]It is engraved by Pietro Monaco, as that of Tiziano, by Le Fevre, but in a manner which makes us lament the lot of those who have no means to see the original.

THE SCHOOL OF MANTOUA.

Mantoua,[154]the birth-place of Virgil, a name dear to poetry, by the adoption of Andrea Mantegna and Giulio Pippi claims a distinguished place in the history of Art, for restoring and disseminating style among the schools of Lombardy.

Mantoua, desolated by Attila, conquered by Alboin, wrested from the Longobards by theExarch of Ravenna, was taken and fortified by Charles the Great: from Bonifazio of Canossa it descended to Mathilda; after her demise, 1115, became a republic tyrannized by Bonacorsi, till the people conferred the supremacy on Lodovico Gonzaga, under whose successors it rose from a marquisate, 1433, to a dukedom, 1531, and finished as an appendage to the spoils of Austria.

Revolutions so uninterrupted, aggravated by accidental devastations of floods and fire, may account for the want of earlier monuments of art in Mantoua and its districts, than the remains from the epoch of Mathilda.[155]A want perhaps more to be regretted by the antiquarythan the historian of art, whose real epoch begins with the patronage of Lodovico Gonzaga and the appearance of Andrea Mantegna.[156]

This native of Padova[157]was the adopted son and pupil of Squarcione, in whose school he acquired that taste for the antique which marks his works at every period of his practice; if sometimes mitigated, never supplanted by the blandishments of colour and the precepts of Giovanni Bellino, whose daughter he had married.

Perhaps no question has been discussed with greater anxiety, and dismissed from investigationwith less success, than that of Correggio's origin, circumstances, methods of study, and death.

The date of his birth is uncertain, some place it in 1475, others in 1490; were we to follow a MS. gloss in the Library at Gottingen, mentioned by Fiorillo, which says he died at the age of forty in 1512, he must have been born in 1472; but the true date is, no doubt, that of the inscription set him at Correggio, viz. that he died in 1534, aged forty. The honour of his birth-place is allowed to Correggio, though not without dispute.[158]His father's name was Pellegrino Allegri, according to Orlandi, countenanced by Mengs. He was instructed in the elements of literature, philosophy, and mathematics; however doubtful this, there can be no doubt entertained on the very early period in which he must have applied to Painting. The brevity of his life, and the surprising number of his works, evince that he could not devote much time to literature, and, of mathematics, probably contented himself with what related to perspective and architecture. On the authority of Vedriani and of Scannelli,Mengs and his follower Ratti make Correggio in Modena the pupil of Franc. Bianchi Ferrari, and in Mantoua of Andr. Mantegna, without vouchers of sufficient authenticity for either: the passage quoted by Vedriani from the chronicle of Lancillotto, an historian contemporary with Correggio, is an interpolation; and Mantegna, who died in 1505, could not have been the master of a boy who at that time was scarcely in his twelfth year.

Some supposed pictures of Correggio at Mantoua, in the manner of Mantegna, may have given rise to this opinion. An imitation of that style is visible in some whose originality has never been disputed: such as in the St. Cecilia of the Palace Borghese, and a piece in his first manner of the Gallery at Dresden.

Father Maurizio Zapata, a friar of Casino, in a MS. quoted by Tiraboschi, affirms that the two uncles of Parmegianino, Michele and Pier Stario Mazzuoli, were the masters of Correggio,—a supposition without foundation; it is more probable, though not certain, that he gained the first elements from Lorenzo Allegri his uncle, and not, as the vulgar opinion states, his grandfather.

Equal doubts prevail on his skill and power of execution in architecture and plastic: the common opinion is, that for this he was beholden to Antonio Begarelli. Scannelli, Resta, and Vedriani, pretend that Correggio, terrified by the enormous mass and variety of figures to be seen foreshortened from below in the cupola of the Domo at Parma, had the whole modelled by Begarelli, and thus escaped from the difficulty, correct, and with applause. They likewise tell in Parma, that by occasion of some solemn funeral, many of those models were found on the cornices of the cupola, and considered as the works of Begarelli: hence they pretend that Correggio was his regular pupil, and as such finished those three statues which a tradition as vague as silly has placed to his account in Begarelli's celebrated composition of the Deposition from the Cross in the church of St. Margareta.

That either Correggio himself or Begarelli made models for the cupola admits no doubt, the necessity of such a process is evident from the nature and the perfection of the work; but there is surely none to conclude from it to that of a formal apprenticeship in sculpture. He who had arrived at the power of painting thecupola at Parma, may without rashness be supposed to have possessed that of making for his own use small models of clay, without the instructions of a master, especially in an age when painting, sculpture, and architecture frequently met in the same artist; and, as we have elsewhere[159]observed, when sketching in clay was a practice familiar to those of Lombardy.

Correggio's pretended journey to Rome is another point in dispute: two writers of his century, Ortensio Landi and Vasari, reject it. The first says[160]Correggio died young without having been able to visit Rome; the second affirms that Antonio had a genius which wanted nothing but acquaintance with Rome to perform miracles. Padre Resta, a great collector of Correggio's works, was the first who opposed their authority.[161]He pretends, in some writing of his own, to have adduced twelve proofs of Correggio's having twice visited Rome, viz. in 1520 and 1530. But the allegations of a crafty monk, a dealer in drawings and pictures, cannot weigh against authorities like those of Vasari and Landi. His conjectures rest partly on some supposed drawings of Correggio'sin his possession, from the Loggie of the Vatican, and partly on an imaginary journey, in which, he tells us, Correggio traversed Italy incognito, and made everywhere copies, which all had the good luck to fall into his own reverend hands. These lures, held out to ensnare the ignorant and wealthy, he palliated by a pretended plan of raising a monument to the memory of the immortal artist at Correggio, the expenses of which were to be defrayed by the produce of his stock in hand. He had even face enough to solicit from that town an attestation that their citizen had travelled as a journeyman painter.

Mengs, and of course Batti, embrace the same opinion. Mengs draws his conclusion from the difference between Correggio's first and second style, which he considers less as the imperceptible progress of art than as the immediate effect of the works of Raphael and Michel Agnolo. Mengs was probably seduced to believe in this visionary journey on the authority of Winkelmann, who pretended to have discovered, in the museum of Cardinal Albani, some designs after the antique by Mantegna, Correggio's reputed master. Bracci, in opposition,assert that Allegri was beholden to none but himself for his acquirements, and appeals to a letter of Annibale Carracci, who says that Correggio found in himself those materials for which the rest were obliged to extraneous help. The words of Carracci, however, with all due homage to the genius of Correggio and the originality of his style, appear to refer rather to invention and the poetic, than to the executive part of his works.

If there be any solidity in the observation of Mengs on Correggio's first manner, as a mixture of Pietro Perugino's and Lionardo's style, and of course not very different from Raphael's, how comes it that in the works of his second and best manner all resemblance to either, and consequently to Raphael, disappears? The simplicity of Raphael's forms is little beholden to that contrast and those foreshortenings which are the element of Correggio's style. Raphael sacrificed all to the subject and expression; Correggio, in an artificial medium, sacrifices all to the air of things and harmony. Raphael speaks to our heart; Correggio insinuates himself into our affections by charming our senses. The essence of Raphael's beauty is dignity of mind;petulantnaïvetéthat of Correggio's. Raphael's grace is founded on propriety; Correggio's on convenience and the harmony of the whole. The light of Raphael is simple daylight; that of Correggio artificial splendour. In short, the history of artists scarcely furnishes characteristics more opposite than what discriminate these two. And though it may appear a paradox to superficial observation, were it necessary to find an object of imitation for Allegri's second and best style, the artificial medium, the breadth of manner and mellowness of transition, with the enormous forms and foreshortenings of Michel Angelo, though adopted by so different a mind, from as different motives, for an end still more different, will be found to be much more congenial with his principles of seeing and executing, than the style of any preceding or coetaneous period.

The authenticity of Correggio's celebrated "Anch' io son Pittore," is less affected by the improbability of his journey to Rome, than by its own legendary weakness: though not at Modena or Parma, for there were no pictures of Raphael in either place during Antonio's life, he might have seen the St. Cecilia at Bologna;and if the story be true, perhaps no large picture of that master that we are acquainted with could furnish him with equal matter of exultation. He was less made to sympathize with the celestial trance of the heroine, the intense meditation of the Apostles, and the sainted grace of the Magdalen, than to be disgusted by a parallelism of the whole which borders on primitive apposition, by the total neglect of what is called picturesque, the absence of chiaroscuro, the unharmonious colour, and dry severity of execution.

The next point is to fix the dates of Correggio's works; the certain, the probable, the conjectural.

The theatre of Correggio's first essays in art is supposed to have been his native place and the palace of its princes; but that palace perished with whatever it might contain. From a document in the parochial archive of Correggio, of 1514, it appears that in the same year he painted an altar-piece for one hundred zechini, a considerable price for a young man of twenty. This picture was in the church of the Minorites, where it remained till 1638, when a copy was unawares put into the place of theoriginal. The citizens alarmed, in vain made representations to Annibale Molza, their governor; it even appears from a letter of his to the Court of Modena, in whose name he governed, that, many years before, two other pieces of Antonio had been removed from the same chapel by order of Don Siro, the last prince of the House of Correggio; those represented a St. John and a St. Bartholomew; the subject of the altar-piece was the Madonna with the child, Joseph and St. Francis.

The fraternity of the Hospitaldella Misericordiapossessed likewise an altar-piece of Antonio. The centre piece represented the Deity of the Father; the two wings, St. John and Bartholomew. According to a contract which still remains in the archives, it was estimated by a painter ofNovellara,Jacopo Borboni, at three hundred ducats, bought for Don Siro in 1613, and a copy put in its place. The originals of all these pictures are lost.

The picture with the Madonna and child on a throne, St. John the Baptist, the Sts. Catharina, Francis, and Antony, inscribed "Antonius de Allegris P." now in the gallery of Dresden, was, as Tiraboschi correctly supposes, an altar-piece in the church of St. Nicolas ofthe Minorites, at Carpi: a copy of it by Aretusi, is at Mantoua. To this period, and perhaps even an earlier one, belongs the St. Cecilia of the Borghese palace. The general style of this picture is dry and hard, and the draperies in Mantegna's taste; but the light which proceeds from a glory of angels, and imperceptibly expands itself over the whole, is a characteristic too decisive to leave any doubt of its originality.

In the gallery of Count Brühl was the Wedding (sposalizio) of St. Catharine, with the following inscription on the back:—"Laus Deo:per Donna Metilde d'Este Antonio Lieto da Correggio fece il presente quadro per sua divozione, anno 1517." This inscription appears, however, suspicious, as at that time there was no princess of that name at the court of Ferrara. At the purchase of the principal pictures in the Modenese gallery by Augustus III. this was presented by the Duke to Count Brühl; from him it went to the Imperial Gallery at Petersburg. A similar one was in the collection of Capo di Monte at Naples, and Mengs considers both as originals. Copies of merit by Gabbiani and Volterrano are in England and Toscana. It is singularthat an artist, than whom none had more scholars and copyists, and whose short life was occupied by the most important works, should be supposed to have painted so many duplicates, and that a set of men, as impudent as ignorant, should meet with dupes as credulous as wealthy, eager to purchase their trash at enormous prices, in the face of the few legitimate originals.

In 1519, Antonio went to Parma, and soon after his arrival is said to have painted a room in the Nunnery of St. Paul. The authenticity of this work, placed within the clausure of the convent and consequently inaccessible, has been recently disputed, and the author of a certain dialogue even attempts to prove the whole a fable. To ascertain the fact, a special licence to visit the place was obtained for some painters and architects of note, and on their declaring the paintings one of Correggio's best works, Don Ferdinando de Bourbon, with some of the courtiers and Padre Iveneo Affo, followed to inspect it. What he tells us of monastic constitution in those times accounts for the admission of so profane an ornament in such a place; for in the beginning of the sixteenth century,clausure was yet unknown to nunneries; abbesses were elected for life, their power over the revenue of the convent was uncontrolled, their style of life magnificent, and their political influence not inconsiderable. Such was the situation of nunneries when Donna Giovanna da Piacenza, descended from an eminent family at Parma, the new-elected abbess of St. Paul's, ordered two saloons of her elegant apartments to be decorated with paintings; one by Correggio, and another, as it is conjectured, either by Alessandro Araldi of Parma, or Cristoforo Casella, called Temperello. Padre Affo proves that Correggio must have painted his apartment before 1520, immediately after his arrival at Parma, and four or five years before the introduction of the clausure. Of a work so singular and questionable, it will not appear superfluous to repeat some of the most striking outlines from his account:—"The chimney-piece represents Diana returned from the chase, to whom an infant Amor offers the head of a new-slain stag; the ceiling is vaulted, raised in arches over sixteen lunettes; four on each side of the walls; the paintings are raised about an ell from the floor, and form a series of mythologicand allegoric figures, which breathe the simplicity, the suavity, and the decorum of Art's golden age. Of these the three Graces naked, in three different attitudes, offer a charming study of female beauty, and a striking contrast with the Parcæ placed opposite; the most singular subject is a naked female figure, suspended by a cord from the sky, with her hands tied over her head—her body extended by two golden anvils fastened with chains to her feet, floating in the attitude of which the Homeric Jupiter reminds his Juno.[162]The high-arched roof embowers the whole with luxuriant verdure and fruit, and is divided into sixteen large ovals, overhung with festoons of tendrils, vine-leaves, and grapes, between which appear groups of infant Amorini, above the size of children, gamboling in various picturesque though not immodest attitudes."

Neither the pretended inaccessibility of place, nor the veil thrown by monastic austerity over the profaneness of the subject, can sufficiently account for the silence of tradition, and the obscurityin which this work was suffered to linger for nearly three centuries. Supposing it, on the authorities adduced, to be the legitimate produce of Correggio, and considering its affinity to the ornamental parts of the Loggie in the Vatican, it affords a stronger argument of Allegri's having seen Rome, studied the antique, and imitated Raphael, than any of those that have been adduced by Mengs, who (with his commentator D'Azara,) appears to have been totally uninformed of it, notwithstanding his familiarity at Parma with every work of Correggio, his perseverance of inquiry and eager pursuit of whatever related to his idol, the influence he enjoyed at Court, and unlimited access to every place that might be supposed to contain or hide some work of art.

Soon after his arrival at Parma, Antonio probably received the commission of the celebrated cupola of S. Giovanni, which he completed in 1524, as appears from an acquittance for the last payment subscribed 'Antonio Lieto,' still existing at Parma.

In the cupola he represented the Ascension of the Saviour, with the Apostles, the Madonna, &c. and the Coronation of the Virgin on thetribune of the principal altar, whose enlargement in 1584 occasioned, with the destruction of the choir, that of the painting: a few fragments escaped; an exact copy had, however, been provided before, by Annibale Carracci, from which it was repainted on the same place by Aretusi. The same church preserved two pictures in oil of Correggio, the martyrdom of St. Placidus and Flavia, and Christ taken from the cross on the lap of his mother; both are now (1802) in the collection of the Louvre.

The success of the cupola of S. Giovanni encouraged the inspectors of the Domo to commit the decoration of theirs to the same master. Of their contract with him, the original still remains in the archive of their chapter; it was concluded in 1522, and amounted to about one thousand zecchini, no inconsiderable sum for those times, and alone sufficient to do away the silly tradition of the artist's mendicity. The decorations of the chapel, next to the cupola, were distributed among three of the best Parmesan painters at that time, Parmegianino, Franc. Maria Rondani, and Michael Angelo Anselmi. From all the papers hitherto found, it appears, however, that Correggio did not actually begin to paint thecupola before 1526: it represents the Ascension of the Virgin, and without recurring to an individual verdict, has received the sanction of ages, as the most sublime in its kind, of all that were produced before and after it; a work without a rival, though now dimmed with smoke, and in decay by time. These were the two first cupolas painted entire, all former ones being painted in compartments. Nothing occurs to make us surmise that Correggio had partners of his labour in these two works; for Lattanzio Gambara of Brescia, mentioned by Rossi as his assistant in the Domo, was born eight years after Correggio's death.

During the progress of these two great works, Correggio produced others of inferior size but equal excellence; the principal of which are the two votive pictures of St. Jerome, andLa Notte. That of St. Jerome represents the Saint offering his Translation to the Infant Christ, who is seated in his Mother's lap, with St. Magdalen reclining on and kissing his feet, and flanked by Angels. The commission for this picture is said to have been given in 1523, by Donna Briseide Colla, thewidow of Orazio or Ottaviano Bergonzi of Parma, who in 1528 gave it as a votive offering to the church of S. Antonio del Fuoco. The price agreed on, was 400 lire; 40,000 ducats were offered for it afterwards by the King of Portugal; and the then Abbot of the convent was on the point of concluding the bargain, when the citizens of Parma, to prevent the loss, applied to the Infante Don Philippo. He ordered it in 1749 to be transposed from S. Antonio to the Domo; there it remained till 1756, when, on the application of a French painter, expelled by the Canons for his attempt to trace it, the Prince had it transferred under an escort of twenty-four grenadiers to Colorno; and from thence to the newly instituted academy, where it remained till 1797, and now, (1802,) with other transported works of Art, glitters among the spoils of the Louvre.

The second picture known by the name of "La Notte," represents the birthnight of the Saviour, and was the commission of Alberto Pratonieri, as appears from a writing dated in 1522, though it was not finished till 1527 according to Mengs, or 1530 as Fiorillo surmised, when it was dedicated in the ChapelPratonieri of S. Prospero at Reggio: from whence, 1640, it was carried to the gallery of Modena, by order, of Duke Francesco I. and from thence at length to that of Dresden.

A chapel in the church del S. Sepolcro at Parma, possessed formerly the altar-piece known by the name of "La Madonna della Scodella," because the Virgin, represented on her flight to Egypt, holds a wooden bowl in her hand: a figure, whom Mengs fancies the Genius of the Fountain, pours water into it; and in the back ground an angel, whose action and expression he considers as too graceful for the business, ties up the ass. This picture, he tells us, was, thirteen years before the date in which he wrote, nearly swept out of the panel by the barbarous wash of a Spanish journeyman painter who had obtained permission to copy it. It is now in the Louvre, and how much of its present florid colour is legitimate, must be left to the decision of the committee "de la Restoration."

If the most sublime degree of expression be entitled to the right of originality, Mengs must be followed in his decision on the Ecce Homo, formerly in the Palace Colonna, without muchanxiety whether it be the same that belonged to the family of Prati at Parma, or that which Agostino Carracci engraved.

The Madonna seated beneath a palm-tree, bending in somnolently pensive contemplation over the Infant on her lap, watched by an Angel above her, and attended by a Leveret, known by the name of "La Zingarella" or the Egyptian, from the sash round her head, formerly in the gallery of Parma, and now at Naples in that ofCapo di Monte, has suffered so much from a modern hand, that little of the master remains but the conception. Nearly a duplicate of it was presented by CardinalAlessandro Albanito king Augustus of Poland; but Mengs hesitates to pronounce it an original.

In the period of these, about 1530, we may probably place the two celebrated pictures of Leda and Danae, than which no modern works of art have suffered more from accident and wanton or bigoted barbarity, or been tossed about by more contradictory tradition.

If the subject that takes its name from Leda be, as Mengs says, rather an allegory than a fable, it alludes to what would aggravate even the story of that mistress of Jupiter. The centralfigure represents a female seated on the verge of a rivulet with a swan between her thighs, who attempts to insinuate his bill into her lips; but at her side, and deeper in the water, is a tender girl, who with an air of innocence playfully struggles to defend herself from the attacks of another swimming swan; farther on, a girl more grown up to woman, gazes, whilst a female servant dresses her, with an air of satiate pleasure after a swan on the wing, that seems just to have left her; at some distance appears half a figure of an aged woman, draped, and with looks of regret. On the other side of the principal group, the graceful form of a full-grown Amor strikes the lyre, and two Amorini contrive to wind some horn instruments. The scene of all this is a charming grove on the brink of a pellucid lake.

The second picture represents the daughter of Acrisius, but with poetic spirit. The virgin gracefully reclines on her bed; a full-grown Cupid, perhaps a Hymen, lifts with one hand the border of the sheet on her lap that receives the celestial shower, whilst his other presents the mystic drops to her enchanted glance: twoAmorini at the foot of the bed try on a touchstone, that, one of the golden drops, this, the point of an arrow, and he, says Mengs, has a vigour of character much superior to the other, plainly to express, that Love proceeds from the arrow, and its ruin from gold; he likewise finds that the head and head-dress of Danae are imitated from those of the Medicean Venus.

Vasari, and after him Mengs with others, tell that in 1530, Federigo Gonzaga, then created Duke of Mantoua, intended to present Charles the Fifth at the ceremonial of his coronation with two pictures worthy of him, and in the choice of artists gave the preference to Correggio. From this, a correct inference is drawn against that pretended obscurity in which Correggio is said to have lingered; for at that time Giulio Romano lived at the Court of Mantoua, and Tizian was in the service of the Emperor. Vasari is silent on the date of the pictures, but he affirms that, at their sight, Giulio Romano declared he had never seen a style of colour approaching theirs. So far all seems correct; but that they were actually presented to Charles, sent to Prague, and after thesacking of that city by Gustavus Adolphus, carried to Stockholm, is unproved or erroneous. If it is not likely that the Emperor, instead of sending them to Madrid, the darling depository of his other works of art, should have sent them into a kind of exile to Prague, it is an error to pretend they were removed from thence by Gustavus Adolphus, who was slain at Lutzen sixteen years before the Swedes sacked that city, 1648. The truth is, that these pictures were not given to the Emperor, but placed in his own gallery by the Duke, where they remained till 1630, when the Imperial General Colalto stormed Mantoua, sacked it, deprived it of its cabinet of treasures, of the celebrated vase since possessed by the House of Brunswick, and transmitted its beautiful collection of pictures to Prague, from whence by the event of war we have mentioned, they became the property of Queen Christina, at whose abdication, when the whole was packing up for Rome, the two pictures in question were discovered in the royal stables, where they had served as window-blinds, mutilated and despised. Whether so unaccountable a neglect be imputable to the Queen's want of taste, as Tessin asserts, or toaccident, or, what is most unlikely, to her modesty, cannot now be decided. They were repaired, and at her demise left to Cardinal Azzolini, of whose heirs they were purchased by Don Livio Odescalchi, and by him left to the Duke of Bracciano, were sold to the Regent of France, whose son, from a whim of bigotry, had the picture of the Leda cut to pieces in his own presence, in which state Charles Coypel requested and obtained it for his private study. At his death it was vamped up, repieced, disposed of by auction, and, at a high price, sold to the King of Prussia. What became of the Danae is matter of dispute.[163]

The picture of Io embraced by Jupiter, inbosomed in clouds, by a silent water in which a stag quenches his thirst, was their companion: a work to which the most lavish fame has done no justice, and beyond which no fancy ever soared. The Io shared a still more barbarous fate. Not content with mangling her like the Leda, the bigot prince burnt her head; and, were it not for the beautiful duplicate which fortune preserved in the Gallery of Vienna,[164]weshould be reduced to guess at Correggio in the fragments at Sans Souci, and the prints of Surregue and Bartolozzi. The Imperial Gallery possesses, likewise, the Rape of Ganymede, by Correggio, of the same size with the Io; a Mountain Scene; a full-grown Cupid, seen from behind, with his head turned to the spectator, shaping a bow, accompanied by a laughing and a weeping infant, in struggling attitudes, which was likewise sold by the heirs of Don Livio Odescalchi, has equally exercised opinion. Vasari, Tassoni, Du Bois, de St. Gelais, &c. ascribe it to Parmegiano; Mengs and Fiorillo, who judge from the duplicate at Vienna, with greater probability give it to Correggio. The contrast of the attitudes is produced more by naïveté than affectation, the lines have more simplicity than the style of Mazzuola admitted of, and the colour more breadth. The conception of the whole, whether the infants be the symbols of successful and unsuccessful love, or denote the dangers of love, or be simply children, though not beyond the fancy of Parmegiano, has more the air of a Correggiesque conceit. Numberless copies were made after it,some by Parmegiano himself, whose handling may be recognized in the picture at Paris.

We are now arrived at those works of Correggio's which cannot be fixed to a certain period. Such are probably, in the Gallery of Dresden, those known under the names of S. Giorgio and S. Sebastiano, of both of which Mengs gives a circumstantial account. He is, however, mistaken when he imagines the last to have been voted by the City of Modena after a plague: the commission of it was given by the fraternity of St. Sebastian.

The half-length portrait, formerly known at Modena as that of Correggio's Physician, belongs to the same doubtful period. Mengs, though he praises the colour and the impasto of it, is inclined to think it painted about the time of his first Cupola, when he had not yet sufficiently studied detail of forms and variety of tints. The style resembles that of Giorgione, but is less vivid, though of equal pasto, and somewhat more limpid.

The last, though not least celebrated piece of Antonio in this Gallery, is the small Meditating Magdalena: of the pictures mentioned, it is theonly one painted on copper, the rest are on panel. It is little more than a palm in height, and not quite a palm and a half long. It was, with other small pictures, stolen out of the Gallery in 1788, but soon recovered. The purchase price, according to Mengs, when the Gallery was disposed of, was 27,000 Roman crowns. It has been copied by Albani, and, if we believe Richardson, by Tizian.

Besides the spoils of Parma, there is now (1802) in the Gallery of the Louvre, from the former collection of Versailles, a picture representing in half-length figures of natural size the Wedding of St. Catherine, with a St. Sebastian, and their Martyrdom in the distance. It does not appear that Mengs ever saw more than some good copy of it, or the prints engraved from it, else his praise would have probably been nearer to astonishment than admiration; and though none would dare to repeat what he ventures to say of the Magdalen's head in the St. Jerome, it might safely be asserted, that perhaps no other picture can boast to have united in the same degree the tints of Tizian, the glow and impasto of Giorgione, and the breadth of Guido,with that bloom of hue and suavity of manner peculiar to Correggio.

This divine performance was presented by Cardinal Barberino to Cardinal Mazarin, with two others painted in water colours on canvass, representing in allegoric figures the heroism of Virtue and the debasement of Vice. The first, in physiognomy and attitudes, abounds in what is commonly called the grace of Correggio; the second in picturesque energy and expression: they are likewise placed among the collections of the Louvre. An unfinished repetition of the first in the House Doria Panfili at Rome, is adduced by Mengs as a proof of Correggio's intelligence in sketching, and the superiority of his principle in the progress of a work.

Of two pictures in the Cabinet at Madrid, the principal is that of Christ praying in the Garden, with an Angel on high pointing to a Cross and a Crown of Thorns on the ground, scarcely discernible. The open but drooping arms of the Saviour express his entire resignation to the will of his Father. The most poetic singularity of this picture is its chiaroscuro: Christ receives his light from Heaven, the Angel from Christ: at a distance on lower ground,and nearly evanescent, are the three Disciplesin graceful and picturesque attitudes, and farther off, the approaching host of captors. At first sight, the whole seems to be divided into two masses only of light and darkness, but on inspection, the ambient medium and the more and less of distinctness in the objects as they approach the light or recede from it, is divinely expressed. There is a tale, which even Lomazzo and Scanelli repeat, that Correggio parted with this picture to his apothecary for four scudi, which he owed him; that afterwards it was sold for five hundred crowns to Pirrho Count Visconti, who resold it for seven hundred and fifty gold doubloons, to the Marchese Camarena, Governor of Milan, by whom it was bought in commission for Philip the Fourth. Every day discovers some copy, or, if you choose to believe those who wish to dispose of them, some duplicate or triplicate of this picture. Padre Resta possessed not one, but four, all of which he insisted on being believed in as originals: one on copper, another on wood, which Lelio Orsi was said to have copied on canvass; a third, likewise on panel but somewhat worm-eaten, disposed of to MonsignorMarchetti, and a fourth again on copper. Some of these are probably in England.

The companion of this picture is the Madonna dressing the Infant, with Joseph planing a board in the back-ground; a performance though inferior in style to the former, not less original from thepentimentistill discoverable in the two principal figures.

The Duke of Alba possesses of Correggio, in figures somewhat less than Nature, Mercury teaching Cupid to read in the presence of Venus. Venus has the singular attribute of wings, and of a bow in her left hand; and Mengs persuades himself to discover in her forms a reminiscence of an imitation of the Apollino, formerly in the Villa Medici at Rome. The characteristic excellence of the execution, and an evidentpentimentoin the arm of the Mercury, leave no doubt of its having a better claim to originality than the duplicates in France and Germany. It formerly made part of the collection of Charles the First, and Sandrart saw it in the Palace of Whitehall, from whence it was purchased by an ancestor of the Duke of Alba.

Not to waste time on conjectural works, we finish this list with a picture formerly in thehouse Barberini, now supposed to be in England: it is painted on panel, and represents from the narrative of S. Marc, the young man who followed our Saviour at the moment of his captivity, but fled on being laid hold of, and left his garment in the hands of the captors. Mengs describes a duplicate of this picture, painted on canvass, at his time in the hands of an Englishman at Rome, and though, in his opinion, only the study for the other, in the principal parts, especially the figure of the youth, highly finished: his expression, form and attitude, remind the critic so strongly of the same in the eldest son of the Laocoon, that he is persuaded they are an imitation, though in a style more consonant with Correggio's manner.

The cause and circumstances of his death we are not acquainted with, since the idle tale has been discarded which Vasari tells, of his perishing in consequence of having carried home a load of sixtyscudiin copper, which he had received in payment at Parma. He who considers what strength would be required to carry sixty crowns inquattrini, will find its confutation in the tale itself; let it be added that the extreme heat which is said to have aggravatedthe fatigue, and accelerated his death, is, even in Italy, not coincident with the season in which he must have taken the journey,[165]as he died on the fifth of March. The magnificence and number of his commissions; the deference paid to his powers in the face of rival artists, by the very patrons of those men, or societies, that might have saved expense by admitting concurrence; the handsome, though not quite metropolitan prices, which he received, and what Mengs has observed, the expensive goodness of his colours, of his panels, and canvasses—make it not only extremely improbable that he should have lived in the depressed circumstances, to which vulgar tradition has sunk him; but add an air of truth to the opinion of those who thought him, if not opulent, yet nearer allied to affluence than want.

Correggio was a monument without a tomb; but it appears strange that a century and a half should have elapsed before the thought of erecting him one occurred to the Senate and citizens of his native place, and then was sufferedto evaporate in ineffectual projects. The boastful intentions of Padre Resta proved equally nugatory: the tombstone set and inscribed by Girolamo Conti still remains a solitary offering to his genius:

D. O. M.Antonio. Allegri. Civi.Vulgo.Il Correggio.Arte. Picturæ. Habitu. Probitatis.Eximio.Monum. Hoc. Posuit.Hier. Conti. Concivis.Siccine. Separas. Amara. Mors.Obiit. Anno. Ætatis. XL. Sal. MDXXXIV.

On such a face as Correggio's, physiognomy might have established principles or drawn some inferences from it, had not a perverse destiny left us as ignorant of it, as of his complexion, stature, character, and habits. Vasari's exertions to obtain a portrait of him were not only unsuccessful, but hopeless; and the profile which is shown in the dome of Parma as his, becomes inadmissible from the very name of the artist to whom it is ascribed.[166]The head which found its way into the third and every following edition of Vasari, has certainly nothingrepugnant with the notions we may form of his character, but age. Meditation, simplicity, serenity, compose it. It is said to have been copied from a picture not quite finished, which appears to have the touch of Correggio, and came from Sicily to Naples. He is represented contemplating a design, the original of which, report has placed at Vienna with Prince Esterhazy. The portrait which is at Turin, in the "Vigna della Regina," engraved by Valperga, with the epigraph, in part hid by the frame, but read by Lanzi "Antonius Corrigiusf." (i. e.fecit) though by some believed genuine, appears spurious from this very circumstance, the large character of the letters and the space they occupy; a manner of writing often used to indicate the person painted, never the painter. Another portrait, which from Genoua is said to have been carried to England, with the indorsed inscription "Dosso Dossi dipinse questo ritratto di Antonio da Correggio," fronts the Memorie of Ratti. Without examining the authenticity of this inscription, it is sufficient to observe, that Antonio da Correggio is likewise the name of Antonio Bernieri, a celebrated miniature painter, and fellowcitizen of Allegri, whose date coincides with that of Dosso, and whom there will be occasion to mention again.

Of Correggio's numerous pretending imitators, Lodovico Carracci appears to be the only one who penetrated his principle. The axiom, that the less the traces appear of the means by which a work has been produced, the more it resembles the operations of Nature, is not an axiom likely to spring from the infancy of art. The even colour, veiled splendour, the solemn twilight; that tone of devotion and cloistered meditation, which Lodovico Carracci spread over his works, could arise only from the contemplation of some preceding style, analogous to his own feelings and its comparison with Nature; and where could that be met with in a degree equal to what he found in the infinite unity and variety of Correggio's effusions? They inspired his frescoes in the cloisters of S. Michele in Bosco: the foreshortenings of the muscular labourers at the hermitage, and of the ponderous demon that mocks their toil; the warlike splendour in the Homage of Totila; the Nocturnal Conflagration of Monte Casino; the wild graces of deranged beauty, and the insidiouscharms of the sister nymphs in the garden scene, equally proclaim the pupil of Correggio.

His triumph in oil is the altar-piece of St. John preaching in a chapel of the Certosa at Bologna, whose lights seem embrowned by a golden veil, and the shadowy gleam of Valombrosa; though he sometimes indulged in tones austere, pronounced, and hardy: such is the Flagellation of Christ in the same church, whose tremendous depth of flesh-tints contrasts the open wide-expanded sky, and less conveys than dashes its terrors on the astonished sense.

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