Correggio

“ While he lay in this strange cradle his birth was made known by a vision of angels to some shepherds on the neighboring hillsides. At once they betook themselves joyfully to Bethlehem, the first to do honor to the new-born king. These homely visitors are gathered about the manger in Correggio's picture. The dark night is without, but a dazzling white light shines from the Holy Child. ”

“ CORREGGIO What genius disclosed all these wonders to thee? All the fair images in the world seem to have sprung forward to meet thee, and to throw themselves lovingly into thy arms. How joyous was the gathering when smiling angels held thy palette, and sublime spirits stood before thy inward vision in all their splendor as models! Let no one think he has seen Italy, let no one think he has learnt the lofty secrets of art, until he has seen thee and thy Cathedral at Parma, O Correggio! ”

“ In every phase Correggio’s work is distinguishable by the most beautiful handling of color and light and dark. Like Moretto and Lotto he prefers a blonder scale than the Venetian, and makes his surfaces so many miracles of ivory, silvery grays and straw yellows, invested with shadow tenuously modulated, yet of strongest modelling power. He cares nothing about textures or individually rich passages; it is the whole picture that counts. The brush sweeps lightly and swiftly, there is no loading of color, everywhere an exquisite economy and a subtlety that conceals itself. ”

“ Correggio is the most skillful artist since the ancient Greeks in the art of foreshortening; and, indeed, he was master of every technical device in painting, being the first to introduce the rules of aerial perspective. Radiant light floods his pictures and is so delicately graded that it passes subtly into shade with that play of reflections among the shadows which gave transparency in every modulation. ”

“ The uses of their brains, their limbs, their every feature, end in enjoyment; innocent and radiant wantonness is the condition of their whole existence. Correggio conceived the universe under the one mood of sensuous joy: his world was bathed in luxurious light; its inhabitants were capable of little beyond a soft voluptuousness. ”

“ The first thing that strikes us in the art of Correggio is, that he has aimed at the realistic representation of pure unrealities. His saints and angels are beings the like of whom we have hardly seen upon the earth. Yet they are displayed before us with all the movement and the vivid truth of nature. Next we feel that what constitutes the superhuman, visionary quality of these creatures, is their uniform beauty of a merely sensuous type. They are all created for pleasure, not for thought or passion or activity or heroism. ”

“ Within his own magic circle Correggio reigns supreme; no other artist having blent the witcheries of colouring, chiaroscuro, and wanton loveliness of form, into a harmony so perfect in its sensuous charm. To feel his influence, and at the same moment to be the subject of strong passion, or intense desire, or heroic resolve, or profound contemplation, or pensive melancholy, is impossible. ”

“ His angels are genii disimprisoned from the chalices of flowers, houris of an erotic Paradise, elemental sprites of nature wantoning in Eden in her prime. They belong to the generation of the fauns. Like fauns, they combine a certain wildness, a dithyrambic ecstasy, a delight in rapid motion as they revel amid clouds and flowers, with the permanent and all-pervading sweetness of the painter's style. Correggio's sensibility to light and colour—that quality which makes him unique among painters—was on a par with his feeling for form. ”

“ It is difficult to leave Correggio without at least posing the question of the difference between moralised and merely sensual art. Is all art excellent in itself and good in its effect that is beautiful and earnest? There is no doubt that Correggio's work is in a way most beautiful; and it bears unmistakable signs of the master having given himself with single-hearted devotion to the expression of that phase of loveliness which he could apprehend. ”

“ We are sorry to read this account of Correggio's celebrated Notte. "Even when they do not destroy the picture entirely, they, at all events, leave the most injurious traces behind, depriving it of its transparency and harmony, and much of the effect, rendering it hard, cold, and weak. Of this the admirable 'Night' of Correggio at Dresden presents a very sad example."
We look upon the audacious man who dares to repaint upon an old picture unnecessarily, and by wholesale, as guilty of a crime. It is the murder of another man's offspring, and of his name and fame at the same time. ”

“ In truth the world created by Correggio and interpreted by Toschi is very far removed from that of actual existence. No painter has infused a more distinct individuality into his work, realising by imaginative force and powerful projection an order of beauty peculiar to himself, before which it is impossible to remain quite indifferent. We must either admire the manner of Correggio, or else shrink from it with the distaste which sensual art is apt to stir in natures of a severe or simple type. ”

“ Before the macchinisti of the seventeenth century had vulgarized the motive, Correggio's bold attempt to paint heaven in flight from earth—earth left behind in the persons of the apostles standing round the empty tomb, heaven soaring upward with a spiral vortex into the abyss of light above—had an originality which set at naught all criticism. ”

“ He had a smile to make Correggio sigh in his grave; and yet here he was running wild among the sea-stunted bushes, on the lonely margin of a decaying world, in prelude to how blank or to how dark a destiny? Verily nature is still at odds with propriety; though indeed if they ever really pull together I fear nature will quite lose her distinction. ”

“ In the passing centuries one picture after another has been put forward as a pretended portrait of Correggio. The painter's admirers were always eager to believe that a real likeness had at last been discovered. Though we cannot rely upon the genuineness of any of these, some are very interesting.
Such an one is our frontispiece, from a painting in the Parma Gallery, pointed out as Correggio's portrait. Whoever the original may have been, the expression is certainly animated and intelligent. There is much humor and kindliness in the face. ”

“ No great master is more dangerous than Correggio to his enthusiasts; round him the misdeeds of conventionalists and the follies of connoisseurs cluster with peculiar virulence, and almost tend to blind to his real and astonishing excellences those practitioners or lovers of painting who, while they can acknowledge the value of technique, are still more devoted to greatness of soul, and grave or elevated invention, as expressed in the form of art.
Correggio was the head of the school of painting of Parma, which forms one main division of the Lombardic school. ”

“ I do not wish to leave that country wherein our great mother Nature, in order not to be thought partial, gave to the world extraordinary men of that sort with which she had already for many and many a year adorned Tuscany; among whom was one endowed with an excellent and very beautiful genius, by name Antonio da Correggio, a most rare painter, who acquired the modern manner so perfectly, that in a few years, what with his natural gifts and his practice in art, he became a most excellent and marvellous craftsman. ”

“ CORREGGIO, or Coreggio, the name ordinarily given to Antonio Allegri (1494-1534) , the celebrated Italian painter, one of the most vivid and impulsive inventors in expression and pose and the most consummate executants. The external circumstances of his life have been very diversely stated by different writers, and the whole of what has been narrated regarding him, even waiving the question of its authenticity, is but meagre. ”

“ The wingless boy has the high, full forehead which marks an active mind. Cupid seems to have the more energetic temperament of the two, while his comrade is a bit of a dreamer.
Our picture is a charming illustration of Correggio's love of children. As it was not the fashion of his time to paint children's portraits, he had to make his own opportunities for the favorite subject. How ingenious he was we have had occasion to see in our study. When given a sacred subject to paint he filled all the available spaces with child angels sporting in the clouds. ”

“ I have been to the Steccata, and the Zocoli, and have observed what you told me many times, and what I now confess to be true; but I will say that, to my taste, Parmeggiano bears no comparison with Correggio, because the thoughts and conceptions of Correggio were his own, evidently drawn from his own mind, and invented by himself, guided only by the original idea. The others all rest on something not their own; some on models, some on statues or drawings: all the productions of the others are represented as they may be; all of this man as they truly are. ”

“ But, though Correggio was not poor, he will make any true artist so, who permits him to enter his mind and take possession of his affections; he infuses a love of soft and even tints without boundaries, and of endless reflected lights, that confuse one another, and hinder all correct drawing from appearing to be correct; for if one of Raphael's or Michael Angelo's figures was to be traced, and Correggio's reflections and refractions to be added to it, there would soon be an end of proportion and strength, and it would be weak, and pappy, and lumbering, and thick-headed, like his own works ”

“ On our left hand (the road conducting thither following the course of the torrent Crossolo, which washes one side of the town) is the village of Correggio, the birthplace and the home of Allegri, to whom it has given a name which is not to die—the man who it is said had no master: who studied nature in her grandeur and her grace ”

“ The next morning left Verona & arrived at Mantua at night, which is 25 miles, there’s an Academy for Arts & Sciences lately built, elegant & upon a good plan. Left Mantua on Sunday, 23rd, got to Parma on Monday morning. Here is the famous picture of Correggio. In St. Sepulchre is a Holy family, by Correggio, but so indifferent I could scarce believe it his. The figure of Joseph is as poorly drawn and the drapery as ill set as anything I ever saw, in short there’s nothing good in the picture, nor do I like Correggio in his great works ”

“ One of them tugs mightily at the palm, throwing himself backward in the effort to bend it towards Joseph. Two others sport together with interlocked arms, and higher still, a pair of [54] eyes gleam through the leaves. The whole jocund company seem to fill the place with mirth. They fulfil the promise of the ancient psalmist, "He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."
Certain characteristics of Correggio's art are well illustrated in the picture. His delight in the foot is here almost equal to that he shows for the hand in "The Marriage of St. Catherine." ”

“ There is such ecstasy of jubilation, such rapturous rapidity of flight, that we who strain our eyes from below feel we are in the darkness of the grave which Mary left. A kind of controlling rhythm for the composition is gained by placing Gabriel, Madonna, and Christ at three points in the swirl of angels. Nevertheless, composition—the presiding, all-controlling intellect—is just what makes itself felt by absence; and Correggio's special qualities of light and color have now so far vanished from the cupola of the Duomo that the constructive poverty is not disguised. ”

“ Here is one figure in outline upon the prepared board, with even the finger-marks in colour of the painter himself. Here is the preparation of the figures painted up at once, and, strange to say, with solid and even sunny colours. Here are the heads of a woman and of a naked child, completed with the full zest and tone of Correggio, in texture fine, and in expression rich and luxurious, and as fine an example of his powers as any part to be found in his most celebrated work. ”

“ The man who has exquisite gifts of expression passes for more, popularly, than the man with great and grand ideas who utters but imperfectly. There are some pictures here by Correggio—a sleeping Venus and Cupid—a marriage of the infant Jesus and St. Catharine. This Correggio is the poet of physical beauty. Light and shadow are his god. What he lives for is, to catch and reproduce fitting phases of these. The moral is nothing to him, and, in his own world, he does what he seeks. ”

“ Correggio was indeed a person who held himself in but very slight esteem, nor could he even persuade himself that he knew any thing satisfactorily respecting his art; perceiving its difficulties, he could not give himself credit for approaching the perfection to which he would so fain have seen it carried: he was a man who contented himself with very little, and always lived in the manner of a good Christian. [23]
The cares of his family caused Antonio to be very sparing, insomuch that he ultimately became exceedingly penurious. ”

“ That he fully admired Correggio, we cannot doubt—his children have all human sweetness, tenderness, and affection; but it was the archness of children that mostly delighted our painter—their play, their frolic, their fun. In this, though in the main successful, he was apt to border upon the caricature; we often observe a cat-like expression. "The Strawberry Girl" has perhaps the most intense, and at the same time human look. ”