Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
Now Correggio's childhood, or at least his early manhood, could not have been spent in poverty, because it is known that he used the most expensive colours to paint with, painted upon the finest of canvas, while greater artists had often to be content with boards.
In confirmation, however, of the general tendency to simplicity which we have observed as prevailing among his great contemporaries, we should add that some of Correggio's pictures are signed with the initial syllables of his name, printed in the ordinary Roman character. It is perhaps more remarkable, that even among the humorists the same simplicity should have prevailed.
The famous frescos of the Vatican need neither enumeration nor description; the world is their judge and their eulogist. No artist ever consecrated his works more by his affections than Raphael. The same hallowed influence of the heart gave inexpressible charm to Correggio's, afterward.
"The collection of pictures in the Old Museum," wrote George Eliot in 1855, "has three gems which remain in the imagination, 'Titian's Daughter, Correggio's 'Jupiter and Io, and his 'Head of Christ on a Handkerchief. I was pleased, also, to recognize among the pictures the one by Jan Steem which Goethe describes in the 'Wahlverwandschaften' as the model of a tableau vivant presented by Lucian and her friends.
By long and close familiarity, by obstinate and patient interrogation, he divined Correggio's secret, and was able at last to see clearly through the mist of cobweb and mildew and altar smoke, and through the still more cruel travesty of so-called restoration.
Doubtless a good share of Correggio's comfortable living came from the lady he married, since she was considered a rich woman for those times and in that locality. Her name was Girolama Merlini, and she lived in Mantua, the place where the Montagues and Capulets lived of whom Shakespeare wrote the most wonderful love story ever imagined.
From all sides letters of condolence flowed in. Elegies and Latin verses recalled the charms and talents of Beatrice and lamented the hard fate which had snatched her away in the flower of life. Among these poetical tributes, Niccolo da Correggio's sonnet on seeing a portrait of the late duchess is perhaps the best.
Il Parmigianino, born 1503, died 1540, was a follower of Correggio's. In Parmigianino's case the danger of the master's peculiarities became apparent by the lapse into affectation and frivolity. 'His Madonnas are empty and condescending, his female saints like ladies in waiting. Still there were certain indestructible beauties of the master which yet clung to the scholar.
It would be impossible to imagine a stronger contrast than that which distinguishes his art from Correggio's, or lives more different in all their details, than those which he and Raphael or Lionardo lived respectively.
They had massed all the tapers in the center and formed a ring about the spectacle, sitting with their legs straight out before them and their toes turned up. The light shone full in their happy faces, and made the group, enveloped otherwise in darkness, like one of Correggio's pictures of children or angels.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking