manner to such complete perfection that, in a few years, favoured as he was by nature and advanced by diligent study, he became a most remarkable and excellent artist. Of a timid and anxious disposition, he subjected himself to severe and continual labours in his art for the support of his family, which he found an oppressive burthen,[1] and though disposed by nature towards everything good, he, nevertheless, afflicted himself more than was reasonable by resisting the pressure of those passions by which man is most commonly assailed. In the exercise of his art, Antonio betrayed the melancholy attributed to his disposition[2]f but, devoted to the labours of his vocation, he was a zealous inquirer into all the difficulties incidental to the calling he had chosen. Of his success we have proof in a vast multitude of figures executed by his hand in the cathedral of Parma: they arepainted in fresco, and finished with much care. These pictures are in the great cupola of the church, and the foreshortenings are managed with extraordinary ability, as the spectator, regarding the work from below, perceives, to his admiring astonishment.[3]
- ↑ Later writers prove that Correggio was not so poor as might be inferred from these words. He is said to have given his sister a dowry of a hundred ducats on her marriage, and to have bought lands, which he afterwards left to his children. — See Pungileoni, ut supra.
- ↑ The German commentator, Schorn, remarks that, as Vasari somewhat lightly accuses Pietro Perugino of irreligion, of which we, nevertheless, find no trace in his life and conduct, so does he here describe Correggio as a melancholy and laborious painter, while the works of that master give constant evidence of a cheerful spirit and of a facility which overcomes all difficulty, without any undue effort. See German Translation, vol. iii. Part i. p. 62.
- ↑ Of this work Vasari speaks more precisely, and with the eulogies so justly its due, in the life of Girolamo da Carpi.
Correggio was the first in Lombardy who commenced the execution of works in the modern maimer, and it is thought that if he had travelled beyond the limits of his native Carpi, as well as by many other writers, among whom the reader is referred to Pungileoni, Memorie storiche di Antonio Allegri detto il Correggio, 3 vols., Parma, 1817; Mengs, Memorie concernenti la vita e le opere di Antonio Allegri, &c.; also Lanzi, ut supra, vol. ii. p. 374, et seq., English edition, with Bryan, Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, whose compendium is a very satisfactory one. The German reader will find valuable details in Fiorillo, Geschichte der Malerei in Italien. Füssli, Künstler-Lexicon, &cc.; also in Hirt, Kunstbemerkungen, &c.; and Förster, Briefe über Malerei.
