painting was executed to be bound round by woodwork secured with irons, and, cutting it away by little and little, they saved their picture, and afterwards caused it to be built into a more secure place in another part of their convent.[1]
Over one of the gates of the city of Parma, Correggio depicted a figure of the Virgin, with the Child in her arms. This is a picture of astonishing beauty, the exquisite colouring of which has obtained the master infinite praise and honour from such strangers and travellers as have seen no other of his works than this fresco.[2] In Sant’ Antonio also, a church of the same city, our artist painted a picture wherein there is a figure of the Virgin, with Santa Maria Maddalena: near them is a boy, representing a little angel, with a book in his hand, who is smiling so naturally that all who look on him are moved to smile also; nor is there any one, however melancholy his temperament, who can behold him without feeling a sensation of pleasure. In the same picture there is also a figure of San Girolamo, which is painted in a manner so admirable and so astonishing, that painters extol the colouring as something wonderful, affirming that it would be scarcely possible to paint better.[3]
Antonio executed various pictures and paintings of different kinds for many nobles of Lombardy; among others of his works may be mentioned two painted in Mantua, for the Duke Federigo II., who sent them to the Emperor, a present
- ↑ This picture ^as not executed for the church of the Barefooted Friars, but for that of the Annunciation at the Capo di Ponte. It was removed, by command of Pier Luigi Farnese, to the inner vestibule, but has suffered much from humidity and the saline efflorescence of the wall.
- ↑ This picture, called the Madonna della Scala, was painted, in a chamber of the Porta Romana, but, in the year 1554, a small church was built at that place from respect to that figure of Om Lady. This being destroyed in 1812, the painting was then removed to the Academy of the Fine Arts.
- ↑ An Italian commentator informs us that the San Girolamo, called also The Day, was on the point of being sold to the King of Portugal, but the government of Parma intervened and saved Italy from this additional spoliation. It is now in the Academy of the Fine Arts, in that city. Mengs considers this work among the best performed by Correggio: it was engraved by Robert Strange, and more recently by Mauro Gandolfi. The San Girolamo was among the pictures transported to Paris by Napoleon, but was restored in 1814. — See Algarotti, Lettere sopra la Pittura; Leghorn, 1765.
