The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume 3 (of 3)

A name then still more conspicuous, though now nearly obliterated, is that of Jacopo, or as he is styled Jacobello, or as he wrote himself, Jacometto del Fiore, whose father Francesco del Fiore, a leader of art in his day, was honoured with a monument and an epitaph in Latin verse at S. Giovanni and Paolo: of him it is doubtful whether any traces remain, but of the son, who greatly surpassed him, several performances still exist, from 1401 to 1436. Vasari has wantonly taxed him with having suspended all his figures, in the Greek manner, on the points of their feet: the truth is, that he was equalled by few of his contemporaries, for few like him dared to represent figures as large as life, and fewer understood to give them beauty, dignity, and that air of agility and ease, which his forms possess; nor would the lions in his picture of Justice at the Magistrato del Proprio, have shared the first praise, had not the principal figures, in subservience to the time, been loaded with tinsel ornament and golden glitter.

Two scholars of his are mentioned: Donato, superior to him in style, and Carlo Crivelli, of obscure fame, but deserving attention for the colour, union, grace, and expression, of the small histories in which he delighted.

The ardour of the capital for the art was emulated by every town of the state; all had their painters, but all did not submit to the principles of Venice and Murano. At Verona the obscure names of Aldighieri and Stefano Dazevio, were succeeded[139 - 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.] by the vaunted one of Vittore Pisanello, of S. Vito: though accounts grossly vary on the date in which he flourished, and the school from which he sprang, that his education was Florentine is not improbable, but whoever his master, fame has ranked him with Masaccio as an improver of style. His works at Rome and Venice, in decay at the time of Vasari, are now no more; and fragments only remain of what he did at Verona. S. Eustachio caressing a Dog, and S. Giorgio sheathing his Sword and mounting his horse, figures extolled to the skies by Vasari, are, with the places which they occupied, destroyed: works which seem to have contained elements of truth and dignity in expression with novelty of invention, and of contrast, style, and foreshortening in design: a loss so much the more to be lamented, as the remains of his less considerable works at S. Firmo and Perugia, far from sanctioning the opinion which tradition has taught us to entertain of Pisano, are finished indeed with the minuteness of miniature, but are crude in colour, and drawn in lank and emaciated proportions. It appears from his works, that he understood the formation, had studied the expression, and attempted the most picturesque attitudes of animals. His name is well known to antiquaries, and to the curious in coins, as a medallist, and he has been celebrated as such by many eminent pens of his own and the subsequent century.[140 - 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.]

From the crowd[141 - See their lists in Descrizione delle Architetture, Pitture e Sculture di Vicenza con alcune osservazioni, &c. Vicenza, 1779, 8vo. p. I. II.] of obscure contemporary artists, which the neighbouring Vicenza produced, the name of Marcello, or as Ridolfi calls him Gio. Battista Figolino, deserves to be distinguished: a man of original manner, whose companion, in variety of character, intelligence of keeping, landscape, perspective, ornament, and exquisite finish, will not easily be discovered at Venice, or elsewhere in the State, at that period; and were it certain that he was anterior to the two Bellini, sufficiently eminent to claim the honours of an epoch in the history of Art: in proof of which Vicenza may still produce his Epiphany in the church of St. Bartolommeo.

But the man who had the most extensive influence on Art, if not as the first artist, as the first and most frequented teacher, was Francesco Squarcione,[142 - 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.] of Padova; in whose numerous school perhaps originated that eclectic principle which characterised part of the Adriatic and all the Lombard schools. Opulent and curious, he not only designed what ancient art offered in Italy, but passed over to Greece, visited many an isle of the Archipelago in quest of monuments, and on his return to Padova formed, from what he had collected, by copy or by purchase, of statues, basso-relievos, torsos, fragments, and cinerary urns, the most ample museum of the time, and a school in which he counted upwards of 150 students, and among them Andrea Mantegna, Marco Zoppo, Girolamo Schiavone, Jacopo Bellini.

Of Squarcione, more useful by precept than by example, little remains, and of that little, perhaps, not all his own. From the variety of manner observable in what is attributed to him, it may be suspected that he too often divided his commissions among his scholars; such as some stories of St. Francis, in a cloister of his church, and the miniatures of the Antifonario in the temple della Misericordia, attributed by the vulgar to Mantegna. Only one indisputably genuine, though retouched work of his, is mentioned by Lanzi; which, in various compartments, represents different saints, subscribed 'Francesco Squarcione,' and conspicuous for felicity of colour, expression, and perspective.

These outlines of the infancy of Venetian art show it little different from that of the other schools hitherto described; slowly emerging from barbarity, and still too much busied with the elements to think of elegance and ornament. Even then, indeed, canvass instead of panels was used by the Venetian painters; but their general vehicle was, a tempera, prepared water-colour: a method approaching the breadth of fresco, and friendly to the preservation of tints, which even now retain their virgin purity; but unfriendly to union and mellowness. It was reserved for the real epoch of oil-painting to develope the Venetian character, display its varieties, and to establish its peculiar prerogative.

Tiziano, the son of Gregorio Vecelli, was born at Piave, the principal of Cadore on the Alpine verge of Friuli, 1477.[143 - Vasari dates his birth 1480.] His education is said to have been learned, and Giov. Battista Egnazio is named as his master in Latin and Greek;[144 - Liruti, Notizie de' Letterati del Friuli, t. ii. p. 285.] but his proficiency may be doubted, for if it be true that his irresistible bent to the art obliged the father to send him in his tenth year to the school of Giov. Bellini at Venice, he could be little more than an infant when he learnt the rudiments under Sebastiano Zuccati.[145 - 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.]

At such an age, and under these masters, he acquired a power of copying the visible detail of the objects before him with that correctness of eye and fidelity of touch which distinguishes his imitation at every period of his art. Thus when, more adult, in emulation of Albert Durer, he painted at Ferrara[146 - 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.] Christ to whom a Pharisee shows the tribute money, he out-stript in subtlety of touch even that hero of minuteness: the hair of the heads and hands may be counted, the pores of the skin discriminated, and the surrounding objects seen reflected in the pupils of the eyes; yet the effect of the whole is not impaired by this extreme finish: it increases it at a distance, which effaces the fac-similisms of Albert, and assists the beauties of imitation with which that work abounds to a degree seldom attained, and never excelled by the master himself, who has left it indeed as a single monument, for it has no companion, to attest his power of combining the extremes of finish and effect.

GIACOMO ROBUSTI, SURNAMED IL TINTORETTO

1512-1594

"It might almost be said that vice is the virtue of the Venetian school, because it rests its prerogative on despatch in execution, and therefore is proud of Tintoretto, who had no other merit."[147 - "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.] Such, in speaking of the great genius before us, is the equally rash, ignorant, unphilosophic verdict of a man exclusively dubbed "The Philosophic Painter."

G. Robusti of Venice was the son of a dyer, who left him that byname as an heir-loom.[148 - It has supplanted, was probably perpetuated in allusion to his rapidity of execution, and remains familiar to ears that never heard of Robusti.] He entered the school of Tiziano when yet a boy; but he, soon discovering in the daring spirit of his nursling the symptoms of a genius which threatened future rivalship to his own powers, with that suspicious meanness which marks his character as an artist, after a short interval, ordered his head pupil, Girolamo Dante, to dismiss the boy; but as envy generally defeats its own designs, the uncourteous dismissal, instead of dispiriting, roused the energies of the heroic stripling, who, after some meditation on his future course, and comparing his master's superiority in colour with his defects in form, resolved to surpass him by an union of both: the method best suited to accomplish this he fancied to find in an intense study of Michael Angelo's style, and boldly announced his plan by writing on the door of his study, THE DESIGN OF M. ANGELO, AND THE COLOUR OF TIZIAN.

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;[149 - See Varie Pitture a fresco de' principali Maestri Veneziani, &c. Venez. fol. 1760. Tab. 8, 9, p. viii. No one who has seen the original figures of the Aurora and Creposcolo in S. Lorenzo, can mistake their imitation, or rather transcripts, in these.] 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,[150 - 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.] 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 painted the 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 dimension appears 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.[151 - 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.]

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 that sotto 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 truth bordering 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 the sopraporta by 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 to rush 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:[152 - 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.] 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 and dignity 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.

THE SCHOOL OF MANTOUA

Mantoua,[153 - Mantoua preserved a certain attachment to Virgil in the darkest ages; for besides numerous coins stamped with his image, his statue, honoured by annual festivals, remained in the forum, till the brutal fanaticism of Carlo Malatesta condemned it to the river. Vide Ant. Possevini Junioris Gonzaga, lib. v. p. 486. Paul of Florence and Peter Paul Vergerius wrote against Malatesta: the latter under the following title, 'De Diruta Statua Virgilii P.P.V. eloquentissimi Oratoris epistola ex tugurio Blondi sub Apolline.' No date.] 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 the Exarch 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.[154 - Some codices decorated with miniatures and the portrait of that Countess: the most conspicuous of which is that by Donizone, a Benedictine at Canossa, in the diocese of Reggio, but a German by extraction, who lived at the court of Mathilda, and in two books of barbarous verse composed her life and history. It is preserved in the Vatican Library, No. 4922, and was first published by Sebastian Tagnagolio, at Ingolstadt, 1612. 4to.The original portrait of Mathilda, by an unknown hand, drawn from her monument at Polirone, has been published by J. Bat. Visi in Notizie Storiche della città di Mantoua e dello stato, t. ii. p. 122. She is represented on a horse with a pomegranate in her hand.] A want perhaps more to be regretted by the antiquary than the historian of art, whose real epoch begins with the patronage of Lodovico Gonzaga and the appearance of Andrea Mantegna.[155 - In the Convent "alle Grazie," tradition dates the remains of several old pictures from the time of Mantegna. That miniature or rather missal painting had attained a high degree of excellence at that period, is proved by a large folio Bible, in the Estensian Library, decorated with admirable copies of insects, plants, and animals. The contract made between Duca Borso, 1455, and the two artists who painted it, Taddeo de Crivelli and Zuanne de Russi da Mantova, has been preserved by Bettshelli, Lett. Mant. Mantova, 1774. 4to.]

This native of Padova[156 - Vasari, whom rage of dispatch and eager credulity seldom suffered to wait for authentic information, not content, in spite of his epitaph, to tell us that he was born of low parents in some district of Mantoua, confounds the date of his death with that of the inscription itself.] 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 investigation with 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.[157 - See Nic. Vleughels, in his notes to Dolci.] 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 the cupola 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[158 - Garofalo.] 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[159 - Cataloghi, p. 498.] 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.[160 - Indice del Pam. de' Pittori, p. 21.] 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's in 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; petulant naïveté that 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 the original. 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 Hospital della Misericordia possessed 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 of Novellara, 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 of the 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 singular that 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 mythologic and 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.[161 - – "περὶ χερσὶ δὲ δεσμὸν ἴηλαΧρύσεον, ἄῤῥηκτον." —Ilias, xv. 19.] 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 obscurity in 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 the tribune 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 the cupola 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, and La 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, the widow 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 Chapel Pratonieri 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."