Mantoua,[154] 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.[155] 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.[156]
This native of Padova[157] 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.[158] 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[159] 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[160] 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.[161] 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.[162] 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."
If the most sublime degree of expression be entitled to the right of
originality, Mengs must be followed in his decision on the Ecce Homo,
formerly in the Palace Colonna, without much anxiety whether it be the
same that belonged to the family of Prati at Parma, or that which
Agostino Carracci engraved.
The Madonna seated beneath a palm-tree, bending in somnolently pensive
contemplation over the Infant on her lap, watched by an Angel above her,
and attended by a Leveret, known by the name of "La Zingarella" or the
Egyptian, from the sash round her head, formerly in the gallery of
Parma, and now at Naples in that of Capo di Monte, has suffered so
much from a modern hand, that little of the master remains but the
conception. Nearly a duplicate of it was presented by Cardinal
Alessandro Albani to king Augustus of Poland; but Mengs hesitates to
pronounce it an original.
In the period of these, about 1530, we may probably place the two
celebrated pictures of Leda and Danae, than which no modern works of art
have suffered more from accident and wanton or bigoted barbarity, or
been tossed about by more contradictory tradition.
If the subject that takes its name from Leda be, as Mengs says, rather
an allegory than a fable, it alludes to what would aggravate even the
story of that mistress of Jupiter. The central figure represents a
female seated on the verge of a rivulet with a swan between her thighs,
who attempts to insinuate his bill into her lips; but at her side, and
deeper in the water, is a tender girl, who with an air of innocence
playfully struggles to defend herself from the attacks of another
swimming swan; farther on, a girl more grown up to woman, gazes, whilst
a female servant dresses her, with an air of satiate pleasure after a
swan on the wing, that seems just to have left her; at some distance
appears half a figure of an aged woman, draped, and with looks of
regret. On the other side of the principal group, the graceful form of a
full-grown Amor strikes the lyre, and two Amorini contrive to wind some
horn instruments. The scene of all this is a charming grove on the brink
of a pellucid lake.
The second picture represents the daughter of Acrisius, but with poetic
spirit. The virgin gracefully reclines on her bed; a full-grown Cupid,
perhaps a Hymen, lifts with one hand the border of the sheet on her lap
that receives the celestial shower, whilst his other presents the mystic
drops to her enchanted glance: two Amorini at the foot of the bed try
on a touchstone, that, one of the golden drops, this, the point of an
arrow, and he, says Mengs, has a vigour of character much superior to
the other, plainly to express, that Love proceeds from the arrow, and
its ruin from gold; he likewise finds that the head and head-dress of
Danae are imitated from those of the Medicean Venus.
Vasari, and after him Mengs with others, tell that in 1530, Federigo
Gonzaga, then created Duke of Mantoua, intended to present Charles the
Fifth at the ceremonial of his coronation with two pictures worthy of
him, and in the choice of artists gave the preference to Correggio. From
this, a correct inference is drawn against that pretended obscurity in
which Correggio is said to have lingered; for at that time Giulio Romano
lived at the Court of Mantoua, and Tizian was in the service of the
Emperor. Vasari is silent on the date of the pictures, but he affirms
that, at their sight, Giulio Romano declared he had never seen a style
of colour approaching theirs. So far all seems correct; but that they
were actually presented to Charles, sent to Prague, and after the
sacking of that city by Gustavus Adolphus, carried to Stockholm, is
unproved or erroneous. If it is not likely that the Emperor, instead of
sending them to Madrid, the darling depository of his other works of
art, should have sent them into a kind of exile to Prague, it is an
error to pretend they were removed from thence by Gustavus Adolphus, who
was slain at Lutzen sixteen years before the Swedes sacked that city,
1648. The truth is, that these pictures were not given to the Emperor,
but placed in his own gallery by the Duke, where they remained till
1630, when the Imperial General Colalto stormed Mantoua, sacked it,
deprived it of its cabinet of treasures, of the celebrated vase since
possessed by the House of Brunswick, and transmitted its beautiful
collection of pictures to Prague, from whence by the event of war we
have mentioned, they became the property of Queen Christina, at whose
abdication, when the whole was packing up for Rome, the two pictures in
question were discovered in the royal stables, where they had served as
window-blinds, mutilated and despised. Whether so unaccountable a
neglect be imputable to the Queen's want of taste, as Tessin asserts, or
to accident, or, what is most unlikely, to her modesty, cannot now be
decided. They were repaired, and at her demise left to Cardinal
Azzolini, of whose heirs they were purchased by Don Livio Odescalchi,
and by him left to the Duke of Bracciano, were sold to the Regent of
France, whose son, from a whim of bigotry, had the picture of the Leda
cut to pieces in his own presence, in which state Charles Coypel
requested and obtained it for his private study. At his death it was
vamped up, repieced, disposed of by auction, and, at a high price, sold
to the King of Prussia. What became of the Danae is matter of
dispute.[163]
The picture of Io embraced by Jupiter, inbosomed in clouds, by a silent
water in which a stag quenches his thirst, was their companion: a work
to which the most lavish fame has done no justice, and beyond which no
fancy ever soared. The Io shared a still more barbarous fate. Not
content with mangling her like the Leda, the bigot prince burnt her
head; and, were it not for the beautiful duplicate which fortune
preserved in the Gallery of Vienna,[164] we should be reduced to guess
at Correggio in the fragments at Sans Souci, and the prints of Surregue
and Bartolozzi. The Imperial Gallery possesses, likewise, the Rape of
Ganymede, by Correggio, of the same size with the Io; a Mountain Scene;
a full-grown Cupid, seen from behind, with his head turned to the
spectator, shaping a bow, accompanied by a laughing and a weeping
infant, in struggling attitudes, which was likewise sold by the heirs of
Don Livio Odescalchi, has equally exercised opinion. Vasari, Tassoni, Du
Bois, de St. Gelais, &c. ascribe it to Parmegiano; Mengs and Fiorillo,
who judge from the duplicate at Vienna, with greater probability give it
to Correggio. The contrast of the attitudes is produced more by naïveté
than affectation, the lines have more simplicity than the style of
Mazzuola admitted of, and the colour more breadth. The conception of the
whole, whether the infants be the symbols of successful and unsuccessful
love, or denote the dangers of love, or be simply children, though not
beyond the fancy of Parmegiano, has more the air of a Correggiesque
conceit. Numberless copies were made after it, some by Parmegiano
himself, whose handling may be recognized in the picture at Paris.
We are now arrived at those works of Correggio's which cannot be fixed
to a certain period. Such are probably, in the Gallery of Dresden, those
known under the names of S. Giorgio and S. Sebastiano, of both of which
Mengs gives a circumstantial account. He is, however, mistaken when he
imagines the last to have been voted by the City of Modena after a
plague: the commission of it was given by the fraternity of St.
Sebastian.
The half-length portrait, formerly known at Modena as that of
Correggio's Physician, belongs to the same doubtful period. Mengs,
though he praises the colour and the impasto of it, is inclined to think
it painted about the time of his first Cupola, when he had not yet
sufficiently studied detail of forms and variety of tints. The style
resembles that of Giorgione, but is less vivid, though of equal pasto,
and somewhat more limpid.
The last, though not least celebrated piece of Antonio in this Gallery,
is the small Meditating Magdalena: of the pictures mentioned, it is the
only one painted on copper, the rest are on panel. It is little more
than a palm in height, and not quite a palm and a half long. It was,
with other small pictures, stolen out of the Gallery in 1788, but soon
recovered. The purchase price, according to Mengs, when the Gallery was
disposed of, was 27,000 Roman crowns. It has been copied by Albani, and,
if we believe Richardson, by Tizian.
Besides the spoils of Parma, there is now (1802) in the Gallery of the
Louvre, from the former collection of Versailles, a picture representing
in half-length figures of natural size the Wedding of St. Catherine,
with a St. Sebastian, and their Martyrdom in the distance. It does not
appear that Mengs ever saw more than some good copy of it, or the prints
engraved from it, else his praise would have probably been nearer to
astonishment than admiration; and though none would dare to repeat what
he ventures to say of the Magdalen's head in the St. Jerome, it might
safely be asserted, that perhaps no other picture can boast to have
united in the same degree the tints of Tizian, the glow and impasto of
Giorgione, and the breadth of Guido, with that bloom of hue and suavity
of manner peculiar to Correggio.
This divine performance was presented by Cardinal Barberino to Cardinal
Mazarin, with two others painted in water colours on canvass,
representing in allegoric figures the heroism of Virtue and the
debasement of Vice. The first, in physiognomy and attitudes, abounds in
what is commonly called the grace of Correggio; the second in
picturesque energy and expression: they are likewise placed among the
collections of the Louvre. An unfinished repetition of the first in the
House Doria Panfili at Rome, is adduced by Mengs as a proof of
Correggio's intelligence in sketching, and the superiority of his
principle in the progress of a work.
Of two pictures in the Cabinet at Madrid, the principal is that of
Christ praying in the Garden, with an Angel on high pointing to a Cross
and a Crown of Thorns on the ground, scarcely discernible. The open but
drooping arms of the Saviour express his entire resignation to the will
of his Father. The most poetic singularity of this picture is its
chiaroscuro: Christ receives his light from Heaven, the Angel from
Christ: at a distance on lower ground, and nearly evanescent, are the
three Disciples _in graceful and picturesque attitudes_, and farther
off, the approaching host of captors. At first sight, the whole seems to
be divided into two masses only of light and darkness, but on
inspection, the ambient medium and the more and less of distinctness in
the objects as they approach the light or recede from it, is divinely
expressed. There is a tale, which even Lomazzo and Scanelli repeat, that
Correggio parted with this picture to his apothecary for four scudi,
which he owed him; that afterwards it was sold for five hundred crowns
to Pirrho Count Visconti, who resold it for seven hundred and fifty gold
doubloons, to the Marchese Camarena, Governor of Milan, by whom it was
bought in commission for Philip the Fourth. Every day discovers some
copy, or, if you choose to believe those who wish to dispose of them,
some duplicate or triplicate of this picture. Padre Resta possessed not
one, but four, all of which he insisted on being believed in as
originals: one on copper, another on wood, which Lelio Orsi was said to
have copied on canvass; a third, likewise on panel but somewhat
worm-eaten, disposed of to Monsignor Marchetti, and a fourth again on
copper. Some of these are probably in England.
The companion of this picture is the Madonna dressing the Infant, with
Joseph planing a board in the back-ground; a performance though inferior
in style to the former, not less original from the pentimenti still
discoverable in the two principal figures.
The Duke of Alba possesses of Correggio, in figures somewhat less than
Nature, Mercury teaching Cupid to read in the presence of Venus. Venus
has the singular attribute of wings, and of a bow in her left hand; and
Mengs persuades himself to discover in her forms a reminiscence of an
imitation of the Apollino, formerly in the Villa Medici at Rome. The
characteristic excellence of the execution, and an evident pentimento in
the arm of the Mercury, leave no doubt of its having a better claim to
originality than the duplicates in France and Germany. It formerly made
part of the collection of Charles the First, and Sandrart saw it in the
Palace of Whitehall, from whence it was purchased by an ancestor of the
Duke of Alba.
Not to waste time on conjectural works, we finish this list with a
picture formerly in the house Barberini, now supposed to be in England:
it is painted on panel, and represents from the narrative of S. Marc,
the young man who followed our Saviour at the moment of his captivity,
but fled on being laid hold of, and left his garment in the hands of the
captors. Mengs describes a duplicate of this picture, painted on
canvass, at his time in the hands of an Englishman at Rome, and though,
in his opinion, only the study for the other, in the principal parts,
especially the figure of the youth, highly finished: his expression,
form and attitude, remind the critic so strongly of the same in the
eldest son of the Laocoon, that he is persuaded they are an imitation,
though in a style more consonant with Correggio's manner.
The cause and circumstances of his death we are not acquainted with,
since the idle tale has been discarded which Vasari tells, of his
perishing in consequence of having carried home a load of sixty scudi in
copper, which he had received in payment at Parma. He who considers what
strength would be required to carry sixty crowns in quattrini, will find
its confutation in the tale itself; let it be added that the extreme
heat which is said to have aggravated the fatigue, and accelerated his
death, is, even in Italy, not coincident with the season in which he
must have taken the journey,[165] as he died on the fifth of March. The
magnificence and number of his commissions; the deference paid to his
powers in the face of rival artists, by the very patrons of those men,
or societies, that might have saved expense by admitting concurrence;
the handsome, though not quite metropolitan prices, which he received,
and what Mengs has observed, the expensive goodness of his colours, of
his panels, and canvasses--make it not only extremely improbable that he
should have lived in the depressed circumstances, to which vulgar
tradition has sunk him; but add an air of truth to the opinion of those
who thought him, if not opulent, yet nearer allied to affluence than
want.
Correggio was a monument without a tomb; but it appears strange that a
century and a half should have elapsed before the thought of erecting
him one occurred to the Senate and citizens of his native place, and
then was suffered to evaporate in ineffectual projects. The boastful
intentions of Padre Resta proved equally nugatory: the tombstone set and
inscribed by Girolamo Conti still remains a solitary offering to his
genius:
D. O. M.
Antonio. Allegri. Civi.
Vulgo. Il Correggio.
Arte. Picturæ. Habitu. Probitatis.
Eximio.
Monum. Hoc. Posuit.
Hier. Conti. Concivis.
Siccine. Separas. Amara. Mors.
Obiit. Anno. Ætatis. XL. Sal. MDXXXIV.
On such a face as Correggio's, physiognomy might have established
principles or drawn some inferences from it, had not a perverse destiny
left us as ignorant of it, as of his complexion, stature, character, and
habits. Vasari's exertions to obtain a portrait of him were not only
unsuccessful, but hopeless; and the profile which is shown in the dome
of Parma as his, becomes inadmissible from the very name of the artist
to whom it is ascribed.[166] The head which found its way into the third
and every following edition of Vasari, has certainly nothing repugnant
with the notions we may form of his character, but age. Meditation,
simplicity, serenity, compose it. It is said to have been copied from a
picture not quite finished, which appears to have the touch of
Correggio, and came from Sicily to Naples. He is represented
contemplating a design, the original of which, report has placed at
Vienna with Prince Esterhazy. The portrait which is at Turin, in the
"Vigna della Regina," engraved by Valperga, with the epigraph, in part
hid by the frame, but read by Lanzi "Antonius Corrigius f." (_i. e._
fecit) though by some believed genuine, appears spurious from this very
circumstance, the large character of the letters and the space they
occupy; a manner of writing often used to indicate the person painted,
never the painter. Another portrait, which from Genoua is said to have
been carried to England, with the indorsed inscription "Dosso Dossi
dipinse questo ritratto di Antonio da Correggio," fronts the Memorie of
Ratti. Without examining the authenticity of this inscription, it is
sufficient to observe, that Antonio da Correggio is likewise the name of
Antonio Bernieri, a celebrated miniature painter, and fellow citizen of
Allegri, whose date coincides with that of Dosso, and whom there will be
occasion to mention again.
Of Correggio's numerous pretending imitators, Lodovico Carracci appears
to be the only one who penetrated his principle. The axiom, that the
less the traces appear of the means by which a work has been produced,
the more it resembles the operations of Nature, is not an axiom likely
to spring from the infancy of art. The even colour, veiled splendour,
the solemn twilight; that tone of devotion and cloistered meditation,
which Lodovico Carracci spread over his works, could arise only from the
contemplation of some preceding style, analogous to his own feelings and
its comparison with Nature; and where could that be met with in a degree
equal to what he found in the infinite unity and variety of Correggio's
effusions? They inspired his frescoes in the cloisters of S. Michele in
Bosco: the foreshortenings of the muscular labourers at the hermitage,
and of the ponderous demon that mocks their toil; the warlike splendour
in the Homage of Totila; the Nocturnal Conflagration of Monte Casino;
the wild graces of deranged beauty, and the insidious charms of the
sister nymphs in the garden scene, equally proclaim the pupil of
Correggio.
His triumph in oil is the altar-piece of St. John preaching in a chapel
of the Certosa at Bologna, whose lights seem embrowned by a golden veil,
and the shadowy gleam of Valombrosa; though he sometimes indulged in
tones austere, pronounced, and hardy: such is the Flagellation of Christ
in the same church, whose tremendous depth of flesh-tints contrasts the
open wide-expanded sky, and less conveys than dashes its terrors on the
astonished sense.