Antonio Allegri da Correggio. From the German of Dr. Julius
Meyer. Edited, and with an Introduction, by Mrs. Charles Heaton. (Macmillan and Co.)—The materials for a life of this master are exceedingly scanty. He seems to have lived in comparative obscurity, due partly, perhaps, to the circumstances of his life, and partly to his retiring disposition, while the renown of his great contemporaries blazed throughout the whole of Italy. Vasari was the first to give any connected account of Correggio, and his narrative, though it contained more fiction than fact, was the ammo whence Pungileoni and Scannelli derived their principal information, and Pater Resta stands charged with making considerable additions to the fabulous history. Tiraboschi, and later still Mengs,
subjected their accounts to a rigid examination, which removed much of the traditional portion, although they elicited little that was new. Dr. Julius Meyer has in the present volume supplemented their labours, sifted the whole of the evidence, and placed all the facts before the reader. From whom ho derived the rudiments of his art is doubtful. Mrs. Heaton, in her introduction, claims the honour for Bartolotti, an artist at the head of the school of painting in his native place, who is favour- ably mentioned by Bulbarini. Dr. Meyer is disposed to assign it to his uncle Lorenzo, who had learnt in his turn from Francesco Bianchi. His opinion is based on the similarity in arrangement, in the characters of the faces, and in the bas-reliefs, between his youthful production Madonna and St. Francis, and one of Bianchi's in the Louvre. But it was at Mantua where "his long-budding genius blossomed," under the influence of Mantegna's works, and Costa, a pupil of Francia. With re- gard to the influence of Mantegna, Mrs. Heaton and Dr. Meyer again differ, the former insisting that his stern classicism and rigid figures. could not have any formative influence over such a free and animated style as Allegri's ; the latter maintaining his position by pointing out the striking resemblance in the foreshol toning, the introduction of smiling girls' and children's faces into the most serious subjects, and the little tablet-holding genii. For a vivid description of the master's works we refer the reader to the pages of Dr. Meyer himself. Correggio, although he formed no school, exercised an important influence on painting. He first broke through the conventional bounds of ecclesiastical art, and represented the human shape, not as a frail thing subject to temptation or capable of ecstatic religious enthusiasm, but in all its loveliness of form and tints; and this by a wonderful play and arrangement of light and shade,—the Correggesque chiaroscuro. Tho key to his whole work, his failure in the representation of Christian endurance under suffering, his success in the depiction of sensuous ideality, on account of which ho has been accused by Burckhardt of demoralising art, lies in the epi- grammatic utterance of Dr. Meyer," Ho was innocently and unconsciously a born heathen." Mrs. Heaton deserves the thanks of allEnglish lovers of art for giving us this instructive volume, with its appendices, in- valuable for reference, and the highly-finished engravings in Woodbury typo which accompany it.
Previous page
