CORREGGIO.* CORREGGIO is a stumbling-block to many. To the plain
man, and still more to the plain woman, who like their sentiment strong, and do not resent the obvious and expected, Correggio's pictures are oases in the desert of early Italian galleries; he comes to them as a pleasing foretaste of the maturer delights of Carlo Dolci and Scu3soferrato. The initiated, on the other hand, failing to see his artistic sentiment because of his senti- mentality, turn from him with a dista,ste which is intensified by the admiration of the vulgar. And yet for all his caressing suavity Correggio was a refined and, in a sense, a subtle artist. His emotional nature may have been some- what commonplace, but his artistic presentment of those emotions is as distinguished as it is unique.
It is doubtful, however, whether Signor Ricci's book will appeal to either of these two classes of spectators. Those
• Antonio dile gri do Correggio: his Life, his Friends, and his Time. By Gcrrado Ricci, Director of the Royal Gallery, Parma. Translated by Florence Simmonds. London; Wiliam Heinemann. 1896. who see in a Correggio a transfiguration of the Christmas- card will scarcely have patience for Signor Ricci's elaborate re- search into contemporary documents; while those who expect a scholarly appreciation of Correggio's position as an artist wilt be somewhat annoyed at the author's indulgence in picturesque writing. In fact, the book (in spite of Signor Rioci's pains- taking and honest research) is not wholly free from a suspicion of bookmaking—a suspicion which the illustrations do not dissipate. To have made the book of the utmost value to students all the money available should have been devoted to getting first-rate reproductions of all Correggio's worke. Instead of this, the pages are crowded with small and quite unnecessary views of the baroque exteriors of churches in which Correggio painted, of places where Correggio was born, of others where he was not born, and such like. In consequence of this attention to picturesque accessories the reproductions of the paintings themselves have suffered. Two processes have been employed ; some of the best-known pictures have been excellently reproduced by photo. engraving, the others have been translated by a new process into a blurred and blotted impression which gives no idea of whether the originals from which they proceed are oils, or frescoes, or, as one cannot help sometimes suspecting, water-colour copies or engravings. The photographs to he bought in Parma are poor, but these reproductions compare unfavourably even with them. The sad part of it is that the frescoes, which are the least known and the most important of Correggio'a works, have come out worst of all. In one case, by an error in the production of the block, the "Assumption of the Virgin" has been converted into a variety enter- tainment with an angel on the tight-rope. It is, indeed, disappointing to find that the recent improvements in cheap photographic reproduction have led to such poor results as these. A comparison of the versions of the Chatsworth drawing given on p. 230 with the same drawing as it appears in Morelli's book published some years ago shows the striking inferiority of the later reproduction. On the other hand, Mr. Benson's picture has come out better. But for the most part the reproductions given here will be of little use to the student who aims at a close study of Cor- reggio's art, and to whom the exact quality of line and the exact relations of tone are as important as the general im- pression of the design as a whole.
In the writing we find the same deflections from the ideal of a scholarly book. Signor Ricci certainly knows his sub.
ject very thoroughly, and he shows great industry in amass- ing documentary evidence for Correggio's chronology, so that his book will be certainly regarded as authoritative. But its practical value would have been increased as much as its size would have been diminished by leaving out unnecesaary con- jectures. We are told, for instance, that Correggio's mother was probably present when he got his first commission and what she thought and felt, and on a good many occasions we are allowed a conjectural insight into the artist's feelings All this might be of value if Correggio's personality (not to mention his mother's personality) were of any importance or interest outside his work as an artist, but it is not. His life was uneventful and obscure (we know that he was born, that he witnessed a few deeds and died, and little else), and such conjectural reconstructions as Signor Ricci gives do not help our ignorance.
However, these unnecessary details do not seriously impair the value of Signor Ricci's main thesis,—to trace the growth of Correggio's artistic individuality, which by its intensely personal character, as well as by its apparent isolation from all surrounding influences, has always appeared somewhat mysterious and inexplicable. In this part of his work Signor Ricci has expanded the ideas put forward by Morelli, and has ingeniously combined them with the older view of Correggio's artistic descent from Mautegna. That is to say, while admitting the generally Ferrarese origin of Correggio's work, be also points out, what Morelli appears to have overlooked, the Mantegnesque elements in it ; and he accounts for this combination by the suggestion that Correggio went as a young man to Mantua at a time when both Mantogna and Costa were working there. That Correggio should have learned from Mantegna is at first sight surprising enough, the opposition of their artistic temperaments being so marked as to obscure their points of likeness. These are, infect, only to be traced in certain details, as, for instance, in the features,
and head-dress of S. Elizabeth in Mr. Benson's picture, now at Burlington House. Signor Ricci dismisses the theory, which has some historical basis, that Correggio first learned from Bianchi at Modena His objection is that Bianchi died when Correggio was only sixteen. But there is every probability that Correggio began his artistic education well before that age. Moreover, some of the traits in Correggio's early work, which Signor Ricci adduces as proofs of his education under Mantegna, point even more strongly to Bianchi. For instance, the pose of the child in Correggio's small early work in the Uffizi is almost absolutely identical with that in Bianchi's great picture in the Louvre, while it only vaguely recalls the Mantegna from which Signor Ricci derives it. From Bianchi, indeed, Correggio might have learned almost all his Ferrarese 'characteristics, the raised throne ornamented with medallions and the flower and fruit decorations. The fact is, as Mr. Berenson has pointed out, that Ferrara was from 1460 to 1480 the home of an artistic activity which, spreading thence over the north-east of Italy, carried into various schools the characteristics of a common stock, and these characteristics might have been learned almost equally from any one of the many painters who were there at that time.
With regard to the possible influence of Lotto on Correggio, signor Ricci adopts the usual view that, in spite of the striking similarity of their work, no direct influence of the elder artist on the younger is to be traced. Lotto was the only artist of the day whose natural bias was sufficiently sympathetic with Correggio's to have influenced him in the essentials of his art ; but in default of direct evidence for each influence it is safer to assume that the similarity of their temperaments led them by separate paths to similar results. Bat, indeed, the same cause that makes it so difficult to determine exactly from whom Correggio's art derives makes it of comparative unimportance. The fact is that Correggio -took very little from his masters ; what he took was purely technical, the scaffolding merely of his art, and even this he either got rid of or developed into new methods while he was still quite young. From the Ferrarese he learned certain habitual ways of building up a picture, together with a few decorative motives ; from Mantegna he must have got the secrets of the art of perspective di sotto in su which he afterwards carried to such amazing perfection in the domee of Parma; from a chance sight of some Lionardesque picture he may have got a hint of that subtle chiaroscuro, without which his peculiar sentiment could never have been fully expressed. But whatever he took from tradition was fused so completely in the crucible of his own personality, became so immediately an integral part of his attitude towards Nature, that to pick out the constituent elements we must for -the time lose sight of the unity of his work. This is not the ease with all great artists (though an artist in whom the personal vision is so spontaneous and so self-consistent is almost certain to be great); Raphael, for instance, arrived at Cis formula only by entering successively into the personality 'of his various masters, and seeing Nature through their eyes, only seeing it more finely. At each stage what he had gained from various sources was present explicitly as a separate and conflicting element in the total vision. But Correggio before he was twenty-one had painted the picture lately shown at Burlington House (since we let Signor Crespi's picture go, almost the only early Correggio in England), in which already his selection from Nature is in perfect accord with 'his emotional bias.
Even those who dislike Correggio's ecstatic sentiment -cannot deny his unique power of compelling line, tone, colour, and, above all, the quality of the paint itself, to ex- press that sentiment in its fullest intensity, and to express nothing but that. And surely if we attempt to get to any- thing like a dispassionate standard of criticism we must adopt some such test of excellence as this power of har- monising everything in the picture to one emotional key, leaving out of account our personal sympathy with or distaste for the mood so expressed. That Correggio's emotional range was limited is obvious, and that he failed when he stepped outside it is shown by his picture of a martyrdom at Parma. It was of no use for him to try to express the horror of the scene or the brutality of the executioners when his dominant mood of ecstatic sensuous delight betrayed itself with unfailing certainty in every curve of the drapery and every leaf of the trees. Dramatic art then, was out of his power, because the idea of conflict and of pain was remote from him; he could not live in the atmosphere of the " sublime " (in Burke's sense of the word); but certain lyrical moods, obvious ones no doubt, common.. place if you will, were expressed by him with final perfection.
The translation of Signor Ricci's book is not as good as it might be, and the reader is likely to be annoyed by the perpetual and quite unnecessary use of the word (more all through the book.
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