Part 1 (1/2)

Correggio

by Estelle M Hurll

PREFACE

To the general public the works of Correggio are much less familiar than those of other Italian painters Parma lies outside the route of the ordinary tourist, and the treasures of its gallery and churches are still unsuspected by many It is hoped that this little collection of pictures reat Emilian The selections are about equally divided between the frescoes of Parh the various European galleries

ESTELLE M HURLL

NEW BEDFORD, Mass

_December, 1901_

INTRODUCTION

I ON CORREGGIO'S CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST

The art of Correggio was very justly su out that in theand composition the artist would scarcely have won a reputation, the writer goes on to say: ”To Correggio belongs the great praise of having attained the highest point of perfection in coloring, whether his works were executed in oil or in fresco” In another place he writes, ”No artist has handled the colors more effectually than hiiven a ures” Color and chiaroscuro were undoubtedly, as Vasari indicates, the two features of his art in which Correggio achieved his highest triumphs, and if some others had equalled or even surpassed him in the first point, none before hiht and shadow

Not only did he understand how to throw the separate figures of the picture into relief, giving them actual bodily existence, but he ht and shade in the whole coio first, chiaroscuro becoeneral expression of a pictorially coives exactly the right expression to the special io's artistic tes of his creation delight in life and movement; their faces are wreathed with perpetual smiles Hence childhood and youth were the painter's favorite subjects The subtleties of character study did not interest hie He was perhaps at his best aination invented, creatures without a sense of responsibility, glad merely to be alive

[Footnote 1: Tradition says that the temperament of the man hi timid and melancholy]

This temperament explains why the artist contented himself with so little variety in his types We need not wonder at the monotony of the Madonna's face She is happy, and this is all the painter required of her psychically He took no thought even to make her beautiful: the tribute he offered her was the technical excellence of his art,--the exquisite color hich he painted flesh and drapery, theover cheek and neck With hair and hands he took especial pains, and these features often redeeures

In his predilection for happy subjects Correggio reminds us of Raphael The two men shrank equally from the painful But where the Uio's was exuberant and ecstatic Raphael indeed was alio had a passion for motion ”He divines, knows and paints the finest movements of nervous life,” says Burckhardt

Even when he sought to portray a figure in stable equilibriu pose; witness the insecurity of Joseph in the Madonna della Scodella, and of St Jero his naht in the midst of action In this characteristic the painter was allied to Michelangelo, the keynote of whose art is action

It is a curious fact that two artists of such opposed natures--the one so light-hearted, the other burdened with the prophet's spirit--should have so much in common in their decorative methods Both understood the decorative value of the nude, and found their supre the ure, the two fell into siio cannot be coelo He was utterly incapable of the sweeping lines characteristic of the great Florentine He seldom achieved any success in the flow of drapery, and often his disposition of folds is very cluht have been had he been free to choose his own subjects Limited, as he was, in his most important commissions, to the orn cycle of ecclesiastical theenius

Nevertheless, he infused into the old theether new spirit, the spirit of his own individuality It is a spirit which we call distinctlythe works of the old Italian io's art is so anomalous that it has inevitably called forth detractors What to his admirers is mere childlike sweetness is condemned as ”sentimentality,”

innocent playfulness as ”frivolity,” exuberance of vitality as ”sensuality” Certainly there is nothing didactic in his art ”space and light and ed to express,”[2] and to these ainificance One of his severest critics (Burckhardt) has conceded that ”he is the first to represent entirely and coenuine nature” He, then, who is a lover of genuine nature in her ht and io

[Footnote 2: E H Blashfield in Italian Cities]

II ON BOOKS OF REFERENCE

The first biographer of Correggio was Vasari, in whose ”Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects” is included a brief account of this painter The student should read this work in the last edition annotated by E H and E W Blashfield and A A Hopkins Passing over the studies of the intervening critics, Julius Meyer's biography may be mentioned next, as an authoritative work, practically alone in the field for some twenty-five years This was translated from the German by M C Heaton, and published in London in 1876 Finally, the recent biography by Signor Corrado Ricci (translated from the Italian by Florence Simmonds, and published in 1896) le large volume, profusely illustrated The author is the director of the galleries of Pario's works and the exa upon his life

General handbooks of Italian art giving sketches of Correggio's life and work are Kugler's ”Handbook of the Italian Schools,” revised by A