Part 8 (1/1)

The two children of the picture are intent upon their task The very seriousness of their ues soreat conquest The arrow h to carry the sweet poison straight to the victie heads with clustering ringlets The wingless boy has the high, full forehead which etic temperament of the thile his co illustration of Correggio's love of children As it was not the fashi+on of his time to paint children's portraits, he had to enious he e have had occasion to see in our study When given a sacred subject to paint he filled all the available spaces with child angels sporting in the clouds With the ceiling of a room to decorate, he covered the whole surface with a band of little boys at play

Our reproduction is a detail of a larger picture illustrating the ht corner of the canvas

XVI

A SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF CORREGGIO

Almost every celebrated painter has at some time in his life sat for his portrait Many have painted their own likenesses, not so much from motives of vanity, but as a matter of artistic interest Others have posed as io was an exception in this regard The old biographer Vasari made many efforts to procure a portrait, and concluded that ”he never took it hi that he lived much in retirement”

Our painter, as we have seen, was not a student of the face Forreatly interest hiht and shade This is perhaps the reason why he never thought it worth while to paint his portrait He was not a traveller, and probably never visited any of the great art centres of his ti the contemporary painters ould have been likely to make his portrait In any case his busy life left little tiht at all of a portrait, he doubtless postponed it to so for such a tiht suddenly to an end He died of fever in Correggio at the age of forty

In the passing centuries one picture after another has been put forward as a pretended portrait of Correggio The painter's ader to believe that a real likeness had at last been discovered Though we cannot rely upon the genuineness of any of these, so

Such an one is our frontispiece, froio's portrait Whoever the original may have been, the expression is certainly anient There is much humor and kindliness in the face The unknown artist should have the credit for the gift of revealing the individual character of his sitter

Lacking an authentic portrait of the io, we have to content ourselves with the short account of his character given by Vasari ”He was a person,” writes the biographer, ”who held hiht estee satisfactorily respecting his art; perceiving its difficulties, he could not give hi the perfection to which he would so fain have seen it carried; he was a man who contented hiood Christian”