CORREGGIO AT PARMA: In
Correggio (1494?-1534) all the Boccaccio
nature of the Renaissance came to the surface. It was indicated in Andrea del
Sarto—this nature-worship—but Correggio was the consummation. He was the Faun of
the Renaissance, the painter with whom the beauty of the human as distinguished
from the religious and the classic showed at its very strongest. Free animal
spirits, laughing madonnas, raving nymphs,
oil paintings of nature, excited children of the wood, and
angels of the sky pass and repass through his pictures in an atmosphere of pure
sensuousness. They appeal to us not religiously, not historically, not
intellectually, but sensuously and artistically through their rhythmic lines,
their palpitating flesh,
original oil paintings wholesale, their beauty of color, and in the light and atmosphere
that surround them. He was less of a religionist than Andrea del Sarto. Religion
in art was losing ground in his day, and the liberality and worldliness of its
teachers appeared clearly enough in the decorations of the Convent of St. Paul
at Parma, where Correggio was allowed to paint mythological Dianas and Cupids in
the place of saints and madonnas. True enough, he painted the religious subject
very often, but with the same spirit of life and joyousness as profane
subjects.
landscape oil painting on canvas
FIG. 46—CORREGGIO. MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE AND CHRIST.
LOUVRE.
Please
click here for a modern color image
The classic subject seemed more appropriate to his spirit, and yet he knew
and probably cared less about it than the religious subject. His Dianas and
Ledas are only
[106]
so in name. They have little of the Hellenic spirit about them, and for the
sterner, heroic phases of classicism—the lofty, the grand—Correggio never
essayed them. The things of this earth and the sweetness thereof seemed ever his
aim. Women and children were beautiful to him in the same way that flowers and
trees and skies and sunsets were beautiful. They were revelations of grace,
charm, tenderness, light, shade,
flower oil paintings on canvas, color. Simply to exist and be glad in the
sunlight was sweetness to Correggio. He would have no Sibylesque mystery, no
prophetic austerity, no solemnity, no great intellectuality. He was no leader of
a tragic chorus. The dramatic, the forceful, the powerful, were foreign to his mood.
He was a singer of lyrics and pastorals, a lover of the material beauty about
him, and it is because he passed by the pietistic, the classic, the literary,
and showed the beauty of physical life as an art motive that he is called the
Faun of the Renaissance. The appellation is not inappropriate.
oil paintings of flowers
How or why he came to take this course would be hard to determine. It was
reflective of the times; but Correggio, so far as history tells us, had little
to do with the movements and people of his age. He was born and lived and died
near Parma, and is sometimes classed among the Bologna-Ferrara painters, but the
reasons for the classification are not too strong. His education, masters, and
influences are all shadowy and indefinite. He seems, from his drawing and
composition, to have known something of Mantegna at Mantua; from his coloring
something of Dosso and Garofolo, especially in his straw-yellows; from his early
types and faces something of Costa and Francia, and his contours and
light-and-shade indicate a knowledge of Leonardo's work. But there is no
positive certainty that he saw the work of any of these men.
oil paintings wholesale
His drawing was faulty at times, but not obtrusively so; his color and
brush-work rich, vivacious, spirited; his light brilliant, warm, penetrating;
his contours melting, graceful; his atmosphere omnipresent, enveloping. In
composition he rather pushed aside line in favor of light and color. It was his
technical peculiarity that he centralized his light and surrounded it by darks
as a foil. And in this very feature he was one of the first men in Renaissance
Italy to paint a picture for the purpose of weaving a scheme of lights and darks
through a tapestry of rich colors. That is art for art's sake, and that, as will
be seen further on, was the picture motive of the great Venetians.
dafen oil painting village
Correggio's immediate pupils and followers, like those of Raphael and Andrea
del Sarto, did him small honor. As was usually the case in Renaissance
art-history they
[108] caught at the method and lost the spirit of the
master. His son,
Pomponio Allegri (1521-1593?), was a painter of some
mark without being in the front rank.
Michelangelo Anselmi(1491-1554?),
though not a pupil, was an indifferent imitator of Correggio.
Parmigianino (1504-1540), a mannered painter of some brilliancy, and of
excellence in portraits,
flower oil paintings on canvas, was perhaps the best of the immediate followers. It was
not until after Correggio's death, and with the painters of the Decadence, that
his work was seriously taken up and followed.
PRINCIPAL WORKS: Milanese—Leonardo da
Vinci, Last Supper S. M. delle Grazie Milan (in ruins), Mona Lisa, Madonna
with St. Anne (badly damaged) Louvre, Adoration (unfinished) Uffizi, Angel at
left in Verrocchio's Baptism Florence Acad.; Luini, frescos Monastero
Maggiore, 71 fragments in Brera Milan, Church of the Pilgrims Sarrona, S. M.
degli Angeli Lugano, altar-pieces Duomo Como, Ambrosian Library Milan, Brera,
Uffizi, Louvre,oil paintings for sale, Madrid, St. Petersburgh, and other galleries; Beltraffio,
Madonna Louvre, Barbara Berlin Gal., Madonna Nat. Gal. Lon., fresco Convent of
S. Onofrio Rome (ascribed to Da Vinci); Marco da Oggiono, Archangels and
other works Brera, Holy Family Madonna Louvre; Solario, Ecce Homo Repose
Poldi-Pezzoli Gal. Milan, Holy Family Brera, Madonna Portrait Louvre, Portraits
Nat. Gal. Lon., Assumption Certosa of Pavia; Giampietrino, Magdalene
Brera, Madonna S. Sepolcro Milan, Magdalene and Catherine Berlin Gal.; Cesare
da Sesto, Madonna Brera, Magi Naples Mus.;Gaudenzio Ferrara, frescos
Church of Pilgrims Saronna, other pictures in Brera, Turin Gal., S. Gaudenzio
Novara, S. Celso Milan. abstract oil paintings for sale
Siennese—Sodoma, frescos Convent of St. Anne
near Pienza, Benedictine Convent of Mont' Oliveto Maggiore, Alexander and Roxana
Villa Farnesina Rome, S. Bernardino Palazzo Pubblico, S. Domenico Sienna,
pictures Uffizi, Brera, Munich, Vienna Gals.; Pacchiarotto, Ascension
Visitation Sienna Gal.;Girolamo del Pacchia, frescos (3) S. Bernardino,
altar-pieces S. Spirito and Sienna Acad., Munich and Nat. Gal. Lon.;
Peruzzi, fresco Fontegiuste Sienna, S. Onofrio, S. M. della Pace Rome;
Beccafumi, St. Catherine Saints Sienna Acad., frescos S. Bernardino
Hospital and S. Martino Sienna, Palazzo Doria Rome, Pitti, Berlin, Munich
Gals. art oil painting for sale
Ferrarese and Bolognese—Dosso Dossi, many
works Ferrara Modena Gals., Duomo S. Pietro Modena, Brera,
Borghese, Doria, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Gals.; Garofolo, many works
Ferrara churches and Gal., Borghese, Campigdoglio, Louvre, Berlin, Dresden,
Munich, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Mazzolino, Ferrara, Berlin, Dresden, Louvre,
Doria, Borghese, Pitti, Uffizi, and Nat. Gal. Lon.; Bagnacavallo,
Misericordia and Gal. Bologna, Louvre, Berlin, Dresden Gals. oil painting on canvas for sale
Parmese—Correggio, frescos Convent of S.
Paolo, S. Giovanni Evangelista, Duomo Parma, altar-pieces Dresden (4), Parma
Gals., Louvre, mythological pictures Antiope Louvre, Danae Borghese, Leda
Jupiter and Io Berlin, Venus Mercury and Cupid Nat. Gal. Lon., Ganymede Vienna
Gal.; Pomponio Allegri, frescos Capella del Popolo Parma; Anselmi,
frescos S. Giovanni Evangelista, altar-pieces Madonna della Steccata, Duomo,
Gal. Parma, Louvre; Parmigianino, frescos Moses Steccata, S. Giovanni
Parma, altar-pieces Santa Margherita, Bologna Gal., Madonna Pitti, portraits
Uffizi, Vienna, Naples Mus., other works Dresden, Vienna, and Nat. Gal.
Lon. oil paintings