Saint. This was painted for Briseida Bergonzi from 1527 onwards, and was remunerated by 400 gold imperials, some cartloads of faggots and measures of wheat, and a fat pig. It is now in the gallery at Parma. The “Magdalene lying at the entrance of her Cavern”: this small picture (only 18 in. wide) was bought by Augustus III. of Saxony for 6000 louis d’or, and is in Dresden. In the same gallery, the two works designated “St George” (painted towards 1532) and “St Sebastian.” In the Parma gallery, the Madonna named “della Scala,” a fresco which was originally in a recess of the Porta Romana, Parma; also the Madonna “della Scodella” (of the bowl, which is held by the Virgin—the subject being the Repose in Egypt): it was executed for the church of San Sepolcro. Both these works date towards 1526. In the church of the Annunciation, “Parma,” a fresco of the Annunciation, now all but perished. Five celebrated pictures painted or begun in 1532,—“Venus,” “Leda,” “Danaë,” “Vice,” and “Virtue”: the “Leda,” with figures of charming girls bathing, is now in the Berlin gallery, and is a singularly delightful specimen of the master. In Vienna, “Jupiter and Io.” In the Louvre, “Jupiter and Antiope,” and the “Mystic Marriage of St Catharine.” In the Naples Museum, the “Madonna Reposing,” commonly named “La Zingarella,” or the “Madonna del Coniglio” (Gipsy-girl, or Madonna of the Rabbit). On some of his pictures Correggio signed “Lieto,” as a synonym of “Allegri.” About forty works can be confidently assigned to him, apart from a multitude of others probably or manifestly spurious.
The famous story that this great but isolated artist was once, after long expectancy, gratified by seeing a picture of Raphael’s, and closed an intense scrutiny of it by exclaiming “Anch’ io son pittore” (I too am a painter), cannot be traced to any certain source. It has nevertheless a great internal air of probability; and the most enthusiastic devotee of the Umbrian will admit that in technical bravura, in enterprizing, gifted, and consummated execution, not Raphael himself could have assumed to lord it over Correggio.
In 1520 Correggio married Girolama Merlino, a young lady of Mantua, who brought him a good dowry. She was but sixteen years of age, very lovely, and is said by tradition to have been the model of his Zingarella. They lived in great harmony together, and had a family of four children. She died in 1529. Correggio himself expired at his native place on the 5th of March 1534. His illness was a short one, and has by some authors been termed pleurisy. Others, following Vasari, allege that it was brought on by his having had to carry home a sum of money, 50 scudi, which had been paid to him for one of his pictures, and paid in copper coin to humiliate and annoy him; he carried the money himself, to save expense, from Parma to Correggio on a hot day, and his fatigue and exhaustion led to the mortal illness. In this curious tale there is no symptom of authenticity, unless its very singularity, and the unlikelihood of its being invented without any foundation at all, may be allowed to count for something. He is said to have died with Christian piety; and his eulogists (speaking apparently from intuition rather than record) affirm that he was a good citizen, an affectionate son and father, fond and observant of children, a sincere and obliging friend, pacific, beneficent, grateful, unassuming, without meanness, free from envy and tolerant of criticism. He was buried with some pomp in the Arrivabene chapel, in the cloister of the Franciscan church at Correggio.
Regarding the art of Correggio from an intellectual or emotional point of view, his supreme gift may be defined as suavity,—a vivid, spontaneous, lambent play of the affections, a heartfelt inner grace which fashions the forms and features, and beams like soft and glancing sunshine in the expressions. We see lovely or lovable souls clothed in bodies or corresponding loveliness, which are not only physically charming, but are so informed with the spirit within as to become one with that in movement and gesture. In these qualities of graceful naturalness, not heightened into the sacred or severe, and of joyous animation, in momentary smiles and casual living turns of head or limb, Correggio undoubtedly carried the art some steps beyond anything it had previously attained, and he remains to this day the unsurpassed or unequalled model of pre-eminence. From a technical point of view, his supreme gift—even exceeding his prodigious faculty in foreshortening and the like—is chiaroscuro, the power of modifying every tone, from bright light to depth of darkness, with the sweetest and most subtle gradations, all being combined into harmonious unity. In this again he far distanced all predecessors, and defied subsequent competition. His colour also is luminous and precious, perfectly understood and blended; it does not rival the superb richness or deep intense glow of the Venetians, but on its own showing is a perfect achievement, in exact keeping with his powers in chiaroscuro and in vital expression. When we come, however, to estimate painters according to their dramatic faculty, their power of telling a story or impressing a majestic truth, their range and strength of mind, we find the merits of Correggio very feeble in comparison with those of the highest masters, and even of many who without, being altogether great have excelled in these particular qualities. Correggio never means much, and often, in subjects where fulness of significance is demanded, he means provokingly little. He expressed his own miraculous facility by saying that he always had his thoughts at the end of his pencil; in truth, they were often thoughts rather of the pencil and its controlling hand than of the teeming brain. He has the faults of his excellences—sweetness lapsing into mawkishness and affectation, empty in elevated themes and lasciviously voluptuous in those of a sensuous type, rapid and forceful action lapsing into posturing and self-display, fineness and sinuosity of contour lapsing into exaggeration and mannerism, daring design lapsing into incorrectness. No great master is more dangerous than Correggio to his enthusiasts; round him the misdeeds of conventionalists and the follies of connoisseurs cluster with peculiar virulence, and almost tend to blind to his real and astonishing excellences those practitioners or lovers of painting who, while they can acknowledge the value of technique, are still more devoted to greatness of soul, and grave or elevated invention, as expressed in the form of art.
Correggio was the head of the school of painting of Parma, which forms one main division of the Lombardic school. He had more imitators than pupils. Of the latter one can name with certainty only his son Pomponio, who was born in 1521 and died at an advanced age; Francesco Capelli; Giovanni Giarola; Antonio Bernieri (who, being also a native of the town of Correggio, has sometimes been confounded with Allegri); and Bernardo Gatti, who ranks as the best of all. The Parmigiani (Mazzuoli) were his most highly distinguished imitators.
A large number of books have been written concerning Correggio. The principal modern authority is Conrado Ricci, Life and Times of Correggio (1896); see also Pungileoni, Memorie storiche di Antonio Allegri (1817); Julius Meyer, Antonio Allegri (1870, English translation, 1876); H. Thode, Correggio (1898); Bigi, Vita ed opere (1881); Colnaghi, Correggio Frescoes at Parma (1845); Fagan, Works of Correggio (1873); and T. Sturge Moore, Correggio (1906) (a work which includes some adverse criticism on the views of Bernhard Berenson, in his Study of Italian Art, 1901, and elsewhere). (W. M. R.)
CORRENTI, CESARE (1815–1888), Italian revolutionist and politician, was born on the 3rd of January 1815, at Milan, of a poor but noble family. While employed in the public debt administration, he flooded Lombardy with revolutionary pamphlets designed to excite hatred against the Austrians, and in 1848 proposed the general abstention of the Milanese from smoking, which gave rise to the insurrection known as the Five Days. During the revolt he was one of the leading spirits of the operations of the insurgents. Until the reoccupation of Milan by the Austrians he was secretary-general of the provisional government, but afterwards he fled to Piedmont, whence he again distributed his revolutionary pamphlets throughout Lombardy, earning a precarious livelihood by journalism. Elected deputy in 1849, he worked strenuously for the national cause, supporting Cavour in his Crimean policy, although he belonged to the Left. After the annexation of Lombardy he was made commissioner for the liquidation of the Lombardo-Venetian debt, in 1860 was
