The Road To Venice

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

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To appreciate all that Squarcione’s school at Padua did for Italian art, we must trace its influence into the second and third generation. In addition to the sons of Bellini—to whom we shall return—who were the real founders of Venetian painting, the old contractor had among his pupils Cosimo Tura (1420-95) who founded the School of Ferrara. Tura had a pupil named Bianci, who founded a school in Modena, and there had a pupil greater than any of his predecessors, Antonio Allegri, known as Correggio, from the place of his birth. Of the life of this great man singularly little is known, and apart from his art it does not seem to have been in any way eventful. Vasari tells us that Correggio ‘was of a very timid disposition and, at a great personal inconvenience, worked continually for the family which depended on him. In art he was very melancholy, enduring its labors, but he never allowed difficulties to deter him, as we see in the great tribune of the Duomo of Parma.’

It is with Parma that the name of Correggio is always associated, for his greatest works were executed there between 1518 and 1530, and the Cathedral of Parma is the monument of his genius. In its marvelous complexity and rich invention, his ‘Assumption of the Virgin’ there has no rival in the world. If his fluent and sure drawing was derived from Mantegna, his mastery of light and shade from Leonardo da Vinci, and his tremendous forms and designs borrowed from the storehouse of Michael Angelo, yet his marvelous coloring is entirely his own, and it is as a colorist, above all, that Correggio is supreme.

‘It is considered certain,’ wrote Vasari, ‘that there never was a better colorist, nor any artist who imparted more loveliness or relief to his things, so great was the soft beauty of his flesh tints and the grace of his finish.’ Nearly 400 years have passed since these lines were written, but no connoisseur of today would change a word in this appreciation. The work of Correggio appeals to every human being who is susceptible to the indefinable quality of charm. Whether his subject be frankly pagan, as in ‘The Education of Cupid’ at the National Gallery, or avowedly religious, as in his ‘St Catherine’ at Hampton Court, it is on the satisfaction of the eye, and through the eye of all the senses, that Correggio relies.

So modest was this great colorist, that portrait of himself by himself is known to exist. ‘He was content with little,’ says Vasari, ‘and lived as a good Christian should.’ A modern critic, Mr Berenson, has pronounced Correggio’s paintings to be ‘hymns to the charm of feminity the like of which have never been known before or since in Christian Europe,’ yet from all accounts this artist’s private life was singularly free from amours. Correggio was a model husband and father, and the only thing said against him by his Italian biographer is that ‘he was anxious to save, like everyone who is burdened with a family, and he thus became excessively miserly.’ This closeness is said to have brought about his premature death. ‘Payment of 60 crowns being made to him at Parma in farthings, which he wished to take to Correggio for his affairs, he set out with this burden on foot. Becoming overheated by the warmth of the sun, he took some water to refresh himself, and caught a severe fever, which terminated his life in the fortieth year of his age.’

The Road To Venice (continued)