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Correggio BiographyItalian High Renaissance painter, muralist and draftsmanborn 1489 - died 5 March 1534 Also known as: Antonio da Correggio, Le
Corrége, Antonio Allegri, Antonio Allegri da
Correggio. |
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CORREGGIO, or COREGGI0, the
name ordinarily given to Antonio Allegri
(1494-1534), the celebrated Italian painter,
one of the most vivid and impulsive
inventors in expression and pose and the
most consummate executants. The external
circumstances of his life have been
very diversely stated by different writers,
and the whole of what has been narrated
regarding him, even waiving the question of
its authenticity, is but meagre. |
Other leading Antonio da Correggio paintings are the following: The frescoes in the Camera di San Paolo (the abbesss saloon) in the monastery of S. Lodovico at Parma, painted towards 1519 in fresco, Diana returning from the Chase, with auxiliary groups of lovely and vivacious boys of more than life size, in sixteen oval compartments. In the National Gallery, London, the Ecce Homo, painted probably towards 1520 (authenticity not unquestioned); and Cupid, Mercury and Venus, the latter more especially a fine example. The oil painting of the Nativity named Night (La Notte), for which 40 ducats and 208 livres of old Reggio coin were paid, the nocturnal scene partially lit up by the splendour proceeding from the divine Infant. | |||||||
On some of Antonio da Correggio paintings
signed 'Lieto', as a synonym of Allegri.
About forty paintings 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 Antonio da 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; Antonio da Correggio carried the money himself, to save expense, from Parma to him 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. Correggio is said to have died with Christian piety; and his eulogists (speaking apparently from intuition rather than record) affirm that Antonio da Correggio 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. Correggio was buried with some pomp in the Arrivabene chapel, in the cloister of the Franciscan church at Correggio. |
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