DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48088#0480
M CORREGGIO.
is rigid, as if in a state of convulsion or of half unconsciousness. At the same time there is a
moral depth in this conception of pain, refined by the highest beauty.
The picture of “Christ on the Mount of Olives” now in Apsley House, belonging to the
Duke of Wellington may be considered the gem of Correggio’s paintings.
The scene is at night, and a light from heaven illuminates the central figure which expresses
the victory of the mind over unspeakable agony. The only picture which in completeness of
design on a small scale, will bear comparison with this, is the Magdalen in the Dresden Gallery,
but here we do not find the vivid representation of remorse and contrition which we should
have expected in this subject from a skilful delineator of the feelings. We see a beautiful
woman, a physically beautiful woman with her bosom bare and her hair loose, lying on the
ground in a wood, her eyes fixed on a book, and a sense of dreamy peace in the midst of the
solitude of nature pervades the whole.
Finally, in two pictures, now in the Gallery of Parma, but formerly altar pieces in the
Church of San Giovanni, we have representations of infinite pain. They are the “Lamentation
over the body of the crucified Saviour,” and the Martyrdom of Saint Placidus and Saint Floria.
In the latter the horror of the event is rendered more intense by the shocking brutality of the
murderers, and by the dismembered corpses which He near; added to this, the ecstatic expression
on the faces of the two martyrs who have just received their death-blow, is repulsive in its
union of sentiment with the pain which is apparent in the very tips of their fingers. In such
pictures of Martyrdoms, and not alone in his representations of ecclesiastical festivals, Correggio
set the example which was followed by the artists of the Catholic restoration. Though the
picture just named is so offensive to our taste that we feel inclined to abjure Correggio for ever,
our eyes are attracted towards the excellence of its drawing, and the bewitching charm of its
colouring.
In the year 1530, Antonio left Rome and returned to Correggio disappointed, as we find
from his contemporaries at the reception which his cupola paintings had received from the un-
appreciative public, and probably also depressed by his wife’s death, which must have occurred
about this time. In his home he gradually recovered his spirits and often undertook works
which did not meet with objections from a better informed priesthood or from a population
unaccustomed to his style.
It was probably through the instrumentality of the little court at Correggio, and especially
through Veronica Gambara, the enlightened and benevolent widow of Duke Giberto X. who
expressed her admiration for the artist in a celebrated letter, that Correggio obtained commissions
from exalted personages, particularly from Federigo II., Duke of Mantua. In this way a
new region was opened to him, the field of ancient mythology, then so interesting to the higher
classes, whose inclinations led them towards a classical education and an easy cheerful life of
sensuous enjoyment. Some pictures on these subjects may have been painted earlier, but the
greater number belong to Correggio’s latest period. The National Gallery in London contains
the “Education of Cupid.” Mercury is teaching Cupid to read, whilst the winged Venus looks
on, with a roguish expression. In the “Salon carree” of the Louvre in the “Antiope asleep,”
watched by Jupiter in the shape of a faun. In perfection of treatment, this picture is only
surpassed by that of “Danae and the Shower of Gold,” in the Borghese Palace in Rome, but,
unlike other similar pictures, there is something ignoble in the expression of the central figure;
this is atoned for, however, by the innocent loveliness of the cupids, sharpening their artws