Italian Renaissance: Correggio

Masterpieces of Correggio

Antonio Allegri da Correggio (Correggio, Italy August 1489 – March 5, 1534) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.

Antonio Allegri was born in Correggio, a small Lombard town near Reggio Emilia. His date of birth is uncertain (around 1494). His father was a merchant. Otherwise, little is known about Correggio's life or training. In the years 1503-1505 he apprenticed to Francesco Bianchi Ferrara of Modena. Here he probably knew the classicism of authors like Lorenzo Costa and Francesco Francia which can be found in his first works. After a trip to Mantua in 1506, he returned to Correggio, where he stayed until 1510. To this period is assigned the Adoration of the Child with St. Elizabeth and John, which shows clear influences from Costa and Mantegna. In 1514 he probably finished three tondos for the entrance of the church of Sant'Andrea in Mantua, and then returned to Correggio: here, as an independent and increasingly renowned artist, he signed a contract for the Madonna altarpiece of the local monastery of St. Francis (now in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie).

In 1516 he was in Parma, where he become a friend of Michelangelo Anselmi, one of the main Mannerist painters of the period. He remained in that city until 1530. In 1519 he married Girolama Francesca di Braghetis, also of Correggio, who died in 1529. From this period are the Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John, Christ Leaving His Mother and the lost Madonna of Albinea.

Correggio's first major commission was the ceiling of the private dining salon of the mother-superior of the Convent of St Paul, called the Camera di San Paolo (Parma). Here he painted a delightful arbor with playful cherub-filled oculi. Although painted for the local convent, it harkens to the secular frescoes of the pleasure palace of the Villa Farnesina in Rome.

He then painted the illusionistic Vision of St. John on Patmos (1520-21) for the dome of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista. Three years later he decorated the dome of the cathedral of Parma with a startling Assumption of the Virgin, crowded with layers of receding figures in perspective. The complexity of this work, and its disruption of the architeral roof and suggestion of divine infinity was innovative. Most fresco work was framed as canvases upon walls.

Other masterpieces include The Lamentation and The Martyrdom of Four Saints [1], both at the Galleria Nazionale of Parma. The Lamentation is haunted by a lambence rarely seen in Italian painting prior to this time. The Martyrdom is also remarkable for resembling later Baroque compositions such as Bernini's (Truth) and Ercole Ferrata's (Death of Saint Agnes), showing a gleeful saint entering martyrdom.

Mythological paintings

In addition to his religious art, Correggio produced a set of mythological paintings centered around the Loves of Jupiter as described in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The series was commisioned by Federico II Gonzaga of Mantua, probably to decorate the Ovid Room in the Palazzo Te. However, they were later given to the visiting Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and left Italy.

Leda and the Swan, now in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, is a tumult of incidents: in the centre is Leda straddling a swan, and on the right, a shy but satisfied maiden. Danae, now in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, shows the maiden being impregnated by a gilded curtain of rain. Semi-covered by sheets, Danae appears more innocent and gleeful than Titian's 1545 version of the same topic, where the rain is numismatic. The picture once called Anthiope and the Satyr is now correctly identified as Venus and Cupid with a Satyr.

Ganymede abducted by the eagle depicts the young man aloft in literal amourous flight. Some have interpreted the abduction as a metaphor for the effects of John the Evangelist; however, given the erotic context of the other paintings, this seems unlikely. This painting and its partner Jupiter and Io are in Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Evaluation
Correggio is an enigmatically eclectic artist, and it is not always possible to identify a stylistic link between his paintings. He appears to have emerged out of no major apprenticeship, and to have had little immediate influence in terms of apprenticed successors, but his works are now considered to have been revolutionary and influential on subsequent artists. A century after his death his work was well known to Vasari, who felt that he had not had enough "Roman" exposure to make him a better painter. They seem to prefigure many elements of Mannerist and Baroque stylistic approaches. In other words, he appears to have fostered artistic grandchildren, despite being barren of direct disciples outside of Parma. In Parma, he was highly influential on the work of Giovanni Maria Francesco Rondani, Parmigianino, and Giorgio Gandini del Grano.

There are echoes of Mantegna's style in his work, and he was influenced also by Lorenzo Costa and Leonardo da Vinci. Correggio was an elder contemporary of Parmigianino, albeit their painting styles were very different.

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It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Italian Renaissance".