Correggio (Antonio Allegri; 1489/94–1534)

CORREGGIO (Antonio Allegri; 1489/94–1534)

CORREGGIO (Antonio Allegri; 1489/94–1534), Italian painter and draftsman. In the sixteenth century, Giorgio Vasari hailed Antonio Allegri (called Correggio) in his Lives of the Artists (1550), as the first Lombard artist to paint in the modern style. Although he worked in north Italian towns, such as his native Correggio and nearby Parma, rather than major artistic centers, he had a tremendous impact on later pictorial developments. His theatrical illusionism, rich coloring, and feathery brushwork were so widely imitated in the seventeenth century that he is often considered a precursor to the baroque.

Correggio's early career remains largely undocumented, including his year of birth (debated, c. 1489/c. 1494). He presumably learned the rudiments from his uncle Lorenzo Allegri and the Modenese painter Francesco Bianchi Ferrari, but found his first true inspiration in Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506). The convincing attribution of frescoes in Mantua (roundels from the church of Sant'Andrea, now in the Museo Diocesano) to the young Correggio supports a direct connection with this master and his workshop. The Madonna of Saint Francis (1514–1515; Dresden, Gemäldegalerie), Correggio's earliest extant documented picture, reveals the formative influence of Leonardo as well as Mantegna.

In Parma, around 1518–1519, Correggio decorated for Abbess Giovanna da Piacenza a small room in the Benedictine convent of San Paolo. The frescoes in the so-called Camera di San Paolo depict Diana, the goddess of chastity and the chase, and transform the ceiling into a verdant trellis populated by boisterous putti with hunting accoutrements. The unity of design, with its vocabulary of classicizing and more monumental forms, heralds the artist's mature style. Despite Vasari's claim that Correggio never traveled to Rome, it is now generally assumed, on stylistic grounds, that he took at least one such trip, probably before painting this chamber (c. 1518).

Correggio's success with the Camera di San Paolo soon led to other work in Parma, including two major fresco programs. In 1520, Correggio was commissioned to paint the dome, apse, and choir, followed by the nave frieze, of the Benedictine church of San Giovanni Evangelista, a project that occupied him (and his assistants) for four years (he received his final payment in January 1524). The Vision of Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos (c. 1522), depicted in the cupola, is indebted to both Michelangelo (Sistine Chapel ceiling, 1508–1512) and Raphael (Transfiguration, c. 1519–1520).

In November 1522, Correggio secured a contract for a vast campaign of mural decoration in Parma Cathedral, which he began some years later, but only partly completed (cupola and pendentives, c. 1524–1530). The dizzying illusionism of the cupola frescoes, in which a whirlwind of foreshortened angels and saints accompany the Virgin's Assumption, served as a fundamental point of reference for later experiments in baroque ceiling decoration.

Throughout his career, Correggio painted easel pictures of religious and mythological themes, but apparently few portraits. The altarpieces he made for patrons in Parma and nearby towns during the 1520s and 1530s reveal his ability to create poetic, strikingly original compositions. For example, the Adoration of the Shepherds (so-called Notte, contracted 1522, finished by 1530; Dresden, Gemäldegalerie) is a dramatic yet intimate nocturnal scene, in which a radiant infant dazzles the onlookers. No less inventive, if very different in subject matter, are the Loves of Jupiter commissioned by Federigo Gonzaga as a gift for Emperor Charles V. Correggio's sensuous handling of paint—as in the vaporous gray cloud enveloping the pearly nymph in Jupiter and Io (c. 1530–1534; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum)—heightens the erotic content.

Although he applauded Correggio's unrivaled use of color, Vasari pointed out (perhaps unfairly) the artist's inadequacy in drawing. His designs can be untidy in appearance, but others are extraordinarily beautiful in their coloristic effects. Moreover, Correggio's known graphic oeuvre suggests that he probably drew compulsively in the planning of his paintings, producing numerous preliminary sketches, of which a mere fraction have survived.

Vasari described Correggio as, literally, self-effacing and noted that his likeness could not be found to illustrate the Lives. The phenomenal rise in Correggio's reputation in the following centuries generated great interest in his biography and art. Alleged portraits of the artist began to circulate, and the Vasarian characterization of a talented but timid provincial painter who had failed to visit Rome came under direct attack. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Correggio's prestige was second only to that of Raphael.

See also Vasari, Giorgio .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DeVito Battaglia, Silvia de. Correggio bibliografia. Rome, 1934. Comprehensive annotated bibliography of literature on Correggio from the sixteenth century until 1934.

Ekserdjian, David. Correggio. New Haven and London, 1997. Most recent English-language monograph on the artist, with keen observations on the patronage and intended site of works of art.

Gould, Cecil. The Paintings of Correggio. Ithaca, N.Y., 1976. Standard English-language monograph on the artist; includes documentary appendix.

Popham, A. E. Correggio's Drawings. London, 1957. The most important catalogue of the artist's drawings.

Mary Vaccaro