Antonio da Correggio: Guide, Hotels, Map & Photos
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Antonio da Correggio: Guide
Antonio Allegri da Correggio (Correggio, Italy August 1489 – March 5, 1534) was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the Italy|Italian Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the 16th century. In his use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, Correggio prefigured the Rococo art of the 18th century.
Biography
Antonio Allegri was born in Correggio, a small Lombard town near Reggio Emilia. His date of birth is uncertain (around 1489). 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 artists like Lorenzo Costa and Francesco Francia, evidence of 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 in 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 San Giovanni Evangelista. Three years later he decorated the dome of the cathedral of Parma with a startling Assumption of the Virgin (Correggio)|Assumption of the Virgin, crowded with layers of receding figures in perspective. The complexity of this work, its disruption of the architectural roof and suggestion of divine infinity was innovative. Most of the fresco work was painted upon framed canvas.
Other masterpieces include The Lamentation and The Martyrdom of Four Saints , 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 Series based on Ovid's Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses. The voluptuous series was commissioned by Federico II Gonzaga of Mantua, probably to decorate his private Ovid Room in the Palazzo Te. However, they were given to the visiting Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor|Charles V and thus left Italy within years of their completion.
Leda and the Swan, now in Staatliche Museen of Berlin, is a tumult of incidents: in the centre Leda straddles a swan, and on the right, a shy but satisfied maiden. Danaë, now in Rome's Borghese Gallery, depicts the maiden as she is impregnated by a curtain of gilded divine rain. Her lower torso semi-obscured by sheets, Danae appears more demure and gleeful than Titian's 1545 version of the same topic, where the rain is more accurately numismatic. The picture once called Antiope 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 amorous flight. Some have interpreted the conjunction of man and eagle as a metaphor for the evangelist John; however, given the erotic context of this and other paintings, this seems unlikely. This painting and its partner, the masterpiece of Jupiter and Io (reproduced above), are in Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna.
Evaluation
Correggio was remembered by his contemporaries as a shadowy, melancholic and introverted character, traits possibly conditioned by his birth into a large and poor family.
Correggio is an enigmatic and 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 Correggio's work was well known to Vasari, who felt that he had not had enough "Roman" exposure to make him a better painter. In the 18th and 19th centuries, his works were often remembered in the diaries of foreign visitors to Italy, which led to a reevaluation of his art during the period of Romanticism. The flight of the Madonna in the vault of the cupola of the Cathedral of Parma inspired numerous scenographical decorations in lay and religious palaces during the 20th centuries.
Corregio's illusionistic experiments, in which imaginary spaces replace the natural reality, seem to prefigure many elements of Mannerist and Baroque stylistic approaches. In other words, he appears to have fostered artistic grandchildren, despite having no direct disciples outside of Parma, where he was influential on the work of Giovanni Maria Francesco Rondani, Parmigianino, and Giorgio Gandini del Grano.
In addition to the influence of Costa, there are echoes of Mantegna's style in his work, and a response to Leonardo da Vinci, as well.
See also
List of painters
This "Travel Guide" section is drawn from the Wikipedia article "Antonio da Correggio". We hope you will edit and improve it. It is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
List of Italian painters
List of famous ItaliansSelected works
Madonna (1512-14) - Oil canvas, Castello Sforzesco, Milan
The Adoration of the Magi (1516-18)- Oil canvas, 84 x 108 cm, Brera, Milan
Ecce Homo - Oil canvas, National Gallery, London|National Gallery, London
The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (1510-15) - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.|Washington
Madonna with St. Francis (1514) - Oil on wood, 299 x 245 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister|Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
Madonna of Albinea (1514, lost)
Virgin and Child with an Angel (Madonna del Latte) - Oil on wood, 68 x 56 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John (1516) - Oil canvas, 48 x 37 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
The Rest on the Flight to Egypt with Saint Francis (1517) - Oil on canvas, 123,5 x 106,5 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Portrait of a Gentlewoman (1517-19) - Oil on canvas, 103 x 87,5 cm, Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Adoration of the Child (1518-20) - Oil on canvas, 81 x 67 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Camera di San Paolo (1519) - Frescoes, Nunnery of St Paul, thumb|300px|Correggio's famous Assumption of the Virgin (Correggio)|frescoes in Parma seem to melt the ceiling of the cathedral and draw the viewer into a gyre of spiritual ecstasy.
Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (c. 1520) - Wood, 105 x 102 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Passing Away of St. John (1520-24) - Fresco, S. Giovanni Evangelista, Parma
Madonna with St. Jerome (Correggio)|Madonna with St. Jerome (c. 1522) - Oil on canvas, 205,7 x 141 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
Madonna della Scala (c. 1523) - Fresco, 196 x 141,8 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
Deposition from the Cross (1525)- Oil canvas, 158,5 x 184,3 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
Noli me Tangere (c. 1525) - Oil canvas, 130 x 103 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
Madonna della Scodella (1525-30) - Oil canvas, 216 x 137 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
Assumption of the Virgin (Correggio)|Assumption of the Virgin (1526–1530) — Fresco, 1093 x 1195 cm, Cathedral of Parma
Nativity (Correggio)|Nativity (Adoration of the Shepherds, or Holy Night (1528-30) - Oil on canvas, 256,5 x 188 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
The Education of Cupid (Correggio)|The Education of Cupid (c. 1528) - Oil canvas, 155 x 91 cm, National Gallery, London
Venus and Cupid with a Satyr (c. 1528) - Oil on canvas, 188 x 125 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Madonna with St. George (1530-32) - Oil on canvas, 285 x 190 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
Ganymede abducted by the Eagle (1531-32) - Oil on canvas, 163,5 x 70,5 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Jupiter and Io (1531-32) - Oil canvas, 164 x 71 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Leda with the Swan (1531-32) - Oil canvas, 152 x 191 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Danaë (c. 1531) - Tempera panel, 161 x 193 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome
Allegory of Virtue (c. 1532-1534) - Oil canvas, 149 x 88 cm, Musée du Louvre, ParisExternal links
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/correggio/
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It does not cite the mythological theme pictures.
, by Estelle M. Hurll, 1901, from Project Gutenberg