File:Antonio Allegri da Correggio, his life, his friends, and his time (1896) (14595576430).jpg

Identifier: antonioallegrida00riccrich (find matches)
Title: Antonio Allegri da Correggio, his life, his friends, and his time
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Ricci, Corrado, 1858-1934 Simmons, Florence
Subjects: Correggio, 1489?-1534
Publisher: New York : Charles Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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n. These five persons are brought together in a somewhat smallcompass. The figure of Christ is rather more than half length, thoseof Pilate and the Virgin rather less. Only the head and hand of theMagdalen are visible, and all that is seen of the soldier is his face.Yet the picture is by no means wanting in grandeur. The faintingMadonna is less dramatic than the Virgin of the Descent from theCross, but on the other hand, she is more beautiful. Her featuresare less disfigured by grief, and if we connect the two figures, takingthem as illustrating successive phases of the Passion, we shall see inone the mother, overcome with grief, but sustained to some extent byhope and physical energy; in the other, a woman stricken and helpless,with no comfort left her on earth. The artist has expressed this ex-tremity of human wretchedness with the happiest and most unflinching 1 There is one in the Communal Palace at Rimini, another in the Estense dallcry atModena, and a third in the Parma Gallery.
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the National Gallery, London. ECCK HOMO aesthetic composure ; but tliou^h his treatmrnt of the thcuie apiicals Idthe culturcul and philosopliic of nioclcrn times, it proved a dangerousprecedent for his successors. In copyii\o- or imitating Correggiosworks they were met in this instance li\ the insui)cral)Ie dirficultyof reproducing the sen-timent of the original.The result has beenthat whereas there aremany fairly good copiesof the Brrc Homo.there is not one of theDescent froii/ the Crosswhich is even tolerable.And further, we findthat those artists whomost successfullystudied and adoptedCorreggesque forms(Annibale Carracci, forinstance, and Lan-franco) accepted theVirgin of the BcccHomo as the type ofthe )\Iatcr Dolorosa. The emotion ex-pressed by the Saviouris less impressive. Hisis not the anguishborn of a conscious-ness of human weak-ness and misery, liut the individual agony of one who, sufferingacutely, has not sufficient fortitude to repress the external evidencesof his pain. T

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