Antonio Correggio
At one time a revered and popular (especially in the seventeenth and seventeenth centuries) artist. Nowadays he is not very well known: he seems out of fashion. His most significant works are in Parma.
His works are marked by genuine charm, some excitement, occasional sentimentality. Mythological and biblical subjects he interprets in a lyrical and sensitive style; with a brilliant technique, everything is filled with softness: light, color, perspective. His paintings have a complex but easy-to-read composition, and his characters, with their young smiling faces, are executed flawlessly in terms of anatomy. Correggio invented the idea of light radiating from the Christ child.
His in-situ decorations in Parma are forerunners of the over-the-top illusionistic decorations in Baroque Rome 100 years later (the link from one to the other was Lanfranco). Look how he turns the ceiling into an illusionistic sky and then makes exciting things happen in it (Mantegna did this first and Correggio followed him). Loved wistful dreamy faces and perfect profiles. Created many beautiful drawings.
Antonio Correggio’s major works are The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, c. 1510–15 (Paris: Musée du Louvre); Judith, 1512–14 (Strasbourg: Musée des Beaux-Arts); Venus, Satyr, and Cupid, 1524–25 (Paris: Musée du Louvre); Venus with Mercury and Cupid, c. 1525 (London: National Gallery).
References:
- Robert Cumming. Art: complete encyclopedia. – 512 p. – Moscow: Astrel, 2005.
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