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Correggio
by
The specialty of Allegri was “putti”–tumbling, tumultuous, tricksy putti. These cherubs symboled the joy of life, and when Allegri wished to sign his name, he drew a cherub. He had come up out of a family that had little and expected nothing. Then he needed so little–his wants were few. If he went away from home on little journeys, he stopped with peasants along the way and made merry with the children and outlined a chubby cherub on the cottage-wall, to the delight of everybody; and in the morning was sent on his way with blessings, Godspeeds, and urgent invitations to come again. Smiles and good-cheer, a little music and the ability to do things, when accompanied by a becoming modesty, are current coin the round world over. Tired earth is quite willing to pay for being amused.
The Abbess Giovanni showed Antonio about the Convent, and he saw what had already been done. He was appreciative, but talked little. The Abbess liked the youth. He suggested possibilities–he might really become the great painter that the enthusiastic Veronica prophesied he would some day be.
The Abbess gave up one of her own rooms for his accommodation, brought him water for a bath, and at supper sat him at the table at her own right hand.
“And about the frescos?” asked the Abbess.
“Yes, the frescos–your room shall be done first. I will begin the work in the morning,” replied Antonio. The confidence of the youth made the Abbess smile.
Many of our finest flowers are merely transplanted weeds. Transplantation often works wonders in men. When Fate lifted Antonio Allegri out of the little village of Correggio and set him down in the city of Parma, a great change came over him. The wealth, beauty and freer atmosphere of the place caused the tendrils of his imagination to reach out into a richer soil, and the result was such blossoms of beauty, so gorgeous in form and color, that men have not yet ceased to marvel.
The Convent of San Paola is a sacred shrine for art-lovers–they come from the round world over, just to see the ceiling in that one room–the room of the Abbess Giovanni, where Antonio Allegri, the young man from Correggio, first placed his scaffolds in Parma.
The village of Correggio is quite off the beaten track of travel. You will have to look five times on the map before you can find it. It is now only a village, and in the year Fourteen Hundred Ninety- four, when Antonio Allegri was born and Cristoforo Colombo, the Genoese, was discovering continents, it was little better than a hamlet. It had a church, a convent, a palace where dwelt the Corregghesi–the Lords of Correggio–and stretching around the square, where stood the church, were long, low, stone cottages, whitewashed, with trellises of climbing flowers. Back of these cottages were little gardens where the peas, lentils, leeks and parsley laughed a harvest. There were flowers, flowers everywhere– none was too poor to have flowers. Flowers are a strictly sex product and symbol the joy of life; and where there are no flowers, there is little love. Lovers give flowers–and they are enough–and if you do not love flowers, they will refuse to blossom for you. “If I had but two loaves of bread, I’d sell one of them and buy white hyacinths to feed my soul”–that was said by a man who loved this world, no less than the next. Do not defame this world–she is the mother that feeds you, and she supplies you not only bread, but white hyacinths to feed your soul.
On market-day in every Italian town four hundred years ago, just as now, the country women brought big baskets of vegetables and also baskets of flowers. And you will see in those markets, if you observe, that the people who buy vegetables usually buy sprays of mignonette, bunches of violets, roses upon which the dew yet sparkles, or white hyacinths. Loaves alone are not quite enough–we want also the bread of life, and the bread of life is love, and didn’t I say that flowers symbol love?