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Correggio
by
They have no wings, yet they soar and fly like English sparrows. They are not troubled with nerv. pros. or introspection. What they feed upon is uncertain, but sure it is that they are well nourished. A putti needs nothing, not even approbation.
In the dome of the Cathedral at Parma, there is a regular flight of them to help on the Ascension. They mix in everywhere, riding on clouds, clinging to robes, perching on the shoulders of Apostles– everywhere thick in the flight and helping on that glorious anabasis. Away, away they go–movement–movement everywhere–right up into the blue dome of Heaven! As you look up at that most magnificent picture, a tinge of sorrow comes over you–the putti are all going away, and what if they should never come back!
A little girl I know once went with her Mamma to visit the Cathedral at Parma. Mother and daughter stood in silent awe for a space, looking up at that cloud of vanishing forms. At last the little girl turned to her mother and said, “Mamma, did you ever see so many bare legs in all the born days of your life?”
Some years ago in a lecture John La Farge said that the world had produced only seven painters that deserved to rank in the first class, and one of these is Correggio. The speaker did not name the other six; and although requested to do so, smilingly declined, saying that he preferred to allow each auditor to complete the list for himself.
One person present made out this list of seven Immortals, and passed the list to Edmund Russell, seated near, for comments. This is the list: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Titian, Rembrandt, Correggio, Velasquez, Corot.
Mr. Russell approved the selection, but added a note claiming the privilege to change and substitute names from time to time as his mood might prompt. This seems to me like a very sensible verdict. “Who is your favorite author?” is a question that is often asked. Just as if any one author ever got first place in the mind of a strong man and stuck there! Authors jostle each other for first place in our hearts. We may have Emerson periods and Browning periods, when they alone minister to us; and so also pictures, like music, make their appeals to mood.
This peaceful, beautiful May day, as I write this at my cabin in the woods, Correggio seems to me truly one of the world’s marvelous men. He is near, very dear, and yet before him I would stand silent and uncovered.
He did his work and held his peace. He was simple, modest, unobtrusive and unpretentious. He was so big that he never knew the greatness of his work, any more than the author of Hamlet knew the immensity of his.
Correggio was never more than a day’s journey from home–he toiled in obscurity and did work so grand that it made its final appeal only to the future. He never painted his own portrait, and no one else seemed to consider him worth while; his income was barely sufficient for his wants. He was so big that following fast upon his life came a lamentable decline in art: his personality being so great that his son and a goodly flock of disciples tried to paint just like him. All originality faded out of the fabric of their lives, and they were only cheap, tawdry and dispirited imitators. That is one of the penalties which Nature exacts when she vouchsafes a great man to earth–all others are condemned to insipidity. They are whipped, dispirited and undone, and spontaneity dies a-borning. No man should try to do another man’s work. Note the anatomical inanities of Bernini in his attempts to out-Angelo Michelangelo.
In this “rushing-in” business, keep out, or you may count as one more fool.
Correggio struck thirteen because he was himself, and was to a great degree even ignorant and indifferent to what the world was doing. He was filled with the joy of life; and with no furtive eye on the future, and no distracting fears concerning the present, he did his work and did it the best he could. He worked to please himself, cultivated the artistic conscience–scorning to create a single figure that did not spring into life because it must. All of his pictures are born of this spirit.
Good old Guido of Parma, afar from home, once asked, with tear- filled eyes, of a recent visitor there–“And tell me, you saw the Cathedral and the Convent of San Paola–and are not the cherubs of Master Correggio grown to be men yet?”
It is only life and love that give love and life. Correggio gave us both out of the fulness of a full heart. And growing weary when scarce forty years of age, he passed out into the Silence, but his work is ours.