argeness, and mastery that can nowhere else be found. In Parma alone
Correggio challenges comparison with Raphael, with Tintoret, with all
the supreme decorative painters who have deigned to make their art the
handmaid of architecture. Yet even in the cathedral and the church of
S. Giovanni, where Correggio's frescoes cover cupola and chapel wall,
we could scarcely comprehend his greatness now--so cruelly have time
and neglect dealt with those delicate dream-shadows of celestial
fairyland--were it not for an interpreter, who consecrated a lifetime
to the task of translating his master's poetry of fresco into the
prose of engraving. That man was Paolo Toschi--a name to be ever
venerated by all lovers of the arts; since without his guidance we
should hardly know what to seek for in the ruined splendours of the
domes of Parma, or even seeking, how to find the object of our search.
Toschi's labour was more effectual than that of a restorer however
skilful, more loving than that of a follower however faithful. He
respected Correggio's handiwork with religious scrupulousness, adding
not a line or tone or touch of colour to the fading frescoes; but he
lived among them, aloft on scaffoldings, and face to face with the
originals which he designed to reproduce. By long and close
familiarity, by obstinate and patient interrogation, he divined
Correggio's secret, and was able at last to see clearly through the
mist of cobweb and mildew and altar smoke, and through the still more
cruel travesty of so-called restoration. What he discovered, he
faithfully committed first to paper in water colours, and then to
copperplate with the burin, so that we enjoy the privilege of seeing
Correggio's masterpieces as Toschi saw them, with the eyes of genius
and of love and of long scientific study. It is not too much to say
that some of Correggio's most charming compositions--for example, the
dispute of S. Augustine and S. John--have been resuscitated from the
grave by Toschi's skill. The original offers nothing but a mouldering
surface from which the painter's work has dropped in scales. The
engraving presents a design which we doubt not was Correggio's, for it
corresponds in all particulars to the style and spirit of the master.
To be critical in dealing with so successful an achievement of
restoration and translation is difficult. Yet it may be admitted once
and for all that Toschi has not unfrequently enfeebled his original.
Under his touch Cor