ins, their limbs, their every feature, end in enjoyment; innocent
and radiant wantonness is the condition of their whole existence.
Correggio conceived the universe under the one mood of sensuous joy:
his world was bathed in luxurious light; its inhabitants were capable
of little beyond a soft voluptuousness. Over the domain of tragedy he
had no sway, and very rarely did he attempt to enter on it: nothing,
for example, can be feebler than his endeavour to express anguish in
the distorted features of Madonna, S. John, and the Magdalen, who are
bending over the dead body of a Christ extended in the attitude of
languid repose. In like manner he could not deal with subjects which
demand a pregnancy of intellectual meaning. He paints the three Fates
like young and joyous Bacchantes, places rose-garlands and
thyrsi in their hands instead of the distaff and the thread of human
destinies, and they might figure appropriately upon the panels of a
banquet-chamber in Pompeii. In this respect Correggio might be termed
the Rossini of painting. The melodies of the 'Stabat Mater'--_Fac ut
portem_ or _Quis est homo_--are the exact analogues in music of
Correggio's voluptuous renderings of grave or mysterious motives. Nor,
again, did he possess that severe and lofty art of composition which
subordinates the fancy to the reason, and which seeks for the highest
intellectual beauty in a kind of architectural harmony supreme above
the melodies of gracefulness in detail. The Florentines and those who
shared their spirit--Michelangelo and Lionardo and Raphael--deriving
this principle of design from the geometrical art of the Middle Ages,
converted it to the noblest uses in their vast well-ordered
compositions. But Correggio ignored the laws of scientific
construction. It was enough for him to produce a splendid and
brilliant effect by the life and movement of his figures, and by the
intoxicating beauty of his forms. His type of beauty, too, is by no
means elevated. Lionardo painted souls whereof the features and the
limbs are but an index. The charm of Michelangelo's ideal is like a
flower upon a tree of rugged strength. Raphael aims at the loveliness
which cannot be disjoined from goodness. But Correggio is contented
with bodies 'delicate and desirable.' His angels are genii
disimprisoned from the perfumed chalices of flowers, houris of an
erotic paradise, elemental spirits of nature wantoning in Eden in her
prime. To accuse the painter of con