upwards to ascend to
heaven in violent commotion--a very orgasm of frenetic rapture. The
essence of the event is forgotten: its external manifestation alone is
presented to the eye; and only the accessories of beardless angels and
cloud-encumbered cherubs are really beautiful amid a surge of limbs in
restless movement. More dignified, because designed with more repose,
is the Apocalypse of S. John painted upon the cupola of S. Giovanni.
The apostles throned on clouds, with which the dome is filled, gaze
upward to one point. Their attitudes are noble; their form is heroic;
in their eyes there is the strange ecstatic look by which Correggio
interpreted his sense of supernatural vision: it is a gaze not of
contemplation or deep thought, but of wild half-savage joy, as if
these saints also had become the elemental genii of cloud and air,
spirits emergent from ether, the salamanders of an empyrean
intolerable to mortal sense. The point on which their eyes converge,
the culmination of their vision, is the figure of Christ. Here all the
weakness of Correggio's method is revealed. He had undertaken to
realise by no ideal allegorical suggestion, by no symbolism of
architectural grouping, but by actual prosaic measurement, by
corporeal form in subjection to the laws of perspective and
foreshortening, things which in their very essence admit of only a
figurative revelation. Therefore his Christ, the centre of all those
earnest eyes, is contracted to a shape in which humanity itself is
mean, a sprawling figure which irresistibly reminds one of a frog. The
clouds on which the saints repose are opaque and solid; cherubs in
countless multitudes, a swarm of merry children, crawl about upon
these feather-beds of vapour, creep between the legs of the apostles,
and play at bopeep behind their shoulders. There is no propriety in
their appearance there. They take no interest in the beatific vision.
They play no part in the celestial symphony; nor are they capable of
more than merely infantine enjoyment. Correggio has sprinkled them
lavishly like living flowers about his cloudland, because he could not
sustain a grave and solemn strain of music, but was forced by his
temperament to overlay the melody with roulades. Gazing at these
frescoes, the thought came to me that Correggio was like a man
listening to sweetest flute-playing, and translating phrase after
phrase as they passed through his fancy into laughing faces, breezy
tresses, and roll