st delicate
gradations and melted into the most elusive harmonies. Beneath his
facile brush, soft and thick, the transparencies of the skin and the
morbidezza of the flesh become ideal.

He was the first to apply himself to the choice of fabrics, and one of
the first in Italy to attend to the scientific distribution of light.
But, in the famous _chiaroscuro_ he does not get his effects by
contrasts, but by analogies, superimposing shadow upon shadow and light
upon light, both being disposed in large masses and graduated in
progression. This process occurs at its fullest in the _Christmas
Night_, where the moon shines, and the child glows with radiance, in a
kind of symbolic struggle between the natural light of this world and
the supernatural light of the other. The effect is such that the
spectator is forced instinctively to blink his eyes, as does the
Shepherdess herself entering the stable.

"When Correggio excels he is a painter worthy of Athens," wrote Diderot,
whose art criticism had in it more of sentiment than knowledge.

"With Correggio everything is large and graceful," said Louis Carrache,
who gave Correggio a large place in his eclecticism. But after studying
and weighing everything, from his somewhat excessive qualities it
follows that Correggio was more of an idealist than a mystic and obeyed
Art more than Faith, with a leaning towards the apotheosis of form. He
painted _Io and Jupiter_ for Frederick Gonzaga of Mantua. This picture
having passed to the son of the Regent, the two passionate heads so
strongly troubled his prudery that he cut them out and burned them.
Coypel then begged the Prince to spare the rest and to give it to him.
He obtained it on condition that "he would make good use of it," and on
the death of Coypel, M. Pasquier, _depute du Commerce de Rouen_, paid
16,500 _livres_ for the mutilated remains, as I find in a very old
account.

[Illustration: MAGDALEN.
_Correggio_]

All the great museums of the world possess Correggios, and I will only
mention the exquisite _Saint Catherine_ and the resplendent _Antiope_ of
the Louvre; the _Danae_ of the Borghese Gallery, a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of
grace and delicacy; and, finally, in the Dresden Gallery, our _Magdalen
in the Desert_, that jewel so well-known and so often reproduced.

This Magdalen as a matter of fact holds the first place among the small
Correggios. There are two kinds of Magdalens in art: I. the Repentant,
emaciated, growi