nts; others, that his family was noble and rich.
Neither account is accurate. His father was Pellegrino Allegri, a
tradesman in comfortable circumstances, living at Correggio, a small
city in the territory of Modena; his mother Bernardina Piazzoli degli
Aromani, also of a creditable family of moderate means. Antonio was born
at Correggio, and was carefully educated. He was not (as has been often
alleged) strictly self-taught in his art--a supposition which the
internal evidence of his pictures must of itself refute. They show a
knowledge of optics, perspective, architecture, sculpture and anatomy.
The last-named science he studied under Dr Giovanni Battista Lombardi,
whom he is believed to have represented in the portrait currently named
"II Medico del Correggio" (Correggio's physician). It is concluded that
he learned the first elements of design from his uncle, Lorenzo Allegri,
a painter of moderate ability at Correggio, and from Antonio Bartolotti,
named Tognino, and that he afterwards went to the school of Francesco
Ferrari Bianchi (named Frare), and perhaps to that of the successors of
Andrea Mantegna in Mantua. He is said to have learned modelling along
with the celebrated Begarelli at Parma; and it has even been suggested
that, in the "Pieta" executed by Begarelli for the church of Santa
Margherita, the three finest figures are the work of Correggio, but, as
the group appears to have been completed three years after the painter's
death, there is very little plausibility in this story. Another
statement connecting Begarelli with Correggio is probably true, namely,
that the sculptor executed models in relief for the figures which the
painter had to design on the cupolas of the churches in Parma. This was
necessarily an expensive item, and it has been cited as showing that
Correggio must have been at least tolerably well off,--an inference
further supported by the fact that he used the most precious and costly
colours, and generally painted on fine canvases or sometimes on sheets
of copper.

The few certain early works of Correggio show a rapid progression
towards the attainment of his own original style. Though he never
achieved any large measure of reputation during his brief lifetime, and
was perhaps totally unknown beyond his own district of country, he found
a sufficiency of employers, and this from a very youthful age. One of
his early pictures, painted in 1514 when he was nineteen or twenty years
old, is a la