g many past years been peeling off.
The violent foreshortenings were not, in the painter's own time, the
object of unmixed admiration; some satirist termed the groups a
"guazzetto di rane," or "hash of frogs." This was not exactly the
opinion of Titian, who is reported to have said, on seeing the pictures,
and finding them lightly esteemed by local dignitaries, "Reverse the
cupola, and fill it with gold, and even that will not be its money's
worth." Annibale Caracci and the Eclectics generally evinced their
zealous admiration quite as ardently. Parma is the only city which
contains frescoes by Correggio. For the paintings of the cupola of San
Giovanni he received the moderate sum of 472 sequins; for those of the
cathedral, much less proportionately, 350. On these amounts he had to
subsist, himself and his family, and to provide the colours, for about
ten years, having little time for further work meanwhile. Parma was in
an exceedingly unsettled and turbulent condition during some of the
years covered by Correggio's labours there, veering between the
governmental ascendancy of the French and of the Pope, with wars and
rumours of wars, alarms, tumults and pestilence.

Other leading works by Correggio are the following:--The frescoes in the
Camera di San Paolo (the abbess's saloon) in the monastery of S.
Lodovico at Parma, painted towards 1519 in fresco,--"Diana returning
from the Chase," with auxiliary groups of lovely and vivacious boys of
more than life size, in sixteen oval compartments. In the National
Gallery, London, the "Ecce Homo," painted probably towards 1520
(authenticity not unquestioned); and "Cupid, Mercury and Venus," the
latter more especially a fine example. The oil-painting of the Nativity
named "Night" ("La Notte"), for which 40 ducats and 208 livres of old
Reggio coin were paid, the nocturnal scene partially lit up by the
splendour proceeding from the divine Infant. This work was undertaken at
Reggio in 1522 for Alberto Pratoneris, and is now in the Dresden
gallery. The oil-painting of St Jerome, termed also "Day" ("Il Giorno"),
as contrasting with the above-named "Night." Jerome is here with the
Madonna and Child, the Magdalene, and two Angels, of whom one points out
to the Infant a passage in the book held by the Saint. This was painted
for Briseida Bergonzi from 1527 onwards, and was remunerated by 400 gold
imperials, some cartloads of faggots and measures of wheat, and a fat
pig. It is now in the g