ics
and ethics, science and religion, we are still far from having learned its
lesson.

Correggio is the Faun or Ariel of Renaissance painting. Turning to him
from Raphael, we are naturally first struck by the affinities and
differences between them. Both drew from their study of the world the
elements of joy which it contains; but the gladness of Correggio was more
sensuous than that of Raphael; his intellectual faculties were less
developed; his rapture was more tumultuous and Bacchantic. Like Raphael,
Correggio died young; but his brief life was spent in comparative
obscurity and solitude. Far from the society of scholars and artists,
ignorant of courts, unpatronised by princes, he wrought for himself alone
the miracle of brightness and of movement that delights us in his
frescoes and his easel-pictures.

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,

was this lyrist of luxurious ecstasy. In his work there was nothing
worldly; that divides him from the Venetians, whose sensuousness he
shared: nothing scientific; that distinguishes him from Da Vinci, the
magic of whose _chiaroscuro_ he comprehended: nothing contemplative; that
separates him from Michael Angelo, the audacity of whose design in dealing
with forced attitudes he rivalled, without apparently having enjoyed the
opportunity of studying his works. The cheerfulness of Raphael, the
wizardry of Lionardo, and the boldness of Michael Angelo, met in him to
form a new style, the originality of which is indisputable, and which
takes us captive--not by intellectual power, but by the impulse of
emotion. Of his artistic education we know nothing; and when we call him
the Ariel of painting, this means that we are compelled to think of him as
an elemental spirit, whose bidding the air and the light and the hues of
the morning obey.

Correggio created a world of beautiful human beings, the whole condition
of whose existence is an innocent and radiant wantonness.[263] Over the
domain of tragedy he had no sway; nor could he deal with subjects
demanding pregnancy of intellectual meaning. He paints the three Fates for
instance like young and joyous Bacchantes; if we placed rose-garlands and
thyrsi in their hands instead of the distaff and the thread of human
destinies, they might figure upon the panels of a banquet-chamber in
Pompeii. Nor, again, did he possess that severe and lofty art of
composition which seeks the highest beauty of