t Goethe called a
demonic influence in the art of Correggio: 'In poetry,' said Goethe to
Eckermann, 'especially in that which is unconscious, before which
reason and understanding fall short, and which therefore produces
effects so far surpassing all conception, there is always something
demonic.' It is not to be wondered that Correggio, possessed of this
demonic power in the highest degree, and working to a purely sensuous
end, should have exercised a fatal influence over art. His successors,
attracted by an intoxicating loveliness which they could not analyse,
which had nothing in common with the reason or the understanding, but
was like a glamour cast upon the soul in its most secret
sensibilities, threw themselves blindly into the imitation of
Correggio's faults. His affectation, his want of earnest thought, his
neglect of composition, his sensuous realism, his all-pervading
sweetness, his infantine prettiness, his substitution of
thaumaturgical effects for conscientious labour, admitted only too
easy imitation, and were but too congenial with the spirit of the late
Renaissance. Cupolas through the length and breadth of Italy began to
be covered with clouds and simpering cherubs in the convulsions of
artificial ecstasy. The attenuated elegance of Parmigiano, the
attitudinising of Anselmi's saints and angels, and a general sacrifice
of what is solid and enduring to sentimental gewgaws on the part of
all painters who had submitted to the magic of Correggio, proved how
easy it was to go astray with the great master. Meanwhile no one could
approach him in that which was truly his own--the delineation of a
transient moment in the life of sensuous beauty, the painting of a
smile on Nature's face, when light and colour tremble in harmony with
the movement of joyous living creatures. Another demonic nature of a
far more powerful type contributed his share to the ruin of art in
Italy. Michelangelo's constrained attitudes and muscular anatomy were
imitated by painters and sculptors, who thought that the grand style
lay in the presentation of theatrical athletes, but who could not
seize the secret whereby the great master made even the bodies of men
and women--colossal trunks and writhen limbs--interpret the meanings
of his deep and melancholy soul.

It is a sad law of progress in art, that when the aesthetic impulse is
on the wane, artists should perforce select to follow the weakness
rather than the vigour, of their predece