coherently or fill a canvas with harmonised variety. There is no trace
of his violence here. Though the motion of music runs through the
whole multitude like a breeze, though the joy expressed is a real
_tripudio celeste_, not one of all these angels flings his arms
abroad or makes a movement that disturbs the rhythm. We feel that they
are keeping time and resting quietly, each in his appointed seat, as
though the sphere was circling with them round the throne of God, who
is their centre and their source of gladness. Unlike Correggio and his
imitators, Ferrari has introduced no clouds, and has in no case made
the legs of his angels prominent. It is a mass of noble faces and
voluminously robed figures, emerging each above the other like flowers
in a vase. Bach too has specific character, while all are robust and
full of life, intent upon the service set them. Their instruments
of music are all the lutes and viols, flutes, cymbals, drums, fifes,
citherns, organs, and harps that Ferrari's day could show. The scale
of colour, as usual with Ferrari, is a little heavy; nor are the tints
satisfactorily harmonised. But the vigour and invention of the whole
work would atone for minor defects of far greater consequence.

It is natural, beneath this dome, to turn aside and think one
moment of Correggio at Parma. Before the _macchinisti_ of the
seventeenth century had vulgarised the motive, Correggio's bold
attempt to paint heaven in flight from earth--earth left behind in the
persons of the Apostles standing round the empty tomb, heaven soaring
upward with a spiral vortex into the abyss of light above--had an
originality which set at nought all criticism. There is such ecstasy
of jubilation, such rapturous rapidity of flight, that we who strain
our eyes from below, feel we are in the darkness of the grave which
Mary left. A kind of controlling rhythm for the composition is gained
by placing Gabriel, Madonna, and Christ at three points in the swirl
of angels. Nevertheless, composition--the presiding all-controlling
intellect--is just what makes itself felt by absence; and Correggio's
special qualities of light and colour have now so far vanished
from the cupola of the Duomo that the, constructive poverty is
not disguised. Here if anywhere in painting, we may apply Goethe's
words--_Gefuehl ist Alles._

If then we return to Ferrari's angels at Saronno, we find that the
painter of Varallo chose a safer though a far more modest theme.