h of whom we will speak at the proper time,
describing fully the honour and benefit that they have conferred on
art.

[Illustration: CATERINA, QUEEN OF CYPRUS

(_After the painting by =Giorgione da Castelfranco= (?). Milan:
Crespi Collection_)

_Anderson_]

FOOTNOTE:

[12] Signet-office, for the sealing of Papal Bulls and
other papers of the Papal Court.

ANTONIO DA CORREGGIO

LIFE OF ANTONIO DA CORREGGIO

PAINTER

I do not wish to leave that country wherein our great mother Nature,
in order not to be thought partial, gave to the world extraordinary
men of that sort with which she had already for many and many a year
adorned Tuscany; among whom was one endowed with an excellent and
very beautiful genius, by name Antonio da Correggio, a most rare
painter, who acquired the modern manner so perfectly, that in a few
years, what with his natural gifts and his practice in art, he
became a most excellent and marvellous craftsman. He was very timid
by nature, and with great discomfort to himself he was continually
labouring at the exercise of his art, for the sake of his family,
which weighed upon him; and although it was a natural goodness that
impelled him, nevertheless he afflicted himself more than was right
in bearing the burden of those sufferings which are wont to crush
mankind. He was very melancholy in his practice of art, a slave to
her labours, and an unwearying investigator of all the difficulties
of her realm; to which witness is borne by a vast multitude of
figures in the Duomo of Parma, executed in fresco and well finished,
which are to be found in the great tribune of the said church, and
are seen foreshortened from below with an effect of marvellous
grandeur.

Antonio was the first who began to work in the modern manner in
Lombardy; wherefore it is thought that if he, with his genius, had
gone forth from Lombardy and lived in Rome, he would have wrought
miracles, and would have brought the sweat to the brow of many who
were held to be great men in his time. For, his works being such as
they are without his having seen any of the ancient or the best of
the modern, it necessarily follows that, if he had seen them, he
would have vastly improved his own, and, advancing from good to
better, would have reached the highest rank. It may, at least, be
held for certain that no one ever handled colours better than he,
and that no craftsman ever painted with greater delicacy or with
more reli