lived in retirement, I have not been able to
find one. He was, in truth, a person who had no opinion of himself,
nor did he believe himself to be an able master of his art,
contrasting his deficiencies with that perfection which he would
have liked to achieve. He was contented with little, and he lived
like an excellent Christian.

[Illustration: THE MADONNA AND CHILD WITH S. JEROME

(_After the painting by =Antonio da Correggio=. Parma: Gallery,
351_)

_Anderson_]

Antonio, like a man who was weighed down by his family, was anxious
to be always saving, and he had thereby become as miserly as he
could well be. Wherefore it is related that, having received at
Parma a payment of sixty crowns in copper coins, and wishing to take
them to Correggio to meet some demand, he placed the money on his
back and set out to walk on foot; but, being smitten by the heat of
the sun, which was very great, and drinking water to refresh
himself, he was seized by pleurisy, and had to take to his bed in a
raging fever, nor did he ever raise his head from it, but finished
the course of his life at the age of forty, or thereabout.

His pictures date about 1512; and he bestowed a very great gift on
painting by his handling of colours, which was that of a true
master; and it was by means of him that men's eyes were opened in
Lombardy, where so many beautiful intellects have been seen in
painting, following him in making works worthy of praise and memory.
Thus, by showing them his treatment of hair, executed with such
facility, for all the difficulty of painting it, he taught them how
it should be painted; for which all painters owe him an everlasting
debt. At their instance the following epigram was written to him by
Messer Fabio Segni, a gentleman of Florence:

Hujus cum regeret mortales spiritus artus
Pictoris, Charites supplicuere Jovi.
Non alia pingi dextra, Pater alme, rogamus;
Hunc praeter, nulli pingere nos liceat.
Annuit his votis summi regnator Olympi,
Et juvenem subito sidera ad alta tulit,
Ut posset melius Charitum simulacra referre
Praesens, et nudas cerneret inde Deas.

At this same time lived Andrea del Gobbo of Milan, a very pleasing
painter and colourist, many of whose works are scattered about in
the houses of his native city of Milan. There is a large
panel-picture of the Assumption of Our Lady, by his hand, in the
Certosa of Pavia, but it was left unfinished, on account of death
overtaking