Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/434

 404 Painting Other works of a similar character are his Leda with the Swan and Io and Jupiter, both in the Berlin Museum ; and his Danae in the Borghese Palace, Rome. To this period of his life belong many fine altar-pieces, Holy Families, and sacred pictures. The Dresden Gallery is especially rich in works by Correggio — containing, amongst others, the famous Nativity, called the La Notte (or "Night"), because it is lighted entirely by the nimbus round the head of the Holy Child; and the yet better-known Reading Magdalen. The Parma Gallery contains the famous Madonna delta Scodella (Fig. 142), and the Madonna and 8. Jerome, representing the Saint offering his translation of the Bible to the Madonna and Child, — also called II Giorno, or " Day," on account of the fulness and radiancy of the light diffused over the whole scene. In the Louvre are the Marriage of 8. Catharine, and the Antiope ; in the Naples Gallery the Madonna known as "La Zingarella," from the peculiar head-dress of the Virgin; and in the National Gallery the famous Ecce Homo, representing Christ pre- sented by Pilate to the people, a Holy Family (known as La Vierge an Panier), remarkable for the knowledge displayed in it of aerial perspective, and Christ* s Agony in the Garden, in which the master's peculiar command of light and shade is well illustrated — the Saviour being illuminated from Heaven, and the attendant angel by light reflected from the person of the Lord. During the years 1526 to 1530, Correggio was engaged on a most important work — the Assumption of the Virgin on the dome of the cathedral at Parma. It is a masterly piece of vigorous design and foreshortening, but is wanting in correctness of drawing, and exhibits a confusion of limbs which gained for it the title of a " hash of frogs."