Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/266

 *norant or a distressed man. Of the rank he held in the estimation of the princes of his country we have evidence in a curious document discovered in the archives of the city of Correggio—the marriage contract between Ippolito (the son of Giberto, Lord of Correggio, by his wife, the celebrated poetess Vittoria Gambara), and Chiara da Correggio, in which we find the signature of the great painter as one of the witnesses. Correggio was one of that splendid triumvirate of painters who, living at the same time, were working on different principles, and achieving, each in his own department, excellence hitherto unequalled; and if Correggio must be allowed to be inferior to Raffaelle in invention and expression, and to Titian in life-like color, he has united design and color with the illusion of light and shadow in a degree of perfection not then nor since approached by any painter. Hence Annibale Caracci, on seeing one of his great pictures, exclaimed in a transport that he was "the only painter!"

CORREGGIO'S GRAND CUPOLA OF THE CHURCH OF ST. JOHN AT PARMA.

The admiration which the works of Correggio excited, induced the monks of St. John to engage him in ornamenting the grand cupola, and other parts of their church. The original agreement has not been discovered, but various entries have been found in the books of the convent, between 1519 and 1536, which prove, that for adorning the cupola he