Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/282

 of the antique, and the works of Raffaelle and Michael Angelo; on this point, the only historical evidence which has been adduced, is a tradition recorded by Father Resta, and said to have been derived through three generations, from the information of Correggio's wife. As an authority so light and doubtful could not be seriously advanced, his biographers and admirers have sought in his works for more valid traces of the models to which he recurred. Mengs contends that his paintings exhibit proofs of an acquaintance with the antique, and the works of Raffaelle and Michael Angelo. In the head of the Danaë, he traces a resemblance to that of Venus de Medici; and in the St. Jerome, and Mercury teaching Cupid to read, he recognises imitations of the Farnese Hercules and the Apollo Belvidere; he also discovers a resemblance to one of the children of Niobe, in the young man who endeavors to escape from the soldiers, in the picture representing Christ betrayed in the garden. The countenance of the Magdalen, in the St. Jerome, he considers as an imitation of Raffaelle; and in the cupola of the church of St. John, he perceives a similitude to the grand style of Michael Angelo, in the frescos of the Vatican. In corroboration of this opinion, he adduces the sudden change which is perceived in the style of Correggio at an earlier period, as a proof that he must have seen and studied compositions superior to his own. Ratti, the copyist of Mengs, coincides with him in opinion. Lanzi cautiously adopts the same