Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/1197

COR was noted for his moderation and prudence, his love of truth, and boldness in enouncing it. He had large views, a cultivated and correct understanding, a keen insight into character, much energy, much enterprise, much fertility of resource, a chivalrous attachment to king and country, and unshaken resolution in doing and enforcing what he thought right.—J. T.  CORNYSHE,, master of the children of the royal chapel in 1490, was a distinguished musician in his day. He was also a poet; at least he wrote some rhymes entitled, "A Treatise between Trowth and Enformation." These lines were penned in 1504, when the author was in the Fleet prison, in consequence, as he asserts, of false information given by an enemy. The treatise was written in order to restore him to favour with "King Harry," as he familiarly calls his sovereign. It was no doubt attended by the desired result; for, not very long afterwards, his name occurs again among the gentlemen of the chapel who played before the king. In 1530 was published a collection of songs, with music, by Cornyshe and other composers.—E. F. R.  CORNYSHE,, jun., a son of the preceding, was also an eminent musician at the end of the fifteenth, and beginning of the following century. Many of his compositions are preserved in a volume of ancient English songs for two, three, and four voices, known as the Fairfax MS.—(Add. MS. British Mus.; No. 5465.)—E. F. R.  CORREA, born at Serpa in Portugal in 1750. After taking orders, he devoted himself with untiring energy to classical and antiquarian studies. While holding the office of secretary to a Portuguese academy of science, Correa wrote an important work on physiological botany. In 1786 he was obliged to leave Portugal, in order to avoid the religious persecution then raging. He returned after the death of Peter III., but in 1796 was a second time obliged to flee, and came to London, where he was made a fellow of the Royal Society. After the peace of Amiens he went to France, where he made good use of the scientific advantages he enjoyed. In 1813 we find him at Philadelphia, where he undertook the duties of a chair of botany, but refused the title of professor. In 1816 he was appointed ambassador of Portugal to the United States, but was recalled to Portugal in 1821, and nominated a member of the board of finance. In 1823 he was elected a member of the cortes, but died 11th September in the same year. His great work is the "Collecao de livros ineditos de historia Portugueza."—F. M. W.  CORRÉA,, a Portuguese general, who commanded a successful expedition against the Moors, undertaken by his own sovereign, Sancho, in the middle of the thirteenth century. He afterwards served with Ferdinand of Castile in the campaigns by which that monarch humbled the Moslem power in Spain, and died in 1275.—W. B.  CORREA, a celebrated admiral, was born at Rio de Janeiro in 1594, and died in 1688. The first part of his life was spent at sea. In 1641 he was made governor-general of Brazil, to which colony he rendered valuable services. In 1648 he drove the Dutch out of Angola, and governed that region during the three following years. The last office he held was that of governor of the countries south of Brazil. He closed a long life of important public services in unmerited neglect.—R. M., A.  CORREGGIO, or, is commonly called Correggio, and Antonio da Correggio, from the small town of that name in which he was born, about twenty miles east of Parma, and now forming part of the duchy of Modena. The exact date of his birth is not known, but he is assumed to have been born in the winter of 1493-94; his father Pellegrino Allegri, was a merchant in good circumstances, but as is the case with many other great painters, exceedingly few facts of the life of Correggio are positively known, notwithstanding the elaborate memoirs of him by the Padre Pungileoni, Memoire Istoriche di Antonio Allegri detto Il Correggio, published at Parma in 1817-21, of which an abstract was published by Archdeacon Coxe, in the Sketches of the Lives of Correggio and Parmegiano, London, 1823. The account of Vasari represents Correggio as having been very poor and obscure, but some documents published by Pungileoni should entirely dissipate this impression, which appears to be altogether erroneous. He evidently enjoyed a great reputation in his lifetime, even as early as 1519, and he received high prices for his works. Antonio commenced the practice of his art in his native place, and a painter of Correggio of the name of Antonio Bartolotti has the credit of being his first master. By the time he was five and twenty years of age, his fame had already reached the capital of Parma, and in 1520 we find him engaged on the extensive frescos of the cupola of San Giovanni, representing the ascension of Christ from the midst of the apostles, well-known by the prints of Vanni and the Cav. Toschi. As an additional indication of prosperity, in this same year, 1520, he was married to a young lady of Mantua, named Girolama Merlini, and with whom he received a considerable dowry; she is supposed by Pungileoni to have been the original of the Madonna in the holy family, known as La Zingarella. He had already executed several remarkable oil pictures before settling in Parma; the St. George, and the St. Sebastian—two large altarpieces, now in the gallery of Dresden—are both of this period. In 1522 he received his last extensive commission, to paint, also in fresco, the dome and choir of the cathedral of Parma, but this great work was interrupted by his early death. Correggio contracted to paint the whole for one thousand ducats (equivalent perhaps, now, to about £5000 of our money). He, however, did not live to complete even the dome, which was finished by his pupil Giorgio Gandini. The subject is the "Assumption of the Virgin," the apostles being witnesses of the event, below; these frescos were also engraved by Vanni, and in part by the Cav. Toschi. This great painter died of a fever at Correggio, 5th March, 1534, at the early age of forty, being survived by his father, and his wife was left with his only son, Pomponio, and one daughter; two of his daughters died before him. Correggio was particularly remarkable for his objective chiaroscuro, and for his violent and complicated foreshortenings; he was also a fine colourist, and pre-eminent above all his contemporaries for what is termed grace. His foreshortenings are, however, skilful as well as violent; his lights and shadows are graduated with exquisite roundness and the utmost taste; and in what has been termed grace—the attitude, undulating forms, and soft expression of his figures—he is still unrivalled. It was this quality, this general softness, which so fascinated Annibale Carracci and the Bolognese eclectics. Annibale, in a letter published by Malvasia, (Felsina Pittrice,) writes from Parma to his cousin Lodvico in 1580, with reference to Raphael's St. Cecilia, now in the gallery of Bologna, and some of Correggio's pictures at Parma, as follows:—"The 'St. Jerome;' the 'St. Catherine;' the 'Madonna della Scodella'—I would rather have any of them than the St. Cecilia; how much grander, and at the same time more delicate, is the figure of St. Jerome, than that of St. Paul [in the St. Cecilia], which at first appeared to me to be a miracle; but now it appears to me wooden, it is so hard." Correggio's pictures are exceedingly valuable, but most of the great European galleries possess one or two fine examples of his oil paintings. Many are still preserved at Parma, and the Dresden gallery is rich in Correggios; besides the two already mentioned, it possesses the famous "Notte," or nativity of Christ, and the small "Reading Magdalene." The Notte, somewhat damaged now, is conspicuous for its grace and foreshortenings, and for the much spoken of device of lighting up the picture from the infant Saviour; Raphael had preceded Correggio many years in this mode of lighting—in the fresco of Peter delivered from Prison, in the Vatican, all the light of the picture proceeds from the angel. Correggio is also well represented in our National gallery—in the "Cupid being taught to Read;" in the "Ecce Homo;" and in the small "Holy Family." The "Christ praying in the Garden," is now assumed to be a copy of the original in the possession of the duke of Wellington, and which was captured from king Joseph after the battle of Vittoria, and afterwards presented to the late duke by Ferdinand VII. The "Cupid reading," one of the painter's masterpieces, is a noble specimen of all Correggio's qualities of style, though the picture has somewhat suffered from time. It was formerly in the possession of Charles I., who purchased it of the duke of Mantua; and at the sale of King Charles' effects it was bought by the duke of Alva for £800, then an immense sum; it belonged afterwards to the prince of Peace, and was eventually restored to this country through the marquis of Londonderry, of whom it was purchased for the nation in 1834, together with the "Ecce Homo" by the same painter.—R. N. W.  CORRI,, a musician, was born in Naples in 1744, and died in London when above the age of eighty-two. He was <section end="1197Zcontin" />