Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/416

408 was formeTly at Reggio; but no long time since, Messer Luciano Pallavicino, a great admirer of fine paintings, passing through that place, happened to see the picture, and without regard to the cost thereof secured it as one who had bought some precious jewel, and despatched it to his house in Genoa. In the same city of Reggio there is a picture by this master, the subject of which is the Birth of Christ; in this work, the light proceeding from the person of the divine Child throws its splendour on the shepherds and around all the figures who are contemplating the infant; many other beautiful thoughts are made manifest by our artist in this picture, among others is one, expressed by the figure of a woman, who, desiring to look fixedly at the Saviour, is not able with her mortal sight to endure the glory of his divinity, which appears to cast its rays full on her figure: she is therefore shading her eyes with her hand: all this is so admirably expressed that it seems quite wonderful. Over the cabin wherein the divine Child is laid, there hovers a choir of angels singing, and so exquisitely painted, that they seem rather to have been showered down from Heaven than formed by the hand of the painter. In the same city there is a small picture by Correggio, not more than a foot high, which is one of the most extraordinary and most beautiful of his works; the figures are small, the subject Christ in the Garden, the time chosen being night, and the angel appearing to the Saviour illumines his person with the splendour of his rays, an effect displayed with so