Antonio Allegri da Correggio

1489-1534

European Artist

Antonio Allegri da Correggio was born in Correggio, a small Lombard town near Reggio Emilia. His date of birth is uncertain (around 1494). His father was a merchant. Otherwise, little is known about Correggio's life or training. In the years 1503-1505 he apprenticed to Francesco Bianchi Ferrara of Modena. In 1516 he was in Parma, where he become a friend of Michelangelo Anselmi, one of the main Mannerist painters of the period. He remained in that city until 1530. Correggio's first major commission was the ceiling of the private dining salon of the mother-superior of the Convent of St Paul, called the Camera di San Paolo (Parma). Although painted for the local convent, it harkens to the secular frescoes of the pleasure palace of the Villa Farnesina in Rome. He then painted the illusionistic Vision of St. John on Patmos (1520-21) for the dome of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista. Three years later he decorated the dome of the cathedral of Parma with a startling Assumption of the Virgin, crowded with layers of receding figures in perspective. The complexity of this work, and its disruption of the architeral roof and suggestion of divine infinity was innovative. Most fresco work was framed as canvases upon walls. Other masterpieces include The Lamentation and The Martyrdom of Four Saints [1], both at the Galleria Nazionale of Parma. The Lamentation is haunted by a lambence rarely seen in Italian painting prior to this time. The Martyrdom is also remarkable for resembling later Baroque compositions such as Bernini's (Truth) and Ercole Ferrata's (Death of Saint Agnes), showing a gleeful saint entering martyrdom. Correggio died on March 5, 1534.