Identifier: antonioallegrida00ricc (find matches)
Title: Antonio Allegri da Correggio, his life, his friends, and his time
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Ricci, Corrado, 1858-1934
Subjects: Correggio, 1489?-1534
Publisher: New York : C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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n. These five persons are brought together in a somewhat smallcompass. The figure of Christ is rather more than half length, thoseof Pilate and the Virgin rather less. Only the head and hand of theMagdalen are visible, and all that is seen of the soldier is his face.Yet the picture is by no means wanting in grandeur. The faintingMadonna is less dramatic than the Virgin of the Descent from theCross, but on the other hand, she is more beautiful. Her featuresare less disfigured by grief, and if we connect the two figures, takingthem as illustrating successive phases of the Passion, we shall see inone the mother, overcome with grief, but sustained to some extent byhope and physical energy; in the other, a woman stricken and helpless,with no comfort left her on earth. The artist has expressed this ex-tremity of human wretchedness with the happiest and most unflinching 1 There is one in the Communal Palace at Rimini, another in the Estense Gallery atModena, and a third in the Parma Gallery.
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ECCE HOMO. In the National Gallery, London. ECCE HOMO 227 aesthetic composure ; but though his treatment of the theme appeals tothe cultured and philosophic of modern times, it proved a dangerousprecedent for his successors. In copying or imitating Correggiosworks they were met in this instance by the insuperable difficultyof reproducing the sen-timent of the original.The result has beenthat whereas there aremany fairly good copiesof the Ecce Homo,there is not one of theDescent from the Crosswhich is even tolerable.And further, we findthat those artists whomost successfullystudied and adoptedCorreggesque forms(Annibale Carracci, forinstance, and Lan-franco) accepted theVirgin of the EcceHomo as the type ofthe Mater Dolorosa. The emotion ex-pressed by the Saviouris less impressive. Hisis not the anguishborn of a conscious-ness of human weak-ness and misery, but the individual agony of one who, sufferingacutely, has not sufficient fortitude to repress the external evidencesof his pain.

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