looks archly at the spectator. She points with her right hand to the little Cupid, who, seen in profile, is with childish simplicity eagerly endeavouring to spell the letters on a paper which Mercury, seated on the ground, holds out to him. The form of Venus is of the finest and most delicate proportions; the attitude of her beautiful limbs, the graceful flow of the lines, and all the parts rounded in the clearest and most glowing colours, show us of what Correggio was capable in his own peculiar style of excellence: the gradation of the full colours, the reflected lights and transparent shadows, are here employed with the most consummate art and the most refined judgment to produce this roundness of effect. The countenance of Venus is not so satisfactory; it is deficient in nobleness both in the forms and expression. Though the drawing is far more correct than in many pictures of Correggio, yet the right corner of the mouth and the thumb of the right hand are not all that might be wished; and in the latter the ill effect is increased, the fourth and little fingers not being seen. It is very remarkable that Venus is here represented with a large pair of tinted wings. All the figures are advantageously relieved by the foliage of the background, where the verdure of the leaves is still to be distinguished; it is of astonishing force and depth."-Dr. Waagen.

It may be observed here that the attractive and enchanting sweetness, the winning smile of self-complacent loveliness, with which Correggio has arrayed his Venus, the very coquetterie with which she looks out of the picture on the charmed spectator, are infinitely more characteristic of the personage represented, the "bella Venere, madre d' Amore," than any nobleness of expression. For the wings he has given to Venus, Correggio had classical authority. She is thus represented in some antique gems: and it is curious enough that he who has in some pictures placed a fiddle instead of a lyre in the hands of Apollo should be thus observant of an

unusual classical attribute-unusual but apt, for Beauty, alas! has wings as well as Time and Love. The figure of Cupid is exquisite for its infantine naïveté. The budding plumage of his wings, and the natural manner in which they are affixed to his little shoulders, have been justly admired; and the whole picture, in its union of the most glowing relief and pictorial effect, with something of the statuesque feeling of Grecian art, looks as if painted from one of the Odes of Anacreon.

A loftier idea of the sublimity, and a larger comprehension of the versatility of Correggio's genius, might be acquired by the study of his grand frescoes at Parma; but all that is necessary to enable the student in art to comprehend his characteristic excellencies may be found in this lovely picture. There is, first, that peculiar grace to which the Italians have given the name of correggiesque, very properly, for it was the complexion of the individual mind and temperament of the artist stamped upon the work of his hand. Though so often imitated, it remains, in fact, inimitable, every attempt degenerating into an affectation of the most intolerable kind. It consists in the blending of sentiment in expression with a flowing grace of form, an exquisite fulness and softness in the tone and colour, an almost illusive chiaroscuro;-sensation, soul, and form melted together;-conveying to the mind of the spectator the most delicious impression of harmony, spiritual and sensual. Lord Byron speaks of "music breathing" from the face of a beautiful woman: music breathes from the pictures of Correggio. He is the painter of beauty, par excellence; he is to us what Apelles was to the ancients-the standard of the amiable and graceful.

Those who may not perfectly understand what artists and critics mean when they dwell with rapture on Correggio's wonderful chiaroscuro should look well into this picture; they will perceive that in the painting of the limbs they can look through the shadows into the substance, as it might be into the flesh and blood; the shadows seem mutable, accidental, and aerial, as if between the eye and the colour, and not incorporated with them; in this lies the inimitable excellence of this master.

"Correggio's principal attention, in point of form, was directed to flow of outline, and its gradual variation; of this he never entirely lost sight even in his most capricious foreshortenings; and his style of light and shadow is so congenial, that the one seems the natural consequence of the other. He is always cited as the most perfect model of those soft and insensible transitions; of that union of effect which, above every

thing else, impresses the general idea of loveliness. The manner of his penciling is exactly of a piece with the rest; all seems melted together, yet with so nice a judgment as to avoid, by some of those free yet delicate touches, the hardness as well as the insipidity of what is called high finishing-(such as we see it in Vanderwerf, for instance). Correggio's he pictures are, indeed, as far removed from monotony as from glare; seems to have felt beyond all others the exact degree of brilliancy that accords with the softness of beauty; and to have been, with regard to figures, what Claude was in landscape."-Price.

It was for a long time the fashion to regard the divine creations of Correggio as the mere product of genius and accident; himself as a man born in the lowest grade of society; uneducated in the elements of his art; owing all to the wondrous resources of his own unassisted genius; living and dying in obscurity and poverty; ill paid for his pictures; and at length perishing tragically. It has been proved that there is no foundation for these popular fallacies. Correggio's own pictures are a sufficient refutation of a part of them; they exhibit not only a classical and cultivated taste, but a profound knowledge of anatomy, and of the sciences of optics, perspective, and chemistry, as far as they were then carried. His exquisite chiaroscuro and harmonious blending of colours were certainly not the result of mere chance: all his sensibility to these effects of nature would not have enabled him to render them, without the profoundest study of the mechanical means he employed. The great works on which he was employed-his lavish use of the rarest and most expensive colours, and the time and labour he bestowed in analysing and refining them-the report that he worked on a ground overlaid with gold-all refute the idea of his being either an ignorant or a distressed man. Of the rank he held in the estimation of the princes of his country we have evidence in a curious document discovered in the archives of the city of Correggio: the marriage contract between Ippolito (the son of Giberto Lord of Correggio, by his wife the celebrated poetess Vittoria Gambara) and Chiara da Correggio, in which we find the signature of the great painter as one of the witnesses. Correggio was one of that splendid triumvirate of painters who, living at the same time, were working on different principles, and achieving, each in his own department, excellence hitherto unequalled; and if Correggio must be allowed to be inferior to Raphael in invention and expression, and to Titian in life-like colour, he has united design and colour with the illusion of light and shadow in a degree of perfection not then nor since approached by any painter. Hence Annibal Carracci, on seeing one of his great pictures, exclaimed in a transport that he was the "only painter !"

Correggio's master is supposed to have been Francesco Bianchi, of Modena, whose pictures-still in existence-have such a resemblance to some peculiarities in Correggio's known style as to justify the presumption: he died when Correggio was about sixteen. It is ascertained that Correggio never visited Rome; but in the pictures of Andrea Mantegna, who died when he was about thirteen, and in the numerous copies after the antique existing in the school of Andrea, and the statues, busts, and relievos in the collections of the Duke of Mantua and Isabella d'Este, there was sufficient to form and refine the taste of a young artist; he could not, however, have seen the works of his cotemporaries, Michael Angelo and Raphael, and remains one of the most original of the great painters of Italy. Morally, he was distinguished by his exceeding gentleness and personal modesty. I know not any other great painter who has left no authenticated effigy whatever of himself. The grand profile in the church at Parma, so often copied and engraved as his portrait, is only supposed to represent him.

Correggio died in 1534 (about fourteen years after the death of Raphael); he was in his forty-first year; dying, like Raphael, in the very prime of his life and powers.

This picture was painted for Frederigo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, the predecessor of him who, a hundred years later, admired and patronised Rubens. Its subsequent history is exceedingly interesting. When Charles I. of England purchased the Mantuan collection, in 1630, for 20,000., this picture, and three others by Correggio, were included in the acquisition. It hung in Charles's own apartment at Whitehall, and is designated in his catalogue as "A standing naked Venus, whereby Mercury sitting, teaching Cupid his lesson, entire figures almost as big as life."* On the sale of the king's effects by order of the parliament, it was purchased by the Duke of Alva, and from his family it passed into the possession of the famous Godoy, Prince of Peace. When his collec tion was to be sold by auction at Madrid during the French invasion, Murat secured it for himself on the morning fixed for the sale, and took it with him to Naples, where it adorned the royal palace. On his fall from power, this picture was among the precious effects with which his wife, Caroline Buonaparte, escaped to Vienna. The rest of its strange eventful history I am enabled to give accurately, through the kindness, and in the very words, of the Marquess of Londonderry, its next possessor.

"During the congress of the sovereigns at Verona, in November, 1822,

A beautiful miniature copy (8 in. by 54) was executed by Peter Oliver, for Charles I., in 1636, when the original was in his possession; and now exists (or ought to exist) in the Royal collection. It used to hang in Queen Caroline's closet, at Kensington, and was then enclosed in an ebony frame with folding doors,

General M'Donald, who was chamberlain to Madame Murat (then known as the Countess Lipona), arrived from her residence near Vienna to sell her collection of pictures, amongst which the two famous Correggios were the most conspicuous. The General communicated with the ministers of all the powers, and had various negotiations, on and off, with them. Many were desirous of obtaining possession of the two chef d'oeuvres, but were indisposed to take the indifferent ones; while General M'Donald naturally wished the Correggios to assist in selling the others. I heard, by mere accident, of these circumstances, as it was not imagined I was an amateur, much less a connoisseur; and my informant acquainted me that the Emperor Alexander's ministers, Capo d'Istrias and Nesselrode, had obtained permission of the Emperor of Austria to export the pictures to Russia, if they could agree on the purchase. I waited immediately on Prince Metternich, and I asked him if, in the event of my closing a bargain with General M'Donald (as I understood the pictures were not yet actually sold), he would obtain for me, as a British plenipotentiary, the same liberty of taking these gems to England that he had accorded to Russia? The prince smiled, and looked en moqueur, saying, 'Mais oui, mon cher! certainement oui!' I then said I wished he would give me an official line under his hand to that effect; and I did not leave him until he gave me the paper, subject to the pleasure of the Emperor. The moment I obtained the order I went to General M'Donald, and inquired how his negotiation stood. He informed me the Russians stood out against taking the whole for the larger price, and wanted the Correggios alone. I asked him if he would close with me, and take my bills within a certain period for the whole? He immediately acquiesced; and within twelve hours after the bills were signed and my courier en route for Vienna, with the order for the pictures, which were conveyed by him to England almost before the Russians knew they were finally disposed of."

An attempt was made to overtake and stop the courier, but the pictures had already reached the Hague; and the promptitude of Lord Londonderry on this occasion eventually secured to the nation two chefs-d'œuvre of art. This picture, and the Ecce Homo, were purchased from his Lordship, in the year 1834, by parliament, for 10,000 guineas.

Sir Thomas Lawrence used to relate that when he was at Rome in 1819, the fate of these pictures was matter of great curiosity and speculation, as well as the dexterity of the ex-queen in secreting them; they were, even then, concealed at Rome; and Lawrence was allowed a furtive glimpse of them, in the hope that he would recommend them to a purchaser in England. He says in a letter, "I had them brought down to me, and placed in all lights, and I know them to be most rare and precious." By his recommendation, Mr. Angerstein offered 65001. for the two, which was declined.*

* Vide Life of Sir T. Lawrence, vol. ii., p. 169.