Correggio and the Antique
National Gallery and other locations in Parma, until 25 January 2009
Unlike the other leading artists of the Italian High Renaissance — Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian — Correggio lived a life of provincial obscurity. Unable to find any likeness of him, Vasari was obliged in his Lives of the Artists to leave blank the portrait space in the frontispiece above Correggio’s brief and often inaccurate entry.
Born Antonio Allegri in Correggio near Parma in around 1489, he spent his entire career in this out-of-the-way region on the northern plains, dying there in 1534. Yet even during his lifetime he won fame, inspiring artists for generations to come and powerfully influencing the development of the Baroque and Rococo.
Correggio’s works are extremely precious and scattered around Europe (there are surprisingly few in the US).
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