the beautiful blandishments of light, shade, and colour. There is not the least indication that such a thought had at this period of his life, entered into the mind of Coreggio.

The child is accordingly in playful action, as if something at a little distance and out of the picture -a passing butterfly perhaps had caught its attention, and occasioned some small temporary impediment as the benevolent mother puts on his outer dress of light purple;-a sort of thing that happens to almost every mother, almost every day. Her hands, and those of the child, are most delightfully drawn and painted, and perhaps are all the better for the artist's avoidance of that factitious gracefulness of lengthening out the extremities far beyond Nature's average, in which Parmegiano about this time, or soon afterward, began to indulge.

The draperies throughout, are cast in a masterly style; broad and but little divided over the larger forms; more divided and subdivided where it is of finer texture, but everywhere characterized by a certain squareness* which is in agreeable apposition to the roundness of the limbs and other nudities.

The robe of the Madonna is red, but the artist has contrived that enough of white shall approach the carnations both of the mother and child, to show to the greatest advantage those flesh tints, which of

Since writing the above I have learned from Lanzi that Mengs is lavish in his critical praises on the design of the draperies of Coreggio, "on whose masses he bestowed more attention than on the particular folds; he being the first who succeeded in making drapery a part of the composition, as well by force of contrast as by its direction; thus opening a new path which might render it conspicuous in large works."

themselves would be exquisite and admirable! In the works of no other master do we find the cool pearly greys worked into the warmer hues with such magical and exemplary skill. It is really a thing to stand before with wonder and amazement! The infant limbs are beautifully moulded: the head is immaculate! and all are rounded and blended into the most perfect harmony. The effect seems to have resulted from the dexterous and exemplary management of light, shade, and colour :-lines are scarcely recognised; and there is little of distinct specification. The right knee and leg of the Saviour come forward, and on the light side these are pronounced with distinctness against the red robe of the Madonna-and so of his face but everywhere else, his figure is all melting and mellifluous blandishment, like the concords of sweet sounds. It far transcends all painting of the kind that had preceded it; and through the three centuries that have since elapsed, panting Art has "toil'd after it in vain."

The whole performance seems to owe its divinity, -in great part at least-to the absence of all effort to make it appear divine. It is as if the author felt quite certain that there was no other art addressible to mortals, of attaining celestial perfection, but through terrestrial and intrinsic means. It sets the sophistry of art at an immense distance, and reduces to nothingness those meretricious and fantastic tricks that are sometimes played before the high heaven of painting, "which make the angels weep."

To be able duly to appreciate and enjoy such works as this divine mother and child, is no trivial attainment of taste, and the less experienced reader, will not regret, if he sympathetically catch-a por

tion at least, of this pleasure and this power from Annibal Carracci, who writes of the finer qualities of Coreggio, "This kind of delicacy and purity, which is rather truth itself than verisimilitude, pleases me greatly. It is neither artificial nor forced, but quite natural." And in another place, treating of the youthful and infantile heads of Coreggio, the same distinguished painter writes (what is very pertinent to the present performance), "The faces beam with so much nature and simplicity, as to enchant, and to compel us, as it were, to smile as they smile." This is charming! The ascribing to Coreggio of this power of exciting involuntary sympathy by his productions, is an exquisite compliment, proceeding, as it does, from an artist of Annibal's high attainments: yet, who feels not something of this, as he gazes at the present Madonna and infant, or, in the words of Milton,

That the Emperor Charles V. received the little picture which is the subject of our present essay, as a present from the Duke of Mantua; and that it is the very work (or one of the works) alluded to by the historian of Italian art, and by Julio Romano, (in the passage which we have quoted above), is by no means improbable, since it was imported into England within these few years, from the Spanish metropolis, and we believe from the Escurial, by Mr. Wallis (an English artist, since deceased), who either gave or received for it two thousand guineas.

THE VISION OF ST. JEROME.

PARMEGIANO.

MICHAEL ANGELO was born A. D. 1474, Raphael in the year 1483, Coreggio in 1494, and Parmegiano in 1504. These thirty years, during which Nature— in Italy* at least-appears to have "wantoned as in her prime," and brought forth nothing but geniusThese thirty years, were thus divided into four nearly equal portions, or periods. And the four distinguished painters who are named above, were the prime fountains of the grandeur and grace of revived art, as it first bubbled up from among the ruins of the classical ages on the banks of the Tiber and of the beautiful Arno.

Grace, have I written? I shall hope to stand excused among those who attach an exclusively religious sense to that word, even should my pen happen thus to slip again, and will endeavour to write gracefulness in future, where I may have occasion for the same compound abstract term: but I have been somewhat inadvertently led into the equivoke, by having recently read in Lanzi's history, that it is on account of his extraordinary grace, that the imperfections of Parmegiano have been pardoned; and that even his defects appear meritorious upon the same

account.

By the time Parmegiano was commissioned to paint the Vision of St. Jerome, which was some

* Dr. Robertson asserts that it was the same elsewhere in Europe.

where about the year 1526, when he could not have been more than twenty-three years of age, it is evident that most painters in their professional practice, had sprung away from that portraiture of individual objects which had regulated the aims of their predecessors, and had not merely begun to idealize, but, at Rome, had proceeded pretty far in the science of classifying and generalising their elementary notions of Art. They had evidently analysed, as they felt or believed, sufficiently for them to venture upon a reversal of the process, and were now practically adopting the synthetic mode. They had even made some considerable progress in the ascertainment of technic principle. Whether they had in all respects philosophized justly? or whether the change was operated rather by experience than a priori reasoning? might be made another, and a very interesting, academical question. But it was a process of abstraction -the metaphysics of imitative Art.

After they had classed a number of pictures together, they appear to have sought in every individual picture of that given class, for some pervading principle, or principles, which they believed might appertain, or be common, to that class. They sought it in the arrangement or combination of forms, of colours, and of light and shade, into which pictures had previously been analysed. In the first of thesenamely, the elements of fine forms-Michael Angelo, who had a mathematical mind, believed that he had discovered the essential principles, in an union of the PYRAMIDAL with the SERPENTINE.

Parmegiano, among others who adopted this faith, followed and refined upon it, by infusing more of the