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Harmony of Coreggio.-Picture of St. Jerome.

all that remains of him, nor have his imitators attained the same effect. The harmony of Coreggio, though assisted by exquisite hues, was entirely independent of colour; his great organ was chiaroscuro in its most extensive sense: compared with the expanse in which he floats, the effects of Leonardo da Vinci are little more than the dying ray of evening, and the concentrated flash of Giorgione, discordant abruptness. The bland central light of a globe, imperceptibly gliding through lucid demi-tints into rich reflected shades, composes the spell of Coreggio, and affects us with the soft emotions of a delicious dream.

Though, perhaps, we should be nearer the truth by ascribing the cause of Coreggio's magic to the happy conformation of his organs, and his calm serenity of mind, than to Platonic ecstasies, a poet might at least be allowed to say, "that his soul, absorbed by the contemplation of infinity, soared above the sphere of measurable powers, knowing that every object whose limits can be distinctly perceived by the mind, must be within its grasp; and, however grand, magnificent, beautiful, or terrific, fall short of the conception itself, and be less than sublime."

In this, from

whatever cause, consists the real spell of Coreggio. He is, no doubt, in the whole of his character, one of those very few artists of the first class; and, not to mention any other of his admirable works, his picture of St. Jerome, in the academy of Parma, is, as far as it goes, and for an agreeable union of all the parts of the art, perhaps superior to any other picture in the world.

In the invention of this work, which exhibits St. Jerome presenting his translation of the Scriptures by the hand of an angel, to the infant seated in the lap of the Madonna, the patron of the piece is sacrificed in place to the angelic group which occupies the middle. The figure that chiefly attracts, and has, by its suavity

Fra Bartolomeo.-Il Frate.-Instruction of Raphael.

for centuries attracted, and still absorbs the general eye, is that charming one of the Magdalen, in a half-kneeling, half-recumbent posture, pressing the foot of the infant Jesus to her lips. By doing this, the painter has, undoubtedly, offered to the Graces the boldest and most enamoured sacrifice which they ever received from art.

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Fra Bartolomeo di St. Marco, (or Baccio Della Porta,) was born in the territory of Savignano, near Florence, in 1469. At an early age he was placed under Cosimo Roselli, at Florence, who happening to live near the gate of St. Peter, his pupil received the name of Baccio Della Porta. Here he continued for some years, studying the works of his master, and those of Leonardo da Vinci, whose grandeur of relief and chiaroscuro he greatly admired.

His early performances were small, but exquisitely finished. He gave a noble proof of his powers in the Last Judgment, painted in fresco, for the chapel of St. Maria Nuova. About this time he contracted an intimacy with the famous monk, Jerome Savana rola, who afterwards suffered at the stake, which circumstance so much affected the painter that he took the habit of St. Dominic, in 1500, and was afterwards called Il Frate.

In 1504, he became acquainted with Raphael, who instructed him in colouring, for which he received in return some lessons in perspective. Soon after this he went to Rome, where the works of Michael Angelo and Raphael both astonished and depressed him so much, that he was almost ready to abandon his art in despair. While here he only painted the two figures of St. Peter and St. Paul, which were long preserved in the Quirinal Palace.

Michael Angelo.-Poet, painter, sculptor, and architect.

On his return to Florence his spirits revived, and he painted several splendid altar-pieces for the churches of his order. His design approached that of Raphael; and he was even superior in boldness of relief, and strength of colouring. Among his most celebrated pictures was a St. Sebastian, a St. Mark, Marriage of St. Catharine, the Four Evangelists, and the Assumption. died in his convent of St. Mark, in 1517.

He

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Michael Angelo Buonaroti, of the noble house of Canossa, was born in the year 1475, in the castle of Caprese, on the Arno. His predilection for art was so strong that he prevailed with his father to place him with Ghirlandaio. He early attracted the attention of Lorenzo de Medicis, who fostered his genius with a generosity and sympathy that the artist never forgot. Poet, painter, sculptor, and architect, he excelled in every branch of art; yet, in his declining days, he regretted not having devoted himself wholly to sculpture.

"The genius of this great man," says Opie, "made an entire change in modern art; to the little and meagre he gave grandeur and amplitude; to the confused and uninteresting he gave simplicity and effect; and to the feeble and unmeaning he stamped energy and character. Raphael, his greatest cotemporary and rival, thanked God for having been born in an age which boasted of such a man; and Reynolds, the greatest painter and critic of our times, prides himself on the capability of feeling his excellence, and declares that the slightest of his perfections ought to confer glory and distinction enough to satisfy an ambitious man.” Michael Angelo having observed the great deficiency of Albor

Diligence. Sistine chapel.-Generalization.

Durer's rules for drawing, resolved to write a complete treatise on the anatomy and proportions of the human figure, and to compose a theory founded on the knowledge and experience acquired by long practice, for the benefit of all future artists. That this resolution was never carried into effect must ever be regretted, as an incalculable and irreparable loss to the arts; for certainly never man, before or since, (at least in modern times,) was so perfectly qualified for the task.

He was indefatigable in his practice, and in the study both of nature and the works of the ancients, and this was continued through his whole life, even to extreme old age; the poorest of men, as he observed of himself, did not labour from necessity more than he did from choice; indeed, from all that is related of him, he appears not to have had the slightest conception that his art was to be acquired by any other means than incessant and unwearied diligence, though, as Sir Joshua Reynolds justly remarks, he, of all men that ever lived, might have advanced the strongest pretensions to the efficacy of genius and inspiration.

The principal work of Michael Angelo in the way of painting, consists of a series of pictures painted on the ceiling and part of the walls of the Pope's chapel, commonly called the Cappella Sistina. The subjects, (taken from the sacred records,) beginning with the Creation, and ending with the Last Judgment, seem to have been chosen for the purpose of exhibiting the history of man, as he stands in relation to the Creator, and of showing his origin, progress, and the final dispensations of Providence respecting him.

He avoids, on all occasions, a multiplicity of objects, and a multiplicity of parts. He knew, as a great critic has judiciously remarked, that, in poetry and painting, many little things do not make a great one; and he has, therefore, rejected all unnecessary subdivisions and unessential particularities; hence the bold swell

Telling the story.-Purpose effected by one stroke.

and flow of his line, uninterrupted by useless breaks and petty inflections; hence the unincumbered breadth of his surfaces, on which the eye rests unfatigued and unperplexed by impertinent differences and trivial distinctions; and hence the fewness and largeness of the parts, both in respect to his figures and his compositions, at once so simple and so impressive.

The same method obtains with him in the intellectual as in the practical parts of the art. In his manner of conceiving his subject and telling his story, he equally avoids all petty and commonplace details of circumstances, ingenious artifices, ur.important shades of character, and merely curious varieties of expression, which arrest and attract the attention of the spectator, and weaken the force of the general effect: essence, not individuality; sentiment, not incident; man, not men, are his objects; and like the Satan and Death, of Milton, he meditates no second stroke, but hastens, by one sure blow, to effect his purpose.

As his profound knowledge of the human figure taught him what to reject, so it likewise taught and enabled hira to mark the essential forms with unexampled force and precision: possessed himself, he instantly possesses the spectator with a complete idea of his object. As in the drawing of his figures there is more knowledge and precision, so in their actions and attitudes there is more vigour and unity than is seen in any other modern painter. By this is meant, that the situation and turn of every limb is more correspondent with the whole, is more perfectly informed with the same mind, and more exactly bears its part in the general feeling; and hence it is, that though Raphael often exceeds him in the variety of his characters, the particular expression of passion, and what may be called the dramatic effect of his pictures, yet, in giving the appearance of thought, capacity, and dignity, he is altogether unrivalled and unapproached

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