Correggio

Correggio painted with a softness nobody in his time could match. His figures melt into shadow, his skin tones glow, and his ceilings open up into swirling skies full of foreshortened figures seen from below. Much of what later became Baroque ceiling painting starts with him.

Antonio Allegri was born in 1489 in the small town of Correggio, from which he took his name. He trained in Modena and saw Mantegna’s work in Mantua, and by 1516 he was working in Parma, where he spent most of his career. There he painted the dome of Parma Cathedral with the Assumption of the Virgin and the Camera di San Paolo. His mythologies, including Jupiter and Io in Vienna and Leda and the Swan in Berlin, are among the most sensuous pictures of the Renaissance. He died in Correggio in 1534.

Allegory of Virtue and Allegory of the Vices were painted for Isabella d’Este. Look at the soft modelling of the faces.