In the period of these, about 1530, we may probably place the two celebrated pictures of Leda and Danae, than which no modern works of art have suffered more from accident and wanton or bigoted barbarity, or been tossed about by more contradictory tradition.
If the subject that takes its name from Leda be, as Mengs says, rather an allegory than a fable, it alludes to what would aggravate even the story of that mistress of Jupiter. The central figure represents a female seated on the verge of a rivulet with a swan between her thighs, who attempts to insinuate his bill into her lips; but at her side, and deeper in the water, is a tender girl, who with an air of innocence playfully struggles to defend herself from the attacks of another swimming swan; farther on, a girl more grown up to woman, gazes, whilst a female servant dresses her, with an air of satiate pleasure after a swan on the wing, that seems just to have left her; at some distance appears half a figure of an aged woman, draped, and with looks of regret. On the other side of the principal group, the graceful form of a full-grown Amor strikes the lyre, and two Amorini contrive to wind some horn instruments. The scene of all this is a charming grove on the brink of a pellucid lake.
The second picture represents the daughter of Acrisius, but with poetic spirit. The virgin gracefully reclines on her bed; a full-grown Cupid, perhaps a Hymen, lifts with one hand the border of the sheet on her lap that receives the celestial shower, whilst his other presents the mystic drops to her enchanted glance: two Amorini at the foot of the bed try on a touchstone, that, one of the golden drops, this, the point of an arrow, and he, says Mengs, has a vigour of character much superior to the other, plainly to express, that Love proceeds from the arrow, and its ruin from gold; he likewise finds that the head and head-dress of Danae are imitated from those of the Medicean Venus.
Vasari, and after him Mengs with others, tell that in 1530, Federigo Gonzaga, then created Duke of Mantoua, intended to present Charles the Fifth at the ceremonial of his coronation with two pictures worthy of him, and in the choice of artists gave the preference to Correggio. From this, a correct inference is drawn against that pretended obscurity in which Correggio is said to have lingered; for at that time Giulio Romano lived at the Court of Mantoua, and Tizian was in the service of the Emperor. Vasari is silent on the date of the pictures, but he affirms that, at their sight, Giulio Romano declared he had never seen a style of colour approaching theirs. So far all seems correct; but that they were actually presented to Charles, sent to Prague, and after the sacking of that city by Gustavus Adolphus, carried to Stockholm, is unproved or erroneous. If it is not likely that the Emperor, instead of sending them to Madrid, the darling depository of his other works of art, should have sent them into a kind of exile to Prague, it is an error to pretend they were removed from thence by Gustavus Adolphus, who was slain at Lutzen sixteen years before the Swedes sacked that city, 1648. The truth is, that these pictures were not given to the Emperor, but placed in his own gallery by the Duke, where they remained till 1630, when the Imperial General Colalto stormed Mantoua, sacked it, deprived it of its cabinet of treasures, of the celebrated vase since possessed by the House of Brunswick, and transmitted its beautiful collection of pictures to Prague, from whence by the event of war we have mentioned, they became the property of Queen Christina, at whose abdication, when the whole was packing up for Rome, the two pictures in question were discovered in the royal stables, where they had served as window-blinds, mutilated and despised. Whether so unaccountable a neglect be imputable to the Queen's want of taste, as Tessin asserts, or to accident, or, what is most unlikely, to her modesty, cannot now be decided. They were repaired, and at her demise left to Cardinal Azzolini, of whose heirs they were purchased by Don Livio Odescalchi, and by him left to the Duke of Bracciano, were sold to the Regent of France, whose son, from a whim of bigotry, had the picture of the Leda cut to pieces in his own presence, in which state Charles Coypel requested and obtained it for his private study. At his death it was vamped up, repieced, disposed of by auction, and, at a high price, sold to the King of Prussia. What became of the Danae is matter of dispute.[163]
The picture of Io embraced by Jupiter, inbosomed in clouds, by a silent water in which a stag quenches his thirst, was their companion: a work to which the most lavish fame has done no justice, and beyond which no fancy ever soared. The Io shared a still more barbarous fate. Not content with mangling her like the Leda, the bigot prince burnt her head; and, were it not for the beautiful duplicate which fortune preserved in the Gallery of Vienna,[164] we should be reduced to guess at Correggio in the fragments at Sans Souci, and the prints of Surregue and Bartolozzi. The Imperial Gallery possesses, likewise, the Rape of Ganymede, by Correggio, of the same size with the Io; a Mountain Scene; a full-grown Cupid, seen from behind, with his head turned to the spectator, shaping a bow, accompanied by a laughing and a weeping infant, in struggling attitudes, which was likewise sold by the heirs of Don Livio Odescalchi, has equally exercised opinion. Vasari, Tassoni, Du Bois, de St. Gelais, &c. ascribe it to Parmegiano; Mengs and Fiorillo, who judge from the duplicate at Vienna, with greater probability give it to Correggio. The contrast of the attitudes is produced more by naïveté than affectation, the lines have more simplicity than the style of Mazzuola admitted of, and the colour more breadth. The conception of the whole, whether the infants be the symbols of successful and unsuccessful love, or denote the dangers of love, or be simply children, though not beyond the fancy of Parmegiano, has more the air of a Correggiesque conceit. Numberless copies were made after it, some by Parmegiano himself, whose handling may be recognized in the picture at Paris.
We are now arrived at those works of Correggio's which cannot be fixed to a certain period. Such are probably, in the Gallery of Dresden, those known under the names of S. Giorgio and S. Sebastiano, of both of which Mengs gives a circumstantial account. He is, however, mistaken when he imagines the last to have been voted by the City of Modena after a plague: the commission of it was given by the fraternity of St. Sebastian.
The half-length portrait, formerly known at Modena as that of Correggio's Physician, belongs to the same doubtful period. Mengs, though he praises the colour and the impasto of it, is inclined to think it painted about the time of his first Cupola, when he had not yet sufficiently studied detail of forms and variety of tints. The style resembles that of Giorgione, but is less vivid, though of equal pasto, and somewhat more limpid.
The last, though not least celebrated piece of Antonio in this Gallery, is the small Meditating Magdalena: of the pictures mentioned, it is the only one painted on copper, the rest are on panel. It is little more than a palm in height, and not quite a palm and a half long. It was, with other small pictures, stolen out of the Gallery in 1788, but soon recovered. The purchase price, according to Mengs, when the Gallery was disposed of, was 27,000 Roman crowns. It has been copied by Albani, and, if we believe Richardson, by Tizian.
Besides the spoils of Parma, there is now (1802) in the Gallery of the Louvre, from the former collection of Versailles, a picture representing in half-length figures of natural size the Wedding of St. Catherine, with a St. Sebastian, and their Martyrdom in the distance. It does not appear that Mengs ever saw more than some good copy of it, or the prints engraved from it, else his praise would have probably been nearer to astonishment than admiration; and though none would dare to repeat what he ventures to say of the Magdalen's head in the St. Jerome, it might safely be asserted, that perhaps no other picture can boast to have united in the same degree the tints of Tizian, the glow and impasto of Giorgione, and the breadth of Guido, with that bloom of hue and suavity of manner peculiar to Correggio.
This divine performance was presented by Cardinal Barberino to Cardinal Mazarin, with two others painted in water colours on canvass, representing in allegoric figures the heroism of Virtue and the debasement of Vice. The first, in physiognomy and attitudes, abounds in what is commonly called the grace of Correggio; the second in picturesque energy and expression: they are likewise placed among the collections of the Louvre. An unfinished repetition of the first in the House Doria Panfili at Rome, is adduced by Mengs as a proof of Correggio's intelligence in sketching, and the superiority of his principle in the progress of a work.