a distinguished engineer who visited the convent of S. Paolo on the 1st of August, 1598.

'We then went to see the rooms inhabited by the Princess, and I was shown the chamber decorated by Master Antonio da Correggio. The vault is painted with a trellis of vines and fruit, interspersed with ovals containing many lovely children in a great variety of attitudes; the lunettes are decorated with compositions in chiaroscuro; below these is a cornice with a simulated drapery, against which are dispersed cups, flagons, and other vessels of silver, all beautifully rendered.'

In 1520, Correggio married Girolama Merlini, a young orphan girl of good family and some fortune, and returned to Parma to paint the cupola of S. Giovanni Evangelista. The master who had transformed the convent parlour into a fairy bower, where radiant loves are at play among the leaves and flowers, now went a step farther and filled the dome of the Benedictine church with one grand composition of the Ascension of Christ. For the first time in the history of art, we see a single composition applied to the decoration of a vast concave surface. The conception was a bold one, but it was attended with complete success. Christ is seen soaring heavenwards, in a golden sea of light, while colossal figures of the Apostles are throned on the clouds below, and St. John kneels with clasped hands, gazing at the wondrous vision. The riotous cherubs who gambol on the clouds, or play at hide-and-seek behind the draperies of the Apostles, may not, in our eyes, agree with the solemn nature of the subject; but the life and fire of the whole composition, and the mastery of drawing and foreshortening which it reveals, are beyond all praise. Dr. Ricci has carefully examined every portion of the fresco, which is now lighted by electricity, and consequently better seen than ever before; and, in spite of the cracks in the plaster and the injury which it has received from the smoke of candles and incense, speaks with enthusiasm of the beauty and freshness of the colour which lies concealed under a thick coating of dirt and grease. Correggio also decorated the apse of the church with frescoes of the Coronation of the Virgin; but this part of the building was unhappily pulled down in 1587, and a fragment of the Madonna receiving a starry crown from her Son's hands is all that is now left us. Dr. Ricci speaks of the 'gentle satisfaction' that is here visible on the Maid-Mother's face, but the phrase gives no adequate idea of the rapture which lights up the Virgin's countenance. The same expression of ecstasy meets us in the impassioned gaze of the youthful Evangelist, who, in the magnificent lunette above the transept door, is represented

sitting

sitting on the architrave, pen in hand, with an open roll on his knee, writing his Revelation, and awaiting the inspiration which comes from heaven.

While the work at S. Giovanni was still in progress, the Cathedral Canons, jealous of the splendid decorations with which the Benedictine church was being adorned, engaged Correggio to paint the cupola of the Duomo. In an autograph letter inserted in the agreement and preserved in the Cathedral archives, Correggio speaks of the greatness and difficulties of the task, and concludes, in words that are full of dignity: 'I cannot, having regard to our own honour and that of the place, undertake the work for less than 1,000 gold ducats.' This accordingly was the sum which the Canons agreed to give. But the work was not begun until the spring of 1526, and the cupola was the only part of the Cathedral which he lived to paint. This time the Assumption was his theme. He painted the Apostles leaning on a balustrade round the edge of the dome; and between the eight windows, the patron Saints of Parma, looking upwards with every variety of wonder and curiosity expressed in their eager gestures, as the Madonna, with head thrown back and outstretched arms, soars upwards in a swift rush of exultant joy. Angels and cherubs circle wildly in the air above, swinging censers and playing harp and viol, leaping and tumbling over each other in mad revelry; while the Archangel Gabriel, leaving his throne in highest heaven, flings himself forward to meet her whom he had called 'blessed among women.' The sense of a great triumph sweeping through the universe has never been more wonderfully represented, and it is easy to understand the extraordinary enthusiasm which Correggio's work excited in the breast of the Carracci, and which made his disciples regard the cupola of Parma as the highest and most perfect example of Italian art. And yet the effect of confusion produced by all these interlaced and foreshortened limbs in violent motion is not to be denied, and justifies the remark of the cynical Canon, who said, when the fresco was displayed, that it seemed to him like a hash of frogs. On the whole we agree with Dr. Ricci that the frescoes of S. Giovanni are distinctly finer and more imposing than the larger and later work.

On the 17th of November, 1530, the painter received the last instalment of 350 ducats for the cupola of the Duomo, and the death of his young wife about the same time recalled him to Correggio, where the remainder of his life was spent. His family, a son born at Correggio in 1521 and three daughters, whose names are inscribed in the registers of the Baptistery 2 K 2

of

of Parma, 6 were a great care to him,' Vasari tells us; 'and although by nature good and well disposed, he nevertheless grieved more than was reasonable under the burden of those passions which are common to all men. He was by nature very melancholy.' Dr. Ricci speaks of the strange duality' that appears in the works of the painter and the character of the man, but an artist of Correggio's lyrical and highly strung nature could not fail to have moments of profound depression and to be keenly sensitive to the troubles and cares of life.

During his residence at Parma, he painted many of his wellknown altar-pieces: the Martyrdom of SS. Placidius and Flavia, the Descent from the Cross, the Ecce Homo of the National Gallery, and the Gethsemane, which was found in Joseph Bonaparte's carriage after the battle of Vittoria and presented to Wellington by King Ferdinand VII. But all of these works are wanting in dramatic power; and although they contain single figures of rare beauty, such as the virgin-martyr Flavia or the Dead Christ, who sleeps in calm majesty at the foot of the Cross, these scenes of death and suffering were, in reality, little suited to Correggio's genius. He was more successful with the famous Notte, that was ordered by a gentleman of Reggio in 1522, but only completed eight years later, and the still finer Giorno, or Madonna of St. Jerome, executed for a church in Parma in 1528. The admiration excited by the golden-haired Magdalen in this picture may have led him to paint the single figure of the repentant Saint, which Veronica Gambara mentions to Isabella d'Este in a letter of the same year. But Morelli has proved that the Reading Magdalen painted on copper at Dresden, which long bore his name, could never have been Correggio's work, and was probably painted by some Flemish follower of the Carracci. The Madonna di S. Giorgio was the only altar-piece which Allegri painted after his return to Correggio. The traditional symmetry of the composition bears some resemblance to that of the Madonna of St. Francis, but the picture can hardly be said to have the same charm as the earlier work, which hangs in the same gallery at Dresden.

In these last years of his life, Correggio found a more congenial theme in classical myths and the loves of the gods. Here there was nothing to fetter the flight of his imagination, and his genius finds its highest and most perfect expression. Two of his mythological pictures, the Sleeping Antiope of the Louvre, and the Education of Cupid, in the National Gallery, were painted at Parma, Dr. Ricci thinks, as early as 1522 or 1523. Both were bought by Federigo Gonzaga, and passed with the treasures of the Mantuan collection into the gallery of

Charles I.,

Charles I., after whose death the Antiope was bought by the banker Jabach, and the Cupid went to Spain and was ultimately brought back to England by Lord Londonderry, who purchased it in 1834 from Caroline Bonaparte, the ex-Queen of Naples. Three other pictures-the Danaë of the Borghese, the Io at Vienna, and the ruined Leda at Berlin-were presented by the Duke of Mantua to Charles V., who visited Correggio in 1532. The strange fate which befell them, and the tale of their almost miraculous preservation through untold dangers and adventures, are fully related by Dr. Ricci. All three must once have ranked among the painter's finest works, and, in spite of the cruel injuries which they have suffered, they still contain passages of rare beauty. Besides these great pictures, Correggio also painted two allegories of Vice and Virtue for the Camerino which Isabella d'Este adorned with masterpieces by the foremost artists of her day, and was engaged on a set of cartoons for her son Federigo, when a short illness brought his life to a sudden close. He died on the 5th of March, 1534, in the same little house belonging to his father where he had first seen the light, forty years before.

The last chapter, which Dr. Ricci devotes to a study of the painter's characteristics, strikes us, we must confess, as somewhat disappointing. The biographer spends so much time in refuting the unreasonable complaints of pedants who blame Correggio because he did not possess the qualities of Raphael or Michelangelo, that he has little space left to consider the artistic personality of his hero. He insists once more upon his Ferrarese origin, and points out rightly that the development of his original genius was, in a great measure, fostered by his isolated life. He dwells also on the high excellence of Allegri's craftsmanship, that mastery which made Mr. Ruskin once speak of him as 'Captain of the painter's art.' But Dr. Ricci omits to mention the marvellous flesh-painting, in which he rivalled the Venetians themselves, and he hardly does justice to the unstudied and spontaneous gladness that was so marked a feature of his genius. It is this intensely joyous feeling, finding expression, as it does, not only in the swift flight of his angels or the merry gambols of his putti, but in the magic of his colour, in the space and sunlight of his landscapes, in the rapt smiles of his women faces, that forms the real charm of his art, and which makes him, more than any other painter of his age, the unconscious prophet of the latest and most brilliant phase of the Italian Renaissance.

ART.

ART. VII.-The Onslow Papers. Historical MSS. Commission. 1896.

THE

HE very interesting fragment which is all that remains of the Papers and Correspondence relating to the Onslow family, for some time preserved at Clandon Park, the seat of the present Earl of Onslow, has now been published by the Historical MSS. Commission; and though it has been seen before and been used by previous writers, the light which it throws on our political and party history in the reign of George II. has been scarcely if at all noticed. More than this, the last words of the greatest of English Speakers,' as Onslow has usually been called, may well be thought, in view of certain recent events, to possess a special significance for ourselves who have witnessed so many attempts to lower that authority of which Onslow was the great champion. It may be as well, perhaps, to remind all readers of the introductory notice prepared by the Commissioners, that although Onslow's direct narrative terminates with his appointment to the Speakership in 1728, it was drawn up for the benefit of his son many years later; that it alludes to numerous events long subsequent to his acceptance of the Chair, and that the opinions expressed in it are the result of his matured experience. The Papers consist of two parts: a memoir of his family, written partly in 1735, and partly much later, and two Notes, occupying about twenty pages, on Opposition.' Both contain references to events which occurred after Walpole's downfall, and as late as Pelham's Administration ; the whole term of his Speakership just covering the reign of George II., a period rich in political memoirs, which enable us to give a tolerably good guess at what was passing through the Speaker's mind when he committed these reflections to paper.

The Onslows are descended from an ancient family of gentry long seated at Onslow, in Shropshire, and trace their pedigree direct to Roger de Onneslowe in the reign of Henry III. They remained in Shropshire till the beginning of the seventeenth century; and the immediate ancestor of the present family, Richard Onslow, who was Speaker of the House of Commons in 1566, was buried at Shrewsbury. Through his wife, however, a Miss Hardinge, of Knowle, in Surrey, he acquired an estate at Cranley in that county, to which the family removed about 1653. The grandson of this Richard, Sir Richard Onslow, seems to have been regarded by the Speaker as a kind of second founder of the family. He represented the county of Surrey in Parliament from 1627 to his death in 1663; and in the Civil War took the side of the Parliament,

though