re of
common life, and ready to give account of all that he has gathered
from his observation of a world not ours. In truth the world created
by Correggio and interpreted by Toschi is very far removed from that
of actual existence. No painter has infused a more distinct
individuality into his work, realising by imaginative force and
powerful projection an order of beauty peculiar to himself, before
which it is impossible to remain quite indifferent. We must either
admire the manner of Correggio, or else shrink from it with the
distaste which sensual art is apt to stir in natures of a severe or
simple type.

What, then, is the Correggiosity of Correggio? In other words, what is
the characteristic which, proceeding from the personality of the
artist, is impressed on all his work? The answer to this question,
though by no means simple, may perhaps be won by a process of gradual
analysis. The first thing that strikes us in the art of Correggio is,
that he has aimed at the realistic representation of pure unrealities.
His saints and angels are beings the like of whom we have hardly seen
upon the earth. Yet they are displayed before us with all the movement
and the vivid truth of nature. Next we feel that what constitutes the
superhuman, visionary quality of these creatures, is their uniform
beauty of a merely sensuous type. They are all created for pleasure,
not for thought or passion or activity or heroism. The uses of their
brains, their limbs, their every feature, end in enjoyment; innocent
and radiant wantonness is the condition of their whole existence.
Correggio conceived the universe under the one mood of sensuous joy:
his world was bathed in luxurious light; its inhabitants were capable
of little beyond a soft voluptuousness. Over the domain of tragedy he
had no sway, and very rarely did he attempt to enter on it: nothing,
for example, can be feebler than his endeavour to express anguish in
the distorted features of Madonna, S. John, and the Magdalen, who are
bending over the de