Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs.
http://www.jstor.org
A CORREGGIO PROBLEM
BY ROGER FRY
EHE small portrait in the collection
] of Lord Lee of Fareham, which we
reproduce on our Frontispiece by
kind permission, .presents the
his
[
amateur of Italian art with a pretty
problem. No external evidence as to provenance is there to help us, the picture comes into
Lord Lee's collection without history, fished out
of the common pool of the picture market by
We are face to face with
his discrimination.
with
the picture
nothing to guide us. But forits
has
own very special eloquence.
it
tunately
The firm construction of this head, which
underlies a surface modelling of extraordinary
subtlety and sensitiveness, is the work of no
The chiaroscuro, with a
ordinary painter.
and
transparency within the
peculiar luminosity
charm of the colour,
seductive
and
the
shadow,
in which extreme sobriety and reticence-a
a
predominant warm, silvery grey-reveal
All
these
peculiarly delicate voluptuousness.
qualities remind us emphatically of the works
of Correggio, and the more one looks at it the
more impossible it is-I
speak of my own
to feel that we are in the
experience-not
presence of that master.
But to claim a portrait to be by Correggio
is doubtless a daring adventure in art criticism,
since no portrait has hitherto made good such
a claim; nor have we, I think, any mention of
one in early records, though various pictures
have from time to time been labelled as portraits
of his wife and himself by his own hand.
Fortunately we can rely on something more
easily demonstrable in reproduction than those
general aesthetic evaluations which I have given
above. In those parts of the picture where there
is impasto, the surface is covered with an even
network of very sharp, clear, black craquelures.
The larger cracks outline fairly large islands of
approximately equal areas, which are again
divided up by a system of smaller cracks. Now
the blackness and sharpness of the cracks, and
the kind of network they make, are curiously
characteristic of the surface of many of
Correggio's pictures. For purposes of comparison, detail photographs of Lord Lee's portrait
and a part of a figure from the Vienna
are reproduced on PLATE II,
Ganymede
A and B. Some personal peculiarities of
technique must, under the action of time,
have led to this appearance; and indeed
artists have frequently felt a strong curiosity
The minds of
about Correggio's technique.
inferior painters, rightly dissatisfied with the
texture of their own pictures, are frequently
*.,;H
?-
1 "Antonio Allegri
(Heinemann, 1896.)
A
THE BURLINGTONMAGAZINE,No. 298, Vol. lii, January, 1928.
L
S
cni-4it
(awas
tcmty
rcf
(Cord,
-? .(i
//
- ,
A
tO
-. ;I
no
B I)etail of (CorregF,
io's Ganym>d??^
sllowinh
(Stslatlicllel\;Iuseen,Vienna)
A Corre>,gio Irol:)lem
X_^
of
THE
BURLINGTON
MAGAZINE
two
At the
to Prince Demidoff of San Donato.
Demidoff sale it was purchased by Lord
Ashburton, who disposed of it to the late
Alfred de Rothschild.
As will be realized through the photograph,
this work is one of the very finest masterpieces
by Isaac van Ostade, who, it will be remembered, died when only twenty-eight years old.
It was painted when he was twenty-four, and
constitutes one more proof of his admirable skill
and of his refined taste as expressed in the
peculiar freshness of colouring, a certain silvery
quality of tone, and in the admirable rendering
of a really Dutch atmospheric effect. It should
be added that the picture is in the best
imaginable state of preservation.
The other picture reproduced [PLATE II] is a
famous
Rembrandt's
pupil,
by
portrait
Ferdinand Bol. It is fully signed and dated
1652. It shows a young man with large,
dreamy, dark eyes and curly, brown hair.
He is richly dressed in a black, goldembroidered coat with white collar and cuffs.
The picture has a wonderful golden-brown
tone, and still, so far as colouring is concerned,
bears a great resemblance to Rembrandt. This
is particularly obvious in the brushwork of the
Bol's
gold embroidery and in the chiaroscuro.
is
of
Rembrandt
splendidly
deep understanding
represented by the broad yet subtle effect of the
and
lighting and the peculiar choice of browns
is
the
there
all
Yet
that,
underlying
greys.
a
personality
strong personality of Bol himself,
Bol's
quite different from that of Rembrandt.
of
the
for
schemes
his
and
composition
ideas
influenced
more
were
by
clearly
portraits
of
European painting in general than by those
of
distinction
The
the miller's inimitable son.
certain
a
to
in
due
is
art
of
this work
part
" in the lines and to that
French " souplesse
dreamy and rather romantic appeal which
already forefeels the coming English art of the
It is a quality found
eighteenth century.