Correggio A Tragedy |
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You have seen many of his pieces there
In the saloon; his Leda, Danaë.—Page 68.
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You have seen many of his pieces there In the saloon; his Leda, Danaë.—Page 68.
Correggio's Leda is now in the Berlin Museum, along with another of his pictures of the same class, Io embraced by Jupiter. The heads in both pictures are new, that of the Io being by Prudhon. The Duke of Orleans, in a squeamish fit at the warmth of the expression of the originals, had them cut out. His sensitiveness, to be consistent, should not have stopped where it did.—(See Kugler's Handbook of Painting in Italy.) Both pictures are masterly in their kind; but that kind is not of the best. The Leda is particularly admirable. Goethe must have had this picture in his mind, when writing the famous passage in the Second Part of ‘Faust,’ where his hero, in the search for Helen, has a waking vision of that incident which led to Helen's birth.
Faust.
These forms of grace unmatchable,
In beauty palpable to sight!
Can these be dreams, or memories,
The shadows of an old delight?
The limpid waters as they stray
Through bushes green, that gently sway
Above them, scarce a murmur make;
An hundred rills together meet
In one broad clear unruffled sheet
Of water deep—a crystal lake:
And female forms, young, sleek, and fair,
That fill the eye with rapture, there
Are doubled in the mirror bright;
They mix and dip with merry hum,
Some swimming, shyly wading some,
And shout and splash in sportive fight.
Could these content, mine eye should find
Enjoyment here; but no, my mind
Looks farther, and with vision keen
Would pierce yon thick-embowering roof
Of clustering leaves, whose tangled woof
Conceals the glory of their Queen.
From leaf-screen'd nooks swim into view
With slow majestic pace;
Two and two serenely steering,
Head and crest yet proudly rearing,
As conscious of their grace.
Yet one that breasts the glassy tide,
Outstripping all, a statelier pride
And bearing seems to vaunt,
With pinions all blown proudly out,
He cleaves the waves that curl about,
And nears the sacred haunt.
The rest glide softly to and fro,
With feathers smooth and white as snow;
But lo! their crests in wrath they set,
And put to flight the timorous maids,
Who, seeking safety in the glades,
Their mistress queen forget.
The Danaë is in the Palazzo Borghese in Rome. Correggio has done the most with a subject, which no skill can ever reconcile with pure taste. Danaë lies half reclining on a sumptuous couch, at the end of which sits Love, catching the golden rain-drops in her drapery. In front of the couch are two amorini intent on sharpening an arrow. We cannot agree with Kugler in thinking that
Semper ardentes acuens sagittas
Cote cruenta,’
but playful urchins, full of the rosy life of childhood, crowing in anticipation over the bewilderment of heart and the odd contrarieties likely to arise from the sweet venom of their shafts. The despair, and madness, and death of the fiercer Amor are quite beyond their sphere. Of all Correggio's children, we know none more admirable than these.
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