Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll.
- Anna Brownell Jameson
- Date:
- 1899
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll. Source: Wellcome Collection.
271/335 page 227
![tua Gallery was bought by our Charles I., and bung in his apartment at Whitehall ; afterwards it passed into the posses- sion of the Duke of Alva; then, during the French invasion of Spain, Murat secured it as his share of the plunder; and his widow sold it to the Marquis of Londonderry, from whom it was purchased by the nation. The Ecce Homo 1 was pur- chased at the same time: it is chiefly remarkable for the tine head of the Virgin, who faints with anguish on beholding the suffering and degradation of her Son ; the dying away of sense and sensation under the influence of mental pain is expressed with admirable and affecting truth : the rest of the picture is , perhaps rather feeble, and the head of Christ not to be com- pared to one crowned with thorns which is in the possession of Lord Cowper, nor with another in the Bridgewater collection. The third picture is a small but most exquisite Madonna, known as the “ Vierge au Panier,” from the little basket in front of the picture. The Virgin, seated, holds the infant Christ on her knee, and looks down upon him with the fond- est expression of maternal rapture, while he gazes up in her face: Joseph is seen in the background. This, though called a Holy Family, is a simple domestic scene ; and Correggio probably in this, as in other instances, made the original study from his wife and child. Another picture in our gallery as- cribed to Correggio, the Christ on the Mount of Olives, is a very fine old copy, perhaps a duplicate, of an original picture now in the possession of the Duke of Wellington. In the gallery of Parma are five of the most important and beautiful pictures of Correggio. The most celebrated is that called the St. Jerome.2 It represents the saint presenting to the Virgin and Child his translation of the Scriptures, while on the other side the Magdalene bends down and kisses with devotion the feet of the infant Saviour. [The picture is called “II Giorno,” the Day.] The Dresden Gallery is also rich in pictures of Correggio. It contains four large altar-pieces, bought out of churches in Modena ; among these is the famous picture of the Nativity, called the Notte, or Night, of Correggio, because it is illumi- nated only by the unearthly splendor which beams round the 1 [Dr. Julius Meyer considers this a copy of Correggio’s original painting, by Ludovico Caracci.] 2 [See illustration in Sacred and Legendary Art, p. 352.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24877888_0271.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
