(Antonia da), a most extraordinary painter, named from a town in the duchy of Modena, where he was born in 1494. He was a man of such great natural talents, that nothing but the deficiencies of education prevented his being the best painter in the world. This artist is noted for borrowing nothing from the works of other men, and his novelties are clear from censure. He is said to be the first who placed figures in the air, or fly, of history-pieces; and to have excelled in the art of foreshortening, and in "the magic of ceilings." Correggio spent the greatest part of his life at Parma; where, notwithstanding his high reputation, he was obliged to work hard for the maintenance of a large family, and was extremely poor. He died young, in 1534, by an odd circumstance: he was to have 50 crowns for a piece of work; and receiving the sum in copper, which he had to carry 12 miles in the midst of summer, he overheated himself; and indiscreetly drinking cold water, brought on a pleurisy that killed him.