ANTONIO, called Coreggio, from the place of his birth, a most celebrated historical painter, was born in the year 1494. It is a mistake to represent Coreggio as of mean descent. His family was respectable, and the place of his birth, a small, neat city. Of his studies we know little, except that he entered the school of Francesco Bianchi, and was an expert modeller. Even A. Caracci, his admirer, was ill-informed on his history, which is still obscure, notwithstanding the researches of Mengs, Tiraboschi, and Lanzi. He saw none of the statues of ancient Greece or Rome, nor any of the works of the established schools of Rome and Venice; but Nature was his guide; and Coreggio was one of her favourite pupils. To express the facility with which he painted, he used to say that he always had his thoughts at the end of his pencil.

The agreeable smile, and the profusion of graces, which he gave to his madonnas, saints, and children, have been taxed with being sometimes unnatural; but still they are lovely and attractive. An easy and flowing pencil, a union and harmony of colours, and a perfect intelligence of light and shade, give an astonishing relief to all his pictures, and have been the admiration both of his contemporaries and his successors. Annibale Caracci, who flourished fifty years after him, studied and adopted his manner in preference to that of any other master. In a letter to his cousin Ludovico, he expressed with great warmth the impression which was made on him by the first sight of Coreggio's paintings: "Every thing which I see here," says he, "astonishes me; particularly the colouring, and the beauty of the children. They live, they breathe, they smile with so much grace and so much reality, that it is impossible to refrain from smiling and partaking of their enjoyment. My heart is ready to break with grief when I think on the unhappy fate of poor Coreggio—that so wonderful a man (if he ought not rather to be called an angel) should finish his days so miserably, in a country where his talents were never known."

From want of curiosity or of patronage, Coreggio never visited Rome, but remained during his whole life at Parma, where the art of painting was little esteemed, and of consequence poorly rewarded. This concurrence of unfavourable circumstances at last occasioned his premature death at the age of forty. He was employed to paint the cupola of the cathedral at Parma, the subject of which is the Assumption of the Virgin, which he executed in a manner that has long been the admiration of every person of good taste, for the grandeur of the design, and especially for the boldness of the fore-shortenings; an art which he first, and at once, brought to the utmost perfection. When he went to receive his payment, the canons of the church, either through ignorance or baseness, found fault with his work; and although the price originally agreed upon had been very moderate, they alleged that it was far above the merit of the artist, and forced him to accept of the paltry sum of 200 livres; which, to add to the indignity, they paid him in copper money. To carry home this unworthy load to his wife and children, poor Coreggio had to travel six or eight miles from Parma. The weight of his burden, the heat of the weather, and his chagrin at his villainous treatment, immediately threw him into a pleurisy, which in three days put an end to his life and his misfortunes. The story of the extreme poverty and sufferings of Coreggio is, it seems, untrue; for we are told by Lanzi that he left his family not in indigence, though probably not in affluence.

For the preservation of this magnificent work, the world is indebted to Titian. As he passed through Parma, in the suite of Charles V., he ran instantly to see the chef d'œuvre of Coreggio. While he was attentively viewing it, one of the principal canons of the church told him that such a grotesque performance did not merit his notice, and that they intended soon to have the whole defaced. "Have a care of what you do," replied the other; "if I were not Titian, I should certainly wish to be Coreggio."

Coreggio's exclamation upon viewing a picture by Raphael is well known. Having long been accustomed to hear the most unbounded applause bestowed on the works of that divine painter, he by degrees became less desirous than afraid of seeing any of them. One, however, he at last had occasion to see. He examined it attentively for some minutes in profound silence; and then, with an air of satisfaction, exclaimed, I am still a painter. Giulio Romano, on seeing some of Coreggio's pictures at Parma, declared they were superior to anything in painting he had yet beheld. One of these, no doubt, was the famous Virgin and Child, with Mary Magdalene and St Jerome. The no less famous Notte, or Night, of Coreggio, was sold for a great sum of money to Augustus II., the king of Poland, and is now in his family gallery at Dresden.

When speaking of his more finished works, Mengs, a most able critic, places Coreggio second in the triad with Raphael and Titian. He considers him inferior to the former in exquisite delineation of the affections of the soul, but before him in the expression of external character, from his unrivalled colouring and admirable chiaroscuro, which clothe his compositions with a very natural species of ideal beauty. This praise has chiefly been bestowed on his St Jerome and his Notte by Annibale Caracci, by Mengs, and Algarotti. His design, indeed, exhibits not the daring depth of Buonarotti; but he is at once so grand and judicious in this respect, that the two Caracci adopted him as their model of excellence. True, his compositions have not the varied outline of Raphael, or of the ancients, because his principle was to avoid angles and straight lines; and he studied a softly undulating outline, to which Mengs attributes his grace. His draperies are much commended for the fine disposition of their general masses, rather than for his attention to particular folds. His infantine and youthful heads are beaming with nature and simplicity. But the variety of his daring fore-shortenings is truly astonishing; and by introducing them freely in his ceilings, which Raphael rather avoided, he overcomes difficulties in that species of painting till his time never conquered. His greatest charm, however, lies in the exquisite harmony of his lucid colouring, which must be acknowledged by all who have ever attentively examined his magnificent 'Communion of St Jerome,' his 'Notte,' his 'Reposing Magdalen,' or the 'Ecce Homo,' and 'Mercury teaching Cupid in the presence of Venus,' of the British National Gallery.

The principle of Coreggio's design is the soft transition from the convex to the concave outline, combining power with grace. The principle of his harmonious lights and shadows is a central globe of light, softly passing through clear semitones into rich reflex shadows. This is the keynote to his compositions, to which every other quality is made subordinate, and gives a mellowness to his colouring which no other artist ever obtained. This great painter's death happened in 1534.—Lanzi, Stor. Pittor. iv.; Mengs, Opere; Tiraboschi, Storia della Lit. Italiana. (7. s.t.)

Gregorio, an ecclesiastic by profession, and a celebrated composer of music of the seventeenth century, was a native of Rome. He was the disciple of Nanini, the intimate friend and contemporary of Palestrina. His abilities as a singer were not remarkable, but he was deemed an excellent master of harmony, and so much respected by all the musical professors of his time that the pope, in the year 1629, appointed him to be one of the singers in his chapel. To his uncommon merit as a composer of church music, he united an excellent moral character, exhibiting in his actions the devotion and benevolence of his heart. The poor crowded daily to his door, and were relieved to the utmost of his ability; and not content with these beneficent actions, he daily visited the prisons of Rome, in order to relieve the most deserving and afflicted objects immersed in these dreary mansions. With such exquisite simplicity and purity of harmony did he compose many parts of the church service, that his loss was severely felt, and sincerely was it lamented by the whole college of singers in the papal service. He died on the 18th February 1650, and was interred in the Chiesa Nuova, in a vault destined for the reception of deceased singers of the pope's chapel, before the chapel of S. Filippo Neri, near the altar of the annunciation.

Among his other musical works preserved in the pontifical chapel, is the celebrated Miserere, which is still annually performed at that chapel on Wednesday and Good Friday in Passion Week, by the choral band and the best singers in Italy. It is, however, generally believed that it owes its reputation more to the manner in which it is performed than to the composition itself. The beauty and effect of the music is not discernible upon paper, but the singers have by tradition certain customs, expressions, and graces of conventions, which produce wonderful effects. Some of the effects produced may be justly attributed to the time, the place, and the solemnity of the ceremonials observed during the performance. "The pope and conclave are all prostrated on the ground, the candles of the chapel and the torches of the balustrade are extinguished one by one, and the last verse of this psalm is terminated by two choirs; the maestro di cappella beating time slower and slower, and the singers diminishing or rather extinguishing the harmony by little and little, to a perfect point." Padre Martini says that there never were more than three copies made by authority, "one of which was for the emperor Leopold, one for the late king of Portugal, and the other for himself;" but a very complete one was presented by the pope to King George III., as an inestimable curiosity.

ALLEGO, in Music. See Music.