Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I think I'm going to begin it's just after 5:00 and I'll show you a nice picture to look at.
Correggio is a small town near Parmar in northern Italy.
It gave its name to Antonia Alegre, who was born there in fourteen eighty nine and died in 15 34.
Nowadays, he's an incomparably less famous figure than Leonardo Michelangelo Rafil,
but was at least they're equal in the estimation of the 17th and 18th centuries.
My subject this afternoon,
his Dohm fresco in Parma Cathedral is one of the most explosively original and influential works of art of the 16th century.
It went much further than any of its precursors in this department, but it did not come out of nowhere.
As a rule in these lectures, time constraints mean I've reluctantly resisted the temptation to give any background to the works,
which are my subjects week by week. But today I am going to break that rule.
The idea of opening up the heavens in the losen mystic fashion in a fresco was not completely new.
The first great, if more modest breakthrough came with what you're seeing.
The vault of Under Armour maintained a so-called Kamerad daily,
supposedly in the Palazzo du Cowley and Mantua, a room which was painted between 14 65 and 14 74.
There is good evidence to support the idea that the teenage Correggio was a pupil of
Montaigne years and the years before the latter's death in fifteen six and soon thereafter.
He was certainly responsible for the frescoes in the cupola of mountaineer's funerary
chapel in the Basilica of Santa Andréa in mantra which you see by the late fifteen tens.
Correggio was in Parma, where he frescoed the Volta Verolme in the private apartments of the abbess of the Benedictine Convent of Son Paolo,
with an irresistible and resolute, fully pagan fresco decoration.
Incomparably more crucial for the Duomo, however, was his dome fresco in the Benedictine abbey of San Giovanni Evangelistic, which,
together with a now in large part destroyed apse, fresco and other decorations, dates from the first half of the fifteen twenties.
I cannot dwell on this project, but its importance as a precedent for the even more ambitious Guillermo Fresco is obvious.
I think if you see them together. Moreover, it does seem imperative at least to mention a very recently rediscovered autograph letter
which was hiding in St. Petersburg sent by Correggio on the 20th of July 15 19 to Jerusalem.
Madame on Ferrat. A major figure in the Benedictine order.
Its president in fifteen twenty one and about to send Jovani Evangelist from fifteen twenty two to twenty four.
In it, Correggio states that he has been in power for eight days and that for the fathers of Sam Giovannelli I have already agreed to do
in the cupola of their church the ascension of our Lord with the 12 Apostles with other histories and Freese's for the church.
He adds that the whole project is likely to take around four years.
On the 3rd of November 15 22, Correggio signed a contract with the Fabbri chair.
The lay factors of PAMA Cathedral in the presence of all the cathedral canons.
In it, he agreed. Paint the cupola. The vote leading to the high altar.
The apps and all visible parts. The walls leading to the apps.
The entire surface area was calculated at 150 square path to care, which is perches.
A colossal expands. Pareja was to receive the commensurately immense sum of a thousand ducats.
The figure of twelve hundred is crossed out in the document and a hundred ducats for materials.
He was to include whatever storia histories would be given to him, whether to the life or imitating bronze or marble as appropriate,
which seems to suggest that no details of the decorative scheme had yet been determined.
Correction further stipulated that he required a large room or closed chapel per family dng to make the drawings, that must be to say, the cartoons.
It is frustrating that nothing more is said concerning the subject matter, which I will be exploring later on.
However, an agreement drawn up on the 17th of May,
fifteen forty seven between the authorities at the monastery of San Benedetta in Ferrara and an all but undocumented pentacle lottery could modern.
That gives an intriguing insight into what might have been required of Carriger.
No such fresco exists in Ferrare and it may indeed never have been executed.
Ludovico is to paint the main cupola from the top to the bottom of the four Peduto C, which means corbels of the crossing.
The document then explains, and I quote First that said Messa Ludovico has to begin said work at the beginning of next month.
Work on it continuously. Make all the figures with his own hand.
The work has to be in the following manner, namely at the summit of the set down,
the ascension of our Lord with the Apostles, all large figures in proportion to the height and size, the said.
But the heavens and angels in clouds so that it is pleasing to a man of judgement, and that the uppermost cornice,
which will be the first one below the apostles, should include eight well painted fictive marble columns.
Then between the columns of the dome where there are no windows.
He is to paint two prophets on an appropriate scale where there are windows to Putina holding festoons.
Why the side of the windows in accordance with the drawing give them the second corners from the top is likewise to be effective marble.
And there he is to paint, festoon, or whatever seems fit to a good judge.
Below the second cornice he has to paint appropriately.
The four patriarchs there then follow the financial arrangements, which, as was customary, involve payments in instalments.
All commentators have accepted that it was courageous work in Central Valley evangelist that had impressed the cathedral authorities.
Indeed, at least in relation to enterprises of this enormity, the idea of such a commission tends not to exist in the abstract.
On the contrary, it is inspired by the availability of an exceptional artist.
What is more, it must have been the overall planned cover.
Sam Geovanni with frescoes by a team of painters that encouraged the even more grandiose Cathedral project,
which similarly involved a vast programme of other frescoes by a number of other artists.
The grand design for the cathedral was arguably overambitious from the start and ran into countless practical difficulties,
such as Parelli Janina's departure for Rome in fifteen twenty four.
At that date, Correggio had not even started to paint, and one has the impression that a leisurely rate of execution was always anticipated.
The cupola in the cathedral was not the centrepiece of a new building, as it Sam Giovannelli.
Instead, it was the heart of an old Romanesque structure and was not suitable for painting without a certain amount of preliminary attention.
This was not arranged until a year later when the contract was signed by George Job.
That added bar on the twenty third in November. Fifteen twenty three.
But in the meantime, the scaffolding had been constructed and the cupola inspected.
There are further documents concerned with a temporary wooden covering for the cupola,
which was the responsibility of Malcolm Turnbull Zuki and with the provision of copper to make the dome secure.
Only when this work was completed, Kuruc could Carriger have begun to paint,
although there is evidence of additional copper laying taking place later wrong.
Maybe because the initial labour was done in too much of a hurry.
However, the delay no doubt suited Carriger extremely well and had presumably been taken into
consideration from the outset since he had a good deal of unfinished business.
That some sounds more than it used to be believed.
Not least.
By me in the book, I wrote some courage about 20 years ago that the payment of the 17th of November, fifteen, 30 marks the completion of the day.
But an article by Christina Chickee nearly of 2010, which publishes a number of new notarial documents,
above all, concerned with the scaffolding, has demonstrated that work went on well into the fifteen thirties.
Checking Early argues convincingly that previously known payment of the twenty ninth of November
fifteen twenty six is not as previously believed for fresco work already completed on the dome.
But on the contrary, the Pareja only got started in the summer of fifteen thirty.
One of the new documents dated the 8th of June fifteen thirty again involves Georgia at
a bar and requires him to construct a scaffolding necessary pair of dipping Jerry deep
dark coolibah in order to paint the said cupola at the same time obliging him to
dismantle the scaffolding once the fresco is completed and to do so without damaging it.
A second document dated the 1st of August 15th, 30 directly concerns correct.
It revisits the original agreement of 15 22, not just for the dome, but also for the apps and the crossing of the choir.
It specifies that his guarantor, in connexion with these enterprises will be should be only Munteanu Della Rosa,
a Parmesan nobleman who was one of the two February chary at the time of the original
signing of the contract and more generally played a considerable part anchorages career.
Further documents of the twenty third and the third first May fifteen thirty 32 relate to the
construction of scaffolding and preparation of the surfaces to be painted in the choir and apps,
and would seem to indicate that by this date Correggio had all but completed his work on the day he died in fifteen thirty four, as I've said.
So the fact that he failed to execute any more of the project is no great surprise if he made drawings for these other areas, they have not survived.
The contract does not specify the frescoes subject,
but merely stipulates that graduates to paint whatever histories are given to him, as previously stated.
This may seem to suggest that the programme remains to be determined,
but in fact there can be no doubt that the assumption of the Virgin was always planned for the cupola.
The Virgin was the patron saint of Panama, and her assumption and coronation,
which both celebrated on the 15th of August, were of particular significance to the city.
The cathedral was actually dedicated to her assumption, and it would have seemed natural to surround her with a subsidiary patron saint of the city.
In the squinch is the arias at the bottom of the dome.
Much as she was flanked by the two most important patron saint John the Baptist and Hillary on the seal of the time,
the details of the iconography will be discussed more fully in due course.
But it is important to realise at the outset that its broad lines were probably defined before the contract was signed.
The idea of an artist planning an exceptionally complex illusionist dick fresco for a cupola is extremely hard to imagine.
And in this instance, there were two particular factors that can only have added to Courreges difficulties.
The first is that although the top part of the cupola is rounded off at its base, it is octagonal.
The second is that each of its eight sides is penetrated by a substantial circular window at its base.
These complications had to be borne in mind from the first,
and it is likely that correctly built himself some sort of scale model upon which to experiment.
His contemporary Rosseau Fiorentino did exactly that when faced by a far less illusionist, actually demanding decorative commission in error.
So needless to say, no such model exists, but a number of preparatory drawings for the cupola have survived.
Sadly, they are less informative about the evolution of the overall design than might have been hoped.
The most instructive by far is a double-sided sheet in the Ashmolean, whose present Recto is currently on display in the museum.
The first point to. Make about it, is that the present recto?
There must, in fact, have been drawn SACC and that it is with the current Vasso on the left for you,
that we should begin drawing in hot orange, red chalk.
It shows one octagonal section of the day capable of repetition all the way round
and appears to have been cut down to its present curved shape by the artist himself.
He started by drawing the parapet and the prominent occulus he has surrounded by a foliate wreath decoration based on Atlantica models.
And then drew the figures over the top.
The parapet bearers of classical order and close inspection reveals that the left right halves are not identical.
This could be interpreted as meaning that the plan involved an alternating rhythm.
But it is far more likely that Correggio was adopting a practise common in
architectural drawings of the period and also found in designs for altarpiece friends,
which issued repetition in order to show alternative options.
In this instance, Gregory drew a fluted ionic plaster on the left, while its counterpart on the right is fluted Doric.
The figures in front of the parapet are even more obviously different, but not for exactly the same reason.
Here. The arrangement on the right is the easier to decipher with a seated figure wearing some
sort of headdress in front of whom is a round breasted sphynx scene Desart to ensue,
resting on its haunches and sitting up on its front legs on the left.
It is possible to pick out a faint echoing sphynx, but the figure behind is very differently conceived, is drawn on a much larger scale,
and notably more boldly, with his head slumped onto his forearm and his legs brawling over the edge of the parapet.
In theory, he could be a prophet, balancing the civil opposite.
But it seems more probable that two separate moments in the evolution of the design are involved up above.
Sitting on the parapet are two boys whose draperies dangle down as they sprawled backwards and look upwards.
Both of them are in charge of their respective candelabra, which are quite hard to pick out.
I know it's unclear at this stage where the apostles must always have been part of the grand design.
I meant to go. They are not included. When Correggio turn the sheet over.
So I'm talking about this side. He again pursued the policy of exploring various possibilities on the left.
He more or less repeated the solution from the left of the Vasso with a bearded prophet
sleeping on his hands behind the Sphinx with lowered head and more evidently than before,
sitting on and resting his arms on a block of fluted plaster or possibly half column.
This time, Corinthian is again the backdrop, and again he has drawn over it.
Above is the same by still tending the candelabra. The solution on the right, however,
is another new departure and shows considerably more signs of creative energy than anything on the comparatively timid other side of the sheet.
The Sphinx has gone. The fluted plaster is replaced by an order less block, and only the Sleeping Profitt remains.
Behind him is a great bulging hearth column, and there is a drum base at his feet.
The only decorative compensation for the increase in austerity comes with the trace of a garland round the central Tonda on this side only,
and with the addition of a bow at the top of that occulus.
All this architectural detail is very carefully planned.
The baselines and cornice lines are all ruled and incised, as is the Tonda, which must have been drawn with the help of a compass.
Furthermore, blank incised line, which starts at the bow and goes down to the baseline, marks the centre of the bay.
However, the real changes come above the parapet where the seated by is supplanted by a standing used in vigorous motion,
still in conjunction with one of the candelabra, which were always intended to occupy the angles of the octagon and thus help conceal them.
Something of his energy is then transferred to the relatively enormous standing figure with raised arms in the middle of the bay.
He was drawn nude with his head in two different positions and then draped.
It seems he must be an apostle.
And if so, Courreges plan would have involved a combination of single compare the parcels to fit all 12 of them onto the eight sides of the dead.
In the final solution, they were to occupy the corners, not the centres of the bays.
And the four pairs were disposed at the sides. But the principal must have remained the same.
This is the nature of drawing, such as this one that they are unable to inform us whether Correggio conceived of standing boys with standing
apostles or whether his idea for the boy led onto the apostle in a way that made them mutually exclusive.
That may seem the more plausible interpretation, since the Apostles might otherwise have got confused with the FGB,
although and engraving after what must have been an autograph drawing for the side
of the octagon immediately below the Virgin involves just such a melee of figures.
In fact, only one further drawing in Harlem.
A much worried over fragment on the Versova study for the figure of Eve,
which will be discussed in due course, is concerned with the parapet does not at all easy to unravel.
That appears to follow on from the Oxford Recto, with which I am comparing it and shows a solution involving the swelling ballasted in front of the
Prophet and a more elaborated version of the half column and drum based arrangement behind him.
Again, there is no trace of the Sphinx. This hilum, Vasso, is of considerable importance for the chronology of the planning of the cupola.
It was not uncovered until comparatively recently.
It's quite normal for drawings to be stuck down and we now unstick them and is clearly cropped from a larger
sheet in the Corden's with the extent of the drawing on its rector when it is turned through 90 degrees.
It becomes possible to decipher preparatory study for the lower half of the figure of Venus in the School of Love in the National Gallery in London.
So you can see foot knee swelling.
Fine one corresponding with since the Kubla study clearly follows the study of Venus.
And since the School of Love is datable to around fifteen,
twenty three to twenty five cupolas studies on the Harlem sheet cannot be any earlier than that.
Very probably. Correct. You did not start serious planning on the design until the cupola was fit to paint the whole conception of
profits and symbols with Sphinx's grew out of his designs for the nave freeze in sounds of an evangelist.
They were to have no part in the finished fresco, although the Sphinx's came to assume decorative row lower down at the level of the scrunches.
Presumably this zone was what the February cherry encourage you had in mind when they
drew up a contract which Reifler referred to the imitation of bronze and marble.
And they may have intended to have bronze Sphinx's and marble profits.
Their presence in the flesh, even if confined to the near side of the parapet,
could hardly have failed, proved distracting in terms of the narrative being enacted higher up.
As far as one can judge, the overall scheme at this stage was very close in spirit.
That of the Dome of San Giovannelli would necessarily involve gigantic apostles around a centrally placed assumption in the event.
Courageous revision was a masterly one which cleared the zone in front of the parapet for the apostles,
therefore allowed them to be even more towering in stature without taking up the whole height of the cupola.
Instead, the Fabi remained relatively low above the parapet, and the centre of the vault was liberated for the full drama of the assumption proper.
Alas, this transformation is not chronicled by drawing's because the rest of them, without exception,
represents studies of details executed after the new conception had been developed.
None of these details relates the simpler initial scheme.
But given how many drawings must been made and how few survive, it would be unwise to infer that.
Ever existed, although the execution of the fresco necessarily proceeded from the top downwards,
the bottom of the design had to be settled before the upper part.
In examining the remaining drawings, it therefore seems best to start at the parapet and move upwards to begin with.
There are a handful of sheets of the apostles. They are all consistent in various respects.
Each sheet represents a single apostle and they invariably show them without feet.
On account of the softer insoo perspective because their feet are hidden behind the parapet,
they stand on a visual plie that's already anticipated on the Oxford director.
Another feature they almost all square is their share.
So share is there squaring off as the one on the left shows.
This is unsurprising.
Correggio must have been constantly aware of the need to transfer the design and and large it threw out a fairly uniform scale was employed.
Some of the studies can be associated with particular apostles in the fresco, while others cannot.
Those that show less recoil may be earlier ideas, since this may have been in effect.
Along with the billowing draper is the Carriger developed only gradually.
There is a big recall of good correspondence in one particular instance,
the same apostle dramatically recoiling from the radiance, the virgins, the scent is studied twice on different sheets.
Both times distinctly schematically.
But in the earlier, with almost no attention being paid to facial type or features, the next group of studies concerns the Phoebe.
And again, a number of the sheets correspond closely to actual figures in the fresco.
In reality, the heads of the apostles impinge upon this.
But in the drawing, the boys are invariably shown without these interruptions.
Thus, for example, in this drawing in Lisbon, which is unusual in its use of pen, in addition to the habitual red chalk.
The seated boys trailing left foot is shown, whereas in the fresco it is occluded by the drapery of one of the apostles.
A sheet formerly in the wouldn't, a collection and now in the private collection, which has a ground plan on its VASSO,
which I'm showing you, shows the same phenomenon with the whole of one segment of the octagon being included.
And the standing gives stretching out towards a nonexistent candelabrum.
Similarly, his legs are included, although in the fresco they too are obscured by an apostle, only the way he's seated.
Companion's left arm trails away suggests that any provision is being made for
the figures in front of the dispositions and poses of the boys in the drawing.
A remarkably close fresco that there is one fascinating difference.
The standing boys arms half conceal his face in the painting, which is a visual complication or obfuscation of the sort.
The entire work abounds in both the Lisbon and wouldn't the sheets predominantly linear.
But the latter does include some shading and two square drawings in the Louvre, which no doubt originally formed part of the same sheet.
This is more evident and the candelabra are included.
The pose of one of the figures in one of them matches that of Phoebe in the engraving.
After last drawing I showed. A Double-Sided sheet in the fund, that's your name.
Crenshaw, which was rediscovered about 20 years ago. But previously known through an engraving dating from the 18th century, has a study,
three apostles in the Fabi of the section of the day, immediately below the Virgin on its recto.
And the Versailles, which you're seeing in black and white.
Consists of a famous study, very famous statuary of the same section and red chalk combined with a series of architectural elevations.
Amongst the figures here is the apostle studied in two drawings previously shown like the Lisbon drawing.
This one is executed in simple pan outline over red chalk,
and it is tempting to suppose that this extreme simplification may have represented
the final stage of courageous preparation immediately before the no less schematics,
not PR or under drawing.
Also, like the Lisbon drawing, this one is squared, but in addition has two angled lines which define the limits of the octagonal face of the dome,
as well as curved lines at the top, perhaps suggestive of the rounding off the centre of the cupola.
This is one of the most severely damaged parts of the fresco,
but it is still possible to see that Corregidor made some minor adjustments between this drawing and what he actually painted.
And even more instructive sheet as regards Courreges overall method of planning is a drawing in red chalk in Frankfurt.
It is centred on the figure of Eve and the women behind that and must have been made at a relatively late stage in the design process.
It is extensively square that the top where the squiring stops.
It is overlapped by the segment of a circle again evidently drawn with the help of a compass.
The system of squiring involves three different baselines which correspond to the sides of the octagon.
What all this proves is that in order to achieve an effect of infinite space on the surface of an octagonal down,
Correggio felt he had to respect the shape, at least until a certain height.
Furthermore, he considered the composition in large units, even if he then restudy did eight by eighth.
The simplest way of gauging the extent of his success in achieving the illusion of continuity is to look
at the reproduction of the detail of the upper part only and to try to work out where the joints are.
The proof that this drawing was executed at a late stage is not merely the correspondence between it and the fresco,
but the existence of for further studies of Eve, two of which certainly earlier they illustrate courageous economy of invention to perfection.
The first of them on the left here is probably the sheet in Harlem whose verse was already been discussed.
It shows Eve as a beautiful naked girl. Her hair unbound and her breasts prominent with her right arm brought back across her body
in a gesture that may ultimately derive from a Venus Boudica classical Venus Boudicca,
but which conceals nothing. A putto seated on a cloud faces her arm, holds the apple of her original sin red chalk with the initial medium implied.
And then Pen was used to outline the final positions that the artist deemed most satisfactory.
They, in turn, were his point of departure for a far more worked up red chalk drawing in the British Museum on the right,
where the curious guru is unusually heavy and the slightly older, grinning child has joined the couple.
This solution was not used for Eve as the Frankfurt drawing.
A lusciously ripe red chalk sheet in the loop.
Which is what I'm showing you here. And the fresco itself all demonstrates instead.
Eve was shown proffering the fruit across the great divide to add them.
The first conception of Eve was not wasted.
However, for the woman directly behind her in the fresco as her right arm and face in much the same position.
The only real difference being that she is clothed indeed somewhat damaged.
Red chalk drawing in a private collection which we're seeing shows both figures and a number of more and less distinctly, realised Putih.
A drawing of Adam with Abraham and Isaac Windsor is almost unique in being connected with the other male side.
It, too, has a curved segment of the circle at the top and is executed in red chalk with pen outlines as the finishing touches.
The emission of the Virgin's outstretched right hand is the only real difference between it and the fresco.
The way in which Adam's left arm has folded back under his chin is a mirror image of the first conception of Eve.
The sequence of execution of the drawings is not easy to reconstruct,
but it is hard to believe that both Adam and Eve were ever intended to be so similar.
On the contrary, Adam's present attitude seems to be a pensive response to Eve's tempting offer.
And now fragmentary head study, which you see below on the left from a severely cropped sheet, is almost a cross between Adam and Abraham.
Three studies survive the all important figure of the Vergie, two on the recto and verso of a sheet in the confession cabinet.
Dresden and the third in the British Museum. In the case of the Dresden drawing.
And you're seeing both sides. It is clear that one side was traced through from the other.
But the initial study probably derived from a tracing to just attempting to suppose that the present Vasso came first.
Not so much because the pose is reversed with respect to the fresco,
but rather because the frontal conception of the head with rolling eyes looking upwards is profoundly unlike the solution found in the fresco.
By contrast, the recto, which is what you see below, already has the raised profile more or less, as in the finished work.
The British Museum sheet is a very different type of drawing because it represents a late stage anchorages thinking.
It is far more resolved with the red chalk more confidently applied and hardly a to a pentimento insight.
It also excludes the Putih entirely,
but does show the virgin of the assumption who is supported on Klans in only one respect, albeit a significant one.
Does it differ from the Dresden Raptor and indeed the fresco, namely in the astonishingly spread eagled legs of the Virgin?
Even then, the work is flouting of convention appears to have been the object of adverse comment from the first.
This would have been a uniquely indecorous solution. Regardless of any intervening clouds or draperies.
The bed, the Virgin's bare feet could not have failed to reveal display of her legs.
In the end, Correggio reverted to the solution of the Dresden's sheet, most probably without requiring the veto of the authorities.
Self-censorship must have been a fact of life in this period, especially for the most imaginative spirits,
apart possibly from a single angel on a drawing in rugby school,
which also has studies Frejus Altarpiece, The Madonna, Delas Cordella on it, which I'm not showing.
There are no surviving preparations for the extraordinary living stream of the angelic host surrounding the Virgin.
No doubt Correggio made small models out of clay or wax and suspended them
from strings to draw them from a multiplicity of viewpoints for Starry stated.
The Gruffalo, with the first artist in Lumber Day by which he meant northern Italy to employ this practise.
And this may be true, but carriages use of it is self evident, may be demonstrated by reconstructing comparable models.
It seems important before concluding with the squinch is to consider the basic subject matter of the fresco,
which is so self evident that it is tended to inhibit detailed discussion.
The first thing to understand, as Padbury Arrester did in the 18th century,
is that the open space around which the apostles are thronged is in some sense at least, the Virgin's tomb.
We in the body of the church so far below, look up at the Apostles,
at the Fabi and the burning candelabra and witness the Virgin being received in the company of Heaven.
Caret share deliberately avoided identifying individual apostles in the usual manner.
There are no affidavits, no coded draperies here,
but instead concentrated on the variety of their overtly physical expressions of their emotional responses.
The apostles nearest the virgin here, the ones we first see from the middle of the nave, are the ones most dazzled by the radiance of her passing.
The force as of a mighty rushing wind, all but knocks them off their feet and their arms are raised as if to fend off the
imaginary blows moving outwards from the male gaze confronts no less surprised but more
delighted figures with great swathes of drapery hurrying across their bodies as they
stretch their arms as wide as possible to encompass the extent of their feelings.
And at the same time, to echo the gesture of the Virgin herself.
Since maybe. Well, I'm saying all this.
You can see that since the Virgin was laid in the tomb by the apostles immediately before her assumption, it is her funeral that is represented.
That explains, at least in part, the inclusion of the Fabi.
They are shown lighting and tending candelabra and also burning branches in the flames to produce clouds of aromatic smoke.
By this period, candles were in the central feature of any funeral,
and they allowed Correggio to fill what would otherwise have been a troublesome hiatus between the earthly and the heavenly.
As regards the assumption of the Virgin and her immediately subsequent coronation,
two main ways of treating the episode had devolved by this date, both of which allowed of almost infinite variations of detail.
The first tended to favour the coronation and presented the event timelessly taking place before the whole company of heaven,
as constituted at the time of the work's execution and naturally reflecting the preferences in terms of saints of the patrons.
The second was strictly historical and only included those of the blessed whose arrival in heaven preceded that of the Virgin.
This is the way Correggio elected or was instructed to show her appearance in paradise.
And in fact, he has confined himself to the Old Testament Worthy's whom Christ released from Limbo.
Judaism is amongst the religions to segregate men and women in services of worship,
and this circumstance was often reflected in Renesas representations of the marriage of the Virgin.
With the menfolk standing on Joseph's side and the womenfolk on Mary's carriages,
paradise is similarly arranged and some, but by no means all of its company are identifiable.
Sadly, I do not have time to pick them out for you above.
The virgin and descending feetfirst degreaser is a figure whose identity has been much debated.
Most critics have assumed he must be Christ, who does indeed meet his mother.
In most representations of the subject and would otherwise be perplexingly absent.
However, it is well to admit that there are problems with this identification.
The figure in the fresco is beardless and wears green and white.
Nothing about him. Such a stigmata or a cruciform halo suggests Christ.
The other possibility is that he is an angel.
Discussion of the assumption on the basis of the photographs is incomparably more deceiving than that exercise usually is.
It diminishes the extraordinarily difficult job of working out who's who.
And it does not give you a crick in the neck. And by the way, if you ever go take binoculars, they will be of inestimable value.
That crick in the neck is an inevitable consequence of trying to see the fresco hole.
The common experience of anyone who has been to Palmer, by contrast, from the body of the knave before the steps leading up to the presbytery,
which was necessarily the location from which the majority of the faithful saw the fresco, only part of the cupola is disclosed.
That is where the virgin is. And there is even an hour of the afternoon when the sun's rays passing through one of
the windows put a natural spotlight on her and bathe her in warmth in the cathedral.
The nave view is the main one.
But some parts of the decoration, such as the side apostles, are best seen from the transept, and the Western Squinch is a best scene from the choir.
However, if the cupola of San Jovani evangelist had privileged viewpoints for the Benedictines,
then it seems right to describe this decoration as essentially democratic.
The cathedral cupola should have been Courreges crowning achievement, but there is good reason to believe it was nothing of the kind.
The anecdote about one of the canons of the cathedral denouncing it as a stew of frogs legs is apparently supported
by a letter from Bevan Alvino Gatti written when he was at work on the cupola of the Church of the State.
Carter just a few hundred yards away in Padma, in which he refers ominously to what happened to Carriger in the cathedral in the last analysis.
The criticism is not wholly without substance either.
For although the protagonist is clear enough.
And although there is a real sense of movement, the composition is hard to read and must furthermore have come as a shock to a provincial public,
even one educated by Courreges own recent efforts in Sanj of Army Evangelist.
Some of courageous foreshortening is border on the indecent as well as the deliberately virtuosi.
And I'm assuming, by the way, that the V sign didn't mean anything. Rene Syler safely.
So that's just a strange chance for us as Brits.
Legend has it that when the cathedral cannons were minded to destroy the fresco or have it whitewashed over
Titian himself assured them that if they had been able to fill the space of the cupola with gold coins,
they would still not have paid the master enough. The squinch is in the cathedral are by definition separated from the cupola proper.
But the figures in them participate in the heavenly rejoicing above.
Each of the Four Corners is occupied by one of the patron saint of the city, who have not invariably been correctly identified in the Sari's words.
The Saints are Saint John the Baptist, who is holding a lamb here on the left, St. Joseph.
The husband of our lady.
Here on the right, Saint Bernard Basti of Florence Cardinal and a bishop of that city on the left here, and another bishop, namely St. Hillary.
Until recently, St. Joseph was invariably mistaken for Thomas, who was indeed the patron saint of Palmer.
However, the figures just reversed. However, the figures of attributes, physiognomy and costume.
All identify him as jokes, as elsewhere, encourages work.
Most obviously in the Madonna Delfs Cordella, Joseph is elderly but robust, grey haired and short, bearded and is dressed in orange and grey.
The inherent interest of this identification is increased by the fact that it leads to a fuller understanding of the history of the commission.
It can be shown that although the original scheme must indeed have required St. Thomas.
That's to say in fifteen twenty two there was a change of programme and he was replaced by St.
Joseph. The Baptists and Hillary were especially revered in power.
I've explained they were on the seal of the time.
Bernard, who Battey had longstanding associations with both the city and the cathedral where he is buried.
By contrast, Thomas had joined the number of the patron saint only in the wake of the lifting of the French siege of Panama.
In fifteen twenty one, which took place on the 21st of December,
his feast day less than a year before Correggio scientists contract on the 3rd of November.
Fifteen, twenty two. It was the subsequent creation of a new patron saint that must have course Thomas to be supplanted on the 19th of March 15.
Twenty eight, the Town Council of Parmar unanimously agreed to adopt St.
Joseph, whose day it was because one of their patron saint.
We now know that the squinch is like the rest of the dome could not have been painted before the summer of fifteen thirty.
Much more interesting is the fact that in their present form they cannot have been invented before March fifteen twenty eight.
This is proved by a series of four red chalk drawings for the squinch is all of a piece stylistically,
which includes Saint Joseph along with the three older patrons.
They provide an invaluable touchstone for courage is late drawing style in his final years.
In the case of St. Bernard, whom you see here, there also exists a very similar, if marginally less resolved, study.
The one on the left second drawing of there is you can see him compare him with how he ends up a second drawing.
St. John the Baptist reveals more energetic but still remarkably delicate touch and portrays him as altogether slighter and less mature,
executed initially in red chalk and then partially gone over in pen.
The sheet shows the Baptist intently cradling Islam and represents an earlier conception of the design in the fresco.
He appears much more aware of his surroundings, his gaze blazing with zeal as he confronts the world where the two facing
patrons slaves you see from the nave John the Baptist and Hillary turn inwards.
The two who are visible only from the crossing and the presbytery face outwards again.
They divide into one who looks out more or less front a St.
Joseph and one looking sideways. St. Bernard.
This latter is an almost pure profile like Hillary, he looks across the divide towards the Baptist.
It is under his feet that there lurks the famous figure of an angel who also plays the part of Ganymede
in a canvas by courage in Vienna when it was assumed that the dome was completed in fifteen thirty,
it was taken as read that he was plucked out of the fresco and repeated in the mythology, which is very much anchorages, last style.
But this is now far less certain.
No less fascinating is the angel in the Saint Joseph squinch, for whom there appears to be a preliminary cartoon in the equal that bows out in Paris,
although a direct link with the head of the Virgin above has often been suggested.
And while it is true that they are very similar in their foreshortening and in the term of the head, they are not the same way round.
Given what a crucial feature the direction of the Virgin's gaze was,
bearing in mind how much depended upon it in terms of the larger composition, it is hard to believe it was reversed at the Khartoum stage.
What is more, although the virgins I look straight up at the figure descending to meet her,
it is entirely proper that her whole attitude should tend towards Eve's side.
There has been an enormous amount of speculation about the cartoons for the cathedral,
but all that is actually known is that there was a black chalk scene up here to draw the fragment of it retrieved during restoration,
which you see on the left here now in the gallery. And that Somalian panorama, which shows the head of the Virgin is remarkable,
even by courageous standards, for its combination of simplicity and confidence in the contract.
Correggio agreed to paint figures in imitation of bronze marble as well as to the life
their possible accommodation in his early designs in the form of profits and symbols.
And Sphinx's is being considered in relation to the half million drawing.
But when that scheme was modified, they were not completely forgotten.
There are Garland bearing winged geniuses in imitation of marble at the springing of the options of the dome, which I'm not showing.
More significantly, the art windows in the zone between the squinch is of top by seated Sphinx's looking
upwards and by winged geniuses receiving garlands below all imitating marble gilt.
Bronze reliefs are counterfeited on either side of these openings and show pooty with cornucopia of stray dolphins accompanied by serpents and apples,
presumably an allusion to the Virgin's role as the secondees.
What appears to be an autographed red chalk drawing for one of these is in the Accademia in Venice.
What you see on the left here, if these monochrome areas reveal economy of effort,
then the opposite is true of the still life vignettes that fill the spaniel's above
the shell niches inhabited by the patron saint like them and like the frescoes above.
They are based on the colours scheme dominated by muted greens, oranges and violets and based acorns,
chestnuts and turnips as here, as well as more predictable bunches of grapes and oranges and lemons.
They serve as a telling reminder that even this most illusionist stick and fantastical of decorations was grounded in the observation of reality.
Thank you very much.