How or why he came to take this course would be hard to determine. It was reflective of the times; but Correggio, so far as history tells us, had little to do with the movements and people of his age. He was born and lived and died near Parma, and is sometimes classed among the Bologna-Ferrara painters, but the reasons for the classification are not too strong. His education, masters, and influences are all shadowy and indefinite. He seems, from his drawing and composition, to have known something of Mantegna at Mantua; from his coloring something of Dosso and Garofolo, especially in his straw-yellows; from his early types and faces something of Costa and Francia, and his contours and light-and-shade indicate a knowledge of Leonardo's work. But there is no positive certainty that he saw the work of any of these men. His drawing was faulty at times, but not obtrusively so; his color and brush-work rich, vivacious, spirited; his light brilliant, warm, penetrating; his contours melting, graceful; his atmosphere omnipresent, enveloping. In composition he rather pushed aside line in favor of light and color. It was his technical peculiarity that he centralized his light and surrounded it by darks as a foil. And in this very feature he was one of the first men in Renaissance Italy to paint a picture for the purpose of weaving a scheme of lights and darks through a tapestry of rich colors. That is art for art's sake, and that, as will be seen further on, was the picture motive of the great Venetians. Correggio's immediate pupils and followers, like those of Raphael and Andrea del Sarto, did him small honor. As was usually the case in Renaissance art-history they caught at the method and lost the spirit of the master. His son, Pomponio Allegri (1521-1593?), was a painter of some mark without being in the front rank. Michelangelo Anselmi (1491-1554?), though not a pupil, was an indifferent imitator of Correggio. Parmigianino (1504-1540), a mannered painter of some brilliancy, and of excellence in portraits, was perhaps the best of the immediate followers. It was not until after Correggio's death, and with the painters of the Decadence, that his work was seriously taken up and followed.