From Correggio to Parmigianino the distance is of the kind that admiration can easily fill up. It was said of the latter that he had more the appearance of an angel than of a man; and the Romans of his own day used to add that the spirit of Raphael had passed into his body. In more than one instance his genius was kindled by the sun of Correggio, and ripened in the studios of Michael Angelo and Raphael; but in addition to this, his flexible and varied talent enabled him to find a place by himself between these two masters. “St. Francis receiving the Stigmata,” and “The Marriage of St. Catherine,” which he painted before he had attained his eighteenth year, are still regarded as equal to the _chefs-d’œuvre_ signed by Allegri. It is well known that a “St. Margaret,” executed by Parmigianino fifteen years later for a church at Bologna, was placed by Guido in the same rank as the “St. Cecilia” of Raphael. By the side of, or after, these famous men, in whom the glory of Italian painting seems to have brilliantly culminated, how many noble names still remain to be cited; how many remarkable names are there still to mention, even among those who, in following the glorious path opened out for them by the great masters, began to show glimpses of the earliest symptoms of decay, exhaustion, and lassitude! It does not form a part of our plan to dwell upon the various phases of this decadence; but before we glance at the last sparks of light which were shed forth, we must not forget the fact that the Italian pleiades were not exclusively privileged to illumine the artistic horizon. It is certainly the case that all over Europe the Byzantine tradition had been the sole possessor of the throne of art since the earliest centuries of the Middle Ages. In Germany as in Italy, in France as in the countries bounding it on the north, we find nothing but the same school displaying the dead level of its inflexibility. At various epochs, however, certain feeble attempts at independence were here and there manifested; but these aspirations were at first generally isolated, and therefore transient in their character. Finally, however, as if the hour of revival had been simultaneously agreed upon at all points of the intellectual world, these desires for emancipation manifested themselves in a corresponding effort to reject the former too absolute form, and to substitute the element of life for the principle of conventionality.