foreshortening on ceilings, as it necessarily presents the human figure, and indeed all objects, in a mode absolutely foreign to our experience, must in the same degree depart from the legitimate end of imitation, and can only excite wonder at the artist’s skill. The difference of treatment alluded to belongs in other respects to two distinct views of the art. M. Angelo aimed at the real and permanent qualities of whatever he represented; a taste derived from his knowledge of sculpture, and certainly, as producing a most intelligible style of art, more nearly allied to the principles of the Greeks. Correggio, on the contrary, loved all the attributes of appearance and illusion; his skill in the management of aërial perspective, and the magic of his chiaro-scuro, by which he secured space, relief, and gradation, are qualities less allied to the reality and perspicuity which characterise the grandest style of the formative arts in general, (as opposed to the vagueness of poetical description,) than to the specific excellencies which distinguish painting from sculpture. Even his colour, true as it is, is still subordinate to his light and shade. It is with reference to the uniting and blending principle of light and shade, which presents differences of degree, but not of kind, that the term harmony has been so often employed as describing the characteristic style of Correggio, and the expression is quite distinct from that harmony (the commoner acceptation) which is often applied to the balance and opposition of colours. In the same church of S. Giovanni were the pictures of the Deposition from the Cross, and the Martyrdom of S. Placido and Sta. Flavia, which were taken to Paris; and on the outside of a chapel are the remains of a grand figure of St. John, in fresco. The well-known Madonna della Scodella, and a fresco of a Virgin and Child, in the Capella della Scala, were perhaps painted about this time. The frescoes of S. Giovanni occupied Correggio from 1520 to 1523. The celebrated picture of the Nativity, generally called the Notte, now at Dresden, appears to have been begun in the interval, as the agreement respecting it bears the date of 1522; but it was not placed in the church of S. Prospero at Reggio, for which it was destined, till 1530. The Notte is the picture most frequently referred to as a specimen of that harmony, founded on the skilful management of light and shade, in which Correggio is unrivalled. The source of the picturesque in this work, the emanation of the light from the infant Christ, is at the same time sublime as an invention. “The idea,” as Opie observes, “has been seized with such avidity, and produced so many imitations, that no one is accused of plagiarism. The real author is forgotten, and the public, accustomed to consider this incident as naturally a part of the subject, have long ceased to inquire when, or by whom, it was invented.” Even the angels in