the upper part of the picture still receive light from the infant, and the attention is thus constantly directed to the principal subject. The same end is very happily answered by a shepherdess, shading her eyes with her hand, as if dazzled by the light: this figure is particularly mentioned by Vasari. It is remarkable that the same feeling for gradation in the mutable effects of light and shade, displays itself in this composition in the rapid perspective diminution of the figures. The shepherd in the foreground is quite gigantic, compared with the more distant figures; and the effect of proximity and distance, and the space of the picture, is greatly aided by this contrivance. The same principle is observable in Correggio’s cupolas. The commission for the St. Jerome, placed in the church of S. Antonio Abbate, at Parma, in 1528, one of the artist’s finest works, was given in 1523. There is a copy of this picture by Lodovico Caracci in the Bridgewater Gallery. The attitude and expression of the Magdalen are justly celebrated: she is represented paying her homage to the infant Christ, by pressing his foot against her cheek. The St. Sebastian, now at Dresden, one of the most striking specimens of Correggio’s magic chiaro-scuro, is supposed by Pungileoni to belong to this period. This picture, like the Notte, is remarkable for an exquisite truth of tint in the passages from light to dark. The infinite gradations of chiaro-scuro are rendered still more mysterious from this truth of colour in the half-tints and shadows, and, as in nature, the spectator is soon unconscious of the presence of shade. These imperceptible transitions are confined to the treatment of light and shade, and contrast finely with the pronounced differences of local colour. In this respect the style of Correggio is very different from the system of blending, or, as it is called, breaking the colours: the contrast of hues is undoubtedly mitigated by the negative nature of his shade; but though fully alive to the value of general tone, of which the St. Sebastian is a powerful instance, he seems never to have lost sight of the principle, that the office of colour is to distinguish, and that of light and shade to unite—the first being proper to each object, the second common to all objects.