Yet the two most excellent of the Mazzuoli could not, any more than their contemporaries, have been considered artists upon a great scale, when the Padri Cassinensi, instead of availing themselves of their services to decorate the tribune and cupola of their magnificent temple, dedicated to St. John, preferred inviting Antonio Allegri da Coreggio, a foreigner and a youth, to undertake the immense task; a choice which may be said to have conferred a lasting obligation upon posterity. For Coreggio, like Raffaello, stood in need of some extensive undertaking in order to bring his powers into full play, and to open a new path for labours upon a grand scale, as he had before done in those of a smaller class. But of an artist who forms an era in Italian painting itself, not in this particular school only, it becomes us to treat, as well as of his imitators, in a separate chapter. SCHOOL OF PARMA. EPOCH II. _Coreggio, and those who succeeded him in his School._ We are at length arrived at one of those distinguished characters, whom, from his high reputation, and the influence he exercised over the style of painting in Italy, we can by no means dismiss with our accustomed brevity. His name, however, must still be confined within compendious limits, adding whatever new information and reflections we may think best adapted for the illustration of such a subject; the life of Coreggio being involved in so much obscurity, as to admit, beyond that of any other artist, of fresh discussion. The more curious may consult the notices of him by the Cavalier Mengs, contained in his second volume, a little work by Cavalier Ratti, upon the life and works of Allegri, published in Finale in 1781, and Tiraboschi in his Notices of the professors of Modena, besides Padre Affò, in his works already cited, the most accurate, perhaps, of any in point of chronology.