Correggio

Ekserdjian places the artist in the context of sixteenth-century Italy and of the north Italian artistic tradition. Correggio was unique as an artist of the first rank who worked only in the provinces, far from the major art centers in Florence, Venice, and Rome. His isolation had a significant effect on his development, the author contends, although Correggio was sensitive to the influences of his contemporaries: Mantegna and Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. Ekserdjian reveals Correggio as a profoundly serious as well as intensely joyous religous artist, and as a great innovator -- he was among the first major artists to experiment with the dramatic effects of light and was a master of illusionism. The author examines documentary material that sheds new light on Correggio's patrons, the question of whether (and if so, when)Correggio went to Rome, and the simultaneous projects the artist undertook during the crucial decade of the 1520s, when he was at his most prolific and inspired.