Correggio and Parmigianino: Master Draughtsmen of the Renaissance Hardcover – Import, 2000 by Carmen & CHAPMAN, Hugo, et al. BAMBACH (Author) (British Museum Press)

Correggio is unique in his blending of late Renaissance and Mannerist ideas. Much of the scant information about him is drawn from wills, letters, and other third-party documents and presents a challenge to anyone working on it. Using his doctoral thesis on Correggio's altarpieces as a base, Ekserdjian expands his analytical involvement with the artist's work and explores the influences on him by such icons as Mantegna, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. The text consists of an introduction and 12 chapters in four parts focusing on the full range of the artist's work from his earliest paintings to the cupola of the Parma Cathedral and the mythology paintings. Engaging the scholarship of his predecessors, Ekserdjian documents the arguments that surround the artist's work. There are 299 illustrations throughout, more than half in colorAenough to satisfy the discerning eye. Much about Correggio has been revealed in the last 20 years, both in research and restoration, making this book appealing to all students of 16th-century painting. Recommended for large public, academic, and museum art collections.AEllen Bates, New York

For a few decades in the first half of the 16th century, the tremendous quality of the paintings and drawings produced in Parma (and by artists from the city working elsewhere) made the city more than a match for its rivals. The two reasons for this brief golden age were Correggio (1489–1534) and Parmigianino (1503–40). Correggio moved to Parma in the late 1510s, by which time he was already a highly accomplished artist; he was to remain based in the city for the rest of his life. This book gathers a selection of his paintings and drawings that emphasize his extraordinary emotional power, the range of his religious imagery and his mythological works. Parmigianino, whose peripatetic career took him to Rome and Bologna, is represented by a similarly important group of paintings, but in addition to religious and mythological subjects, his spectacular achievements as a portraitist are a central focus.