Correggio's Fresco of the Assumption in Parma

Antonio Allegri (1494-1534) was called Correggio from the place of his birth. He frescoed the cupola of the Duomo of Parma 1526-1530, the subject the Assumption, all the figures in what has been described as “riotous rapture.”Correggio had learnt perspective and foreshortening primarily from his observation of the works of Melozzo d Forli (1438-1494).A “violently” foreshortened Jesus “flings Himself forward to meet the Madonna."

Austen Layard. Mary is so dramatically foreshortened that “seen from underneath…her knees appear almost to touch her breast.”

Correggio displays in the duomo another of his skills: extreme chiaroscuro, “that peculiar play of light and shade.” The enraptured Mary is carried upward by a throng of angels, below this more masterfully foreshortened biblical figures, including Adam and Eve,

Judith and Holofernes, below this the Apostles bearing candelabra and censers. The four pendentives have the patron saints of Parma: the Baptist, Hilary, Thomas and Bernard. Correggio’s competitors and critics criticized his work at the time as a “hash of frogs,” “guazzetto di rane.” But over time it was greatly admired as one of the true masterpieces of the High Renaissance. Giovanni Lanfranco copied the illusionist vault at the della Valle a hundred years later, itself heralded as a masterpiece of the baroque.