. Antonio Allegri da Correggio, his life, his friends, and his time. as accustomed always to value his works at a verylow price, and having on one occasion to pay a bill of four or five scudito an apothecary in his native city, he painted him a Christ praying inthe Garden, which he executed with all possible care. 3 This curiousanecdote evidently owes its origin rather to the fable of Correggiospoverty, than to that of his supposed depreciation of his own works. We must also reject the suggestion made by Lodovico AntonioDavid to Muratori in a letter of April 4, 1705. I was told,he says, by a p
. Antonio Allegri da Correggio, his life, his friends, and his time. as accustomed always to value his works at a verylow price, and having on one occasion to pay a bill of four or five scudito an apothecary in his native city, he painted him a Christ praying inthe Garden, which he executed with all possible care. 3 This curiousanecdote evidently owes its origin rather to the fable of Correggiospoverty, than to that of his supposed depreciation of his own works. We must also reject the suggestion made by Lodovico AntonioDavid to Muratori in a letter of April 4, 1705. I was told,he says, by a professor who is my friend, that many yearsago the Marchese Bonifazio Rangoni showed him an account-book of the end of the sixteenth century, which belonged to 1 The above description applies to the work in its original state, as shown in oldengravings. It has darkened considerably, and much of the detail is now lost. 2 Bottari, Raccolta di lettere artistiche, vi. p. 320. See also Frizzoni, op. tit. p. 359. 3 Idea del tempio delta pittura, p. 115. -Milan, 1590. 1 3. CHRIST IX THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE 233 Conte Claudio Rangoni, who lived in the time of Correggio. One ofthe items noted was a sum of forty-five Modenese lire for a picture ofChrist in the Garden of Gelhsemane, painted by the said Correggio in1520, and paid for in the month of March. l As Meyer very justly remarks, this entry in an account-book laterby some half century than the event is in itself Butwe have more solid grounds for classing the story among the innu-merable fables which have grown up round Correggios works. In thefirst place, no trace of the book has ever been discovered. Secondly,Count Claudio Rangoni was only twelve years old in 1520, an agenot admissible as that of a Maecenas or giver of commissions. Finally,in a letter written in 1584 by a member of the Rangoni family (Fulvio),which we have lately examined, this very picture is discussed, butthere is not the faintest hint that the work
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