PORTRAITS OF CORREGGIO.
Reading edition
Correggio appears to have been far less solicitous than most other painters, that his likeness should be transmitted to posterity, for of him there is no unquestioned portrait extant. That which is prefixed to his life, in the Roman edition of Vasari, is evidently false, for it exhibits the head and countenance of a man aged seventy. It was taken from a collection of designs, in the possession of Father Resta, to one of which, representing a man and his wife with three sons and one daughter, in mean apparel, he gave the name of the Family of Correggio, forgetting that the family consisted of three daughters and one son.
Another portrait, with the title, Antonius Correggius, and consequently supposed to be painted by himself, was preserved in a villa which belonged to the Queen of Sardinia, near Turin, and engraved by Valperga; but its authenticity seems justly questioned by Lanzi and Pungileoni. A third, which was sent from Genoa to England, bore an inscription signifying that it was the portrait of Maestro Antonio da Correggio, by Dosso Dossi, and was accordingly engraved for the memoirs of Correggio by Ratti, who obtained a copy. Lanzi is inclined to infer, however, that it is the portrait of Antonio Bernieri, the miniature painter, who also bore the name of Antonio da Correggio.
A copy of this portrait is still preserved in the Pinacotheca Bodoniana, at Parma, and has been engraved, first by Asioli, and since as a medallion, by Professor Rocca, of Reggio. Pungileoni, who is inclined to consider it as genuine, has prefixed the medallion to his life of Correggio.
Tiraboschi and Pungileoni mention other supposed portraits and busts, of questionable authenticity; and Pungileoni, in particular, adverts to a portrait still preserved near a door of the cathedral at Parma, which is exhibited as a likeness of Correggio. It is supposed to have been copied in the middle of the seventeenth century, by Lattanzio Gambara, from a more ancient one of this celebrated painter, in another part of the cathedral; but its authenticity is questioned, merely on the ground that it represents a man of more advanced age than Correggio, who only attained his forty-first year.