In Lives of the Artists (1550) Giorgio Vasari said that, had Correggio ever worked in Rome, he ‘would have brought sweat to the brow of many who were held to be great men in his time’. While he may never have rivalled Leonardo, Michelangelo or Raphael in the popular imagination, Correggio has always been considered one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance. What most distinguished him from his peers were a command of light, colour and dramatic composition that anticipated baroque painting by nearly a century and a gift for making angels, saints and other sacred figures seem human, even approachable. All of these talents are in evidence at this exhibition at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden (19 September–10 January 2027). The centrepiece of the show is the museum’s own Madonna of Saint Sebastian (c. 1524), which, after a painstaking 13th restoration, shines more brightly than it has in four centuries. Major loans include the Prado’s Noli me tangere (c. 1525) and the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (c. 1527) from the Louvre.
Find out more from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister’s website.
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