The spice merchant lived in the town of Correggio, and thus the artist
got his name. Correggio knew what should be inside the lovely flesh of
his painted figures before he began to paint them, because he studied
anatomy in a truly scientific manner before he studied painting.
Probably no other artist up to that time, had ever begun with the bare
bones of his models, but Correggio may be said to have worked from the
inside out. He learned about the structure of the human frame from
Dr. Giovanni Battista Lombardi, and showed his gratitude to his
teacher by painting a picture "Il Medico del Correggio" (Correggio's
Physician), and presenting it to Doctor Lombardi.

Now Correggio's childhood, or at least his early manhood, could not
have been spent in poverty, because it is known that he used the most
expensive colours to paint with, painted upon the finest of canvas,
while greater artists had often to be content with boards. He also
painted upon copper plates, and it is said that he hired Begarelli, a
sculptor of much fame, to make models in relief for him to copy for
the pictures he painted on the cupolas of the churches in Parma. That
sculptor's services must have been expensive.

On the lovely island of Capri, in the Franciscan convent, will be
found one of his first pictures, painted when Correggio was about
nineteen years old.

He was highly original in many ways. Although he had never seen the
work of any great artist, he painted the most extraordinary
fore-shortened pictures; and fore-shortening was a technicality in art
then uncommon. He also was the first to paint church cupolas.
Fore-shortening produces some peculiar as well as great results, and
being a feature of art with which people were not then familiar,