Corenzio, Belisarius

, an artist, was born about 1558 in Greece, and after studying five years under Tintoretto, about 1590, fixed himself at Naples. He had received from nature a fertility of ideas and a celerity of hand, which made him perhaps equal to his master in the | dispatch of works as numerous as complicated; he alone performed the task of four industrious painters. When he chose to bridle his enthusiasm, he may be compared with Tintoretlo; he is inferior to few in design, and has inventions, motions, airs of heads, which the Venetians themselves, though they were perpetually before their eyes, could never equal. His powers of imitation he proved by the large picture of the “Crowd miraculously fed,” painted in forty days for the refectory of the Benedictines. In general his method resembles that of Cesare d’Arpino, and when he conforms to the Venetian manner, he still preserves a character of his own, especially in his glories, which he hems in with showery clouds and darkness. He painted little in oil, though possessed of great energy and union of colour. The rage of gain carried him to large works in fresco, which he arranged with much felicity of the whole; copious, various, resolute, and even finished in the parts, and correct, if roused by the concurrence of some able rival, Such he was at the Certosa in the chapel of St. Gennaro, when he had Caracciolo for his competitor. For other churches he sometimes painted sdfcred subjects in small proportions, much commended by Dominici. This artist died in 1643. ¹