CORREGGIO
(b. ca. 1490, Correggio, d. 1534, Correggio)

Passing away of St John

1520-24
Fresco
San Giovanni Evangelista, Parma

A marked change can be observed in the style of Correggio after 1520 which is apparent in the decorations that he realized in the great Benedictine construction in Parma, the church of San Giovanni Evangelista. There is no doubt that earlier visits to Rome to see Michelangelo's and Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican had an impression on him.

The painter was commissioned to decorate the dome with its pendentives, the apse of the main chapel, the candelabrum motifs in the transept over the high altar, and the frieze of the nave.

The dome whose vault has no lantern and only receives light from the four oculi set in the drum, was reserved for the illustration of the Passing away of Saint John, the last of the Apostles to die, aged over a hundred, at Ephesus. It is a traditional belief that at the moment of his death Christ came to meet him, surrounded by all Apostles.