Our debt to Paolo Toschi is such that it would be ungrateful not to seek some details of his life.  The few that can be gathered even at Parma are brief and bald enough.  The newspaper articles and funeral panegyrics which refer to him are as barren as all such occasional notices in Italy have always been; the panegyrist seeming more anxious about his own style than eager to communicate information.  Yet a bare outline of Toschi’s biography may be supplied.  He was born at Parma in 1788.  His father was cashier of the post-office, and his mother’s name was Anna Maria Brest.  Early in his youth he studied painting at Parma under Biagio Martini; and in 1809 he went to Paris, where he learned the art of engraving from Bervic and of etching from Oortman.  In Paris he contracted an intimate friendship with the painter Gerard.  But after ten years he returned to Parma, where he established a company and school of engravers in concert with his friend Antonio Isac.  Maria Louisa, the then Duchess, under whose patronage the arts flourished at Parma (witness Bodoni’s exquisite typography), soon recognised his merit, and appointed him Director of the Ducal Academy.  He then formed the project of engraving a series of the whole of Correggio’s frescoes.  The undertaking was a vast one.  Both the cupolas of S. John and the cathedral, together with the vault of the apse of S. Giovanni[10] and various portions of the side aisles, and the so-called Camera di S. Paolo, are covered by frescoes of Correggio and his pupil Parmegiano.  These frescoes have suffered so much from neglect and time, and from unintelligent restoration, that it is difficult in many cases to determine their true character.  Yet Toschi did not content himself with selections, or shrink from the task of deciphering and engraving the whole.  He formed a school of disciples, among whom were Carlo Raimondi of Milan, Antonio Costa of Venice, Edward Eichens of Berlin, Aloisio Juvara of Naples, Antonio Dalco, Giuseppe Magnani, and Lodovico Bisola of Parma, and employed them as assistants in his work.  Death overtook him in 1854, before it was finished, and now the water-colour drawings which are exhibited in the Gallery of Parma prove to what extent the achievement fell short of his design.  Enough, however, was accomplished to place the chief masterpieces of Correggio beyond the possibility of utter oblivion.

To the piety of his pupil Carlo Raimondi, the bearer of a name illustrious in the annals of engraving, we owe a striking portrait of Toschi.  The master is represented on his seat upon the scaffold in the dizzy half-light of the dome.  The shadowy forms of saints and angels are around him.  He has raised his eyes from his cartoon to study one of these.  In his right hand is the opera-glass with which he scrutinises the details of distant groups.  The upturned face, with its expression of contemplative intelligence, is like that of an astronomer accustomed to commerce with things above the sphere of common