Correggio painted light the way few people ever have. He is called a master of chiaroscuro for good reason, and that deep push between dark and bright is exactly the thing that makes a finished piece stop somebody in the hallway.
Antonio Allegri da Correggio, born in 1489 and died in 1534, was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the High Renaissance. He trained under Francesco Bianchi and Antonio Begarelli, and what he did with dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening ran ahead of everyone else in the sixteenth century. The Baroque painters who came a hundred years later were working ground he broke first. I always tell people that if a Renaissance painting feels like it is moving, there is usually a debt to Correggio somewhere behind it.
I have charted three of his works, and none of them is a weekend project. Noli Me Tangere (RE-1126) sits at Level 4, Challenging, and it is the gentlest way into his work if you have not stitched him before. There are large areas of shaded flesh and cloth where the color shifts are subtle, so you will want good light and a habit of checking your count at the end of every row. Both The Adoration of the Child (RE-1127) and Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine with St. Sebastian (RE-1128) are Level 5, Big League. Those two are the real commitment. Multiple figures, heavy shadow work, and the kind of tonal blending that only reveals itself once you have several hundred stitches down and can finally step back. Counted cross stitch of this sort rewards patience more than speed. Worked on 18-count Aida and framed, either one holds a wall on its own.
If Correggio suits you, look at Nicolo Abbate next. He was a contemporary, and Correggio influenced his work directly, so the two sit together naturally on the same wall. I have one chart from him. For a different corner of the same era, (Bernardino di Betto) Pinturicchio gives you another Renaissance cross stitch pattern with a very different feel at the fabric.
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