Eager to defend Correggio’s reputation against the cen- sure of earlier critics, Francesco Scannelli’s Microcosmo della Pittura (1657) recognizes a fundamental distinction in the working methods employed by Antonio Allegri da Correggio (1489/94?–1534) and his younger contemporary, and perhaps student, Parmigianino (1503–1540): There are very different opinions as to what is necessary for those who want to become good painters […]. Raphael of Urbino and Francesco Manzuoli called Parmegianino, among the modern masters, can serve as examples of one of the methods. With long effort and intensive study they constructed a specific, precisely researched concept of the beautiful. So fluent and accom- plished were they in drawing that they may be easily said to be the very best in the practice of this studious activity. The other side can be seen in the painter from Correggio […] [who] abhorred the practice of making designs […] [and] used to reply that he had his designs at the tip of his brush […]. [Correggio] was endowed with so great a nat- ural ability to paint with the most beautiful colors, and in the most truly naturalistic manner, whereas the other two painters, with different preferences and methods, made designs with extreme perfection. 1 Parmigianino (like Raphael) drew endlessly, and his designs reflect beautiful and constantly shifting patterns of his imagination. Correggio appears instead to have eschewed an elaborate graphic practice, for, according to Scannelli, “he had his designs at the tip of his brush” (“c’havea i suoi disegni nella stremit∫ dei pennelli”). Considerably less sympathetic to Correggio’s method had been the sixteenth-century biographer Giorgio Vasari. Although he hails Correggio as the first Lombard to work in the modern style, Vasari defines the artist’s creative achieve- ment in terms of his use of colors, rather than the ability to draw, and notes that Correggio’s drawings alone would cer- tainly not have secured his fame. What prevented Correggio from attaining true perfection, Vasari bemoans, was the failure to visit Rome. Such remarks bespeak a general tendency in Vasari’s Lives, particularly evident in the revised 1568 edition, to rank design above coloring (disegno above colorito) and to privilege the aesthetic preferences of Tuscany and Rome over those of other regions, especially Venice. Center and periph- ery are located accordingly on Vasari’s art historical map. 2 Artists who neglect to study the lessons of Central Italy – to visit Rome – remain inadequate in disegno and thus marginal in significance. Vasari’s biography of another Lombard artist, Parmigianino, includes much praise for his unrivaled grace of MARY VACCARO Correggio and Parmigianino: On the Place of Rome in the Historiography of Sixteenth-Century Parmese Drawing 1