Antonio Allegri da Correggio, known as Correggio, was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the Italian Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the 16th century. His use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, prefigured Rococo art of the 18th century.

Antonio Allegri was born in Correggio. His date of birth is uncertain but by all accounts, it was about 1490. His father was a poor merchant. Otherwise, little is known about Correggio's life or training. He apprenticed under an uncle and then with Francesco Bianchi Ferrara of Modena. After a trip to Mantua in 1506, he returned to Correggio, where he stayed until 1510.

As an independent artist, he signed a contract for the Madonna altarpiece in the local monastery of St. Francis which is now in Dresden.

By 1516, Correggio was living in Parma, where he remained for the rest of his career. In 1519 he married Girolama Francesca di Braghetis, also of Correggio, who died in 1529. One of his sons, Pomponio Allegri, became an undistinguished painter.

Correggio was remembered by as a shadowy, melancholic and introverted character. He was an eclectic artist, and it is not always possible to identify a stylistic link between his paintings. He seems to have emerged out of no major apprenticeship, and to have had little influence in terms of successors, but his works are now considered to have been revolutionary and influential on subsequent artists. A century after his death Correggio's work was well known to Giorgio Vasari, who felt that he had not had enough Roman exposure or he would have been a better painter.