PARMIGIANINO

The study shows a bearded evangelist or prophet, with two putti hiding beneath his drapery at right. The inspiration for this cloud-borne figure is Correggio’s apostles in the dome of San Giovanni Evangelista.

This drawing shows an eagle with head in profile to right. The eagle is the attribute of St John the Evangelist and this drawing may be connected with the representation of the Saint on which Parmigianino was engaged in the period before he left Parma in 1524.

In this episode from the Odyssey, Circe offers Odysseus’s men a magic potion that will turn them into beasts, yet leave them helplessly aware of their changed state.

The painting is a good example of the Mannerist tendencies in the art of Parmigianino.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 4 minutes):

Francesco Gasparini: The Meddlesome Cupid, aria

In the 1530s Parmigianino frescoed the under-arch above the altar in Santa Maria della Steccata. He graced his painted coffer articulation with sculptural rosettes. A colourful variety of fruit garlands, animals, and grotesques, in red and gold, produces a magnificent effect. At the spring line of the arch, Parmigianino painted two sets of three beautiful, graceful women in various side views, suggesting the Three Graces. Their elegance is analogous to the perfected sweeping forms of the precious vessels they bear on their heads. Grisaille figures of Adam and Eve and Moses and Aaron frame the group of women.

Parmigianino’s composition survives in several printing conditions. The second version shown here is the result of a reworking in his own hand.

A small room (the Camerino) in the castle of Fontanellato contains a fascinating fresco decoration by Parmigianino. It depicts the famous story told by Ovid of the hunter Actaeon, who happened innocently to catch sight of Diana bathing, was transformed into a stag by the enraged goddess, and eventually killed by his own dogs.

The Camerino has a vaulted ceiling with fourteen lunettes. The painter could not or did not wish to include the lower parts of the wall for the narrative painting. Parmigianino grappled with the problem of composing the narrative series in a series of drawings. He decided to transfer the action of the story from the ceiling to the lunettes. Thus it was possible to narrate the story in a logical manner using nearly life-size, half-length figures. A clear visual separation is maintained between the space in which the action takes place and the vaulted ceiling surrounded by a pergola.

The picture shows a view of the entire decoration.

A small room (the Camerino) in the castle of Fontanellato contains a fascinating fresco decoration by Parmigianino. It depicts the famous story told by Ovid of the hunter Actaeon, who happened innocently to catch sight of Diana bathing, was transformed into a stag by the enraged goddess, and eventually killed by his own dogs.

The picture shows part of the mural frescoes with inscription.

A small room (the Camerino) in the castle of Fontanellato contains a fascinating fresco decoration by Parmigianino. It depicts the famous story told by Ovid of the hunter Actaeon, who happened innocently to catch sight of Diana bathing, was transformed into a stag by the enraged goddess, and eventually killed by his own dogs.

The picture shows part of the mural frescoes with inscription.

A small room (the Camerino) in the castle of Fontanellato contains a fascinating fresco decoration by Parmigianino. It depicts the famous story told by Ovid of the hunter Actaeon, who happened innocently to catch sight of Diana bathing, was transformed into a stag by the enraged goddess, and eventually killed by his own dogs.

The picture shows part of the mural frescoes with inscription.

A small room (the Camerino) in the castle of Fontanellato contains a fascinating fresco decoration by Parmigianino. It depicts the famous story told by Ovid of the hunter Actaeon, who happened innocently to catch sight of Diana bathing, was transformed into a stag by the enraged goddess, and eventually killed by his own dogs.

The picture shows part of the mural frescoes with inscription.

A small room (the Camerino) in the castle of Fontanellato contains a fascinating fresco decoration by Parmigianino. It depicts the famous story told by Ovid of the hunter Actaeon, who happened innocently to catch sight of Diana bathing, was transformed into a stag by the enraged goddess, and eventually killed by his own dogs.

The picture shows Actaeon.

A small room (the Camerino) in the castle of Fontanellato contains a fascinating fresco decoration by Parmigianino. It depicts the famous story told by Ovid of the hunter Actaeon, who happened innocently to catch sight of Diana bathing, was transformed into a stag by the enraged goddess, and eventually killed by his own dogs.

The picture shows Diana.

A small room (the Camerino) in the castle of Fontanellato contains a fascinating fresco decoration by Parmigianino. It depicts the famous story told by Ovid of the hunter Actaeon, who happened innocently to catch sight of Diana bathing, was transformed into a stag by the enraged goddess, and eventually killed by his own dogs.

The picture shows the Death of Actaeon.

A small room (the Camerino) in the castle of Fontanellato contains a fascinating fresco decoration by Parmigianino. It depicts the famous story told by Ovid of the hunter Actaeon, who happened innocently to catch sight of Diana bathing, was transformed into a stag by the enraged goddess, and eventually killed by his own dogs.

The picture shows two putti.

The four seated figures in violent altercation, one with arms gesturing to right, were probably made for a composition of ‘The Descent of the Holy Spirit’.

Parmigianino’s art offered the Parmesan aristocracy extraordinary opportunities for self-promotion. In his portrait of Gian Galeazzo Sanvitale, Count of Fontanellato, whose villa Parmigianino brightened with inspired variations on Correggio’s frescoes in the Camera di San Paolo, the sitter’s self-confidence is extraordinary. The count stares out at the viewer, calmly daring anyone to challenge his innate physical and intellectual superiority. In his right hand he displays a bronze medal marked with the mysterious ciphers “7” and “2”, which must have had significance for him and his close circle of friends, but whose inscrutability serves to distance him from the rest of humanity.

Thought to be a sketch by Raphael in the late nineteenth century, the drawing was only recently attributed to Parmigianino.

The girl’s head drawn on paper does not correspond with certainty to any pictorial project and rather appears to be an interpretation of an ideal image inspired by Raphael’s female models and, in particular, the canons of beauty expressed in their faces. The soft blurred lines of red chalk are inspired by Correggio: in around 1520, Parmigianino worked alongside his older colleague on the fresco for the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma, where he would have studied his drawings mainly executed by using this technique.

This drawing was probably drawn in Rome, during a period in which the artist was interested in studying the graphic potential of the pen and its affinities with the burin technique. It shows physical characteristics reminiscent of the busts portraying Emperor Hadrian or Emperor Antoninus Pius.

The almost three-quarter position and the intensity of the gaze, which can be perceived by observing the hollowed eye sockets, seem to point to an authentic portrait of some ancient personage who, although idealised, is commemorated in an unconventional manner.

Parmigianino was one of the first in Italy to try etching and found the medium well suited to his temperament. A fine stroke, permitting far more nuances than in a pencil drawing, becomes in this example the conductor of the excitement possessing not just the couple who have secluded themselves in a wood but the entire natural setting, which is treated in an almost expressionist manner.

In the inventory of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini’s paintings compiled by Giovanni Battista Agucchi in 1603, a double-sided picture is mentioned, with a Nativity on one side and a Madonna on the other. In 1638 the painting was left by Ippolito Aldobrandini to his only niece Olimpia, who had married for a second time to Camillo Pamphilj senior. In a list of the same property made prior to 1665, the work is recorded as still being in one piece, “with gilded frame at the front of the Parmigianino [and] with a pedestal covered with crimson velvet and gold trimming.” The work was obviously held in high regard, and probably intended, from the outset, for use as a small altar for private devotion.

The votive picture was still in this state in 1709 and only subsequently split into two separate parts. Before this investigation of the archives was carried out, the two pictures had been considered two separate works intended as companion pieces. Curiously, in 1603 Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini’s collection contained another small Nativity surrounded by angels, also by Parmigianino but not the same as the one here.

This delightful example of sacred painting with its curved and supple lines, in which the Madonna with her hands joined in moving and gentle spirituality and the Child with a dove perched on an open book, undoubtedly inspired by Correggio, are set against a background of trees stirred by a light breeze, probably dates from around 1525. It would therefore have been painted at the time of the Fontanellato frescoes, that is prior to the artist’s stay in Rome.

This painting dates to the early 1530s, when the artist, who had fled after the Sack of Rome 1527, was staying in Bologna for a few years, focusing on an intense production of altarpieces and paintings for private devotion like this one, commissioned by Count Bonifacio Gozzadini from Bologna.

From the time of his very early works Parmigianino broke away from Correggio, his master, being attracted variously by Raphael, by the light effects of Beccafumi and by the bizarre touches of German engravings. In this work, however, executed after his stay in Rome, there is an unexpected return to the art of Correggio, discernible in the poetry which emerges from the warm, golden colour blends, almost creating a fantastic pictorial vision, and in the ability to capture spontaneous family affections. However, this pervading tenderness is crystallized immediately, intellectually, in the relationship between these human emotions, the refined images of the finely rendered background, and the serious, contemplative face of the saint in the foreground.

The represented saints are John the Baptist, Magdalene and Zachariah. The stern gaze of the latter, father of John the Baptist, guides the beholder towards the Virgin, who is sitting down with the Child in her arms. Baby Jesus, with his large languid, thoughtful eyes, is held tight by John the Baptist, whose tanned complexion is in stark contrast with the pale skin of the Messiah. John the Baptist is bending over to give his cousin a tender kiss, which he returns, caressing his cheek. On the left, a sensual Mary Magdalene, her breast barely concealed by her long blonde flowing hair, shows the vase of anointing oils, her traditional attribute.

He was commissioned to paint the Madonna with the long neck in 1534 by Elena Baiardi Tagliaferri for the church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Parma. In the commissioning contract, the artist undertook to finish the painting in five months, but when he died in 1540, the altarpiece was in his study, still unfinished. Two years later, a decision was made to place it on the altar for which it had been destined, and the following inscription was added to the base of the column to justify its incomplete state: FATO PRAEVENTUS F. MAZZOLI PARMENSIS ABSOLVERE NEQUIVIT (Adverse destiny prevented Francesco Mazzola from Parma from completing this work).

A Virgin with a statuesque figure reminiscent of Michelangelo, but with unnaturally elongated forms, contemplates the Divine Infant, who is asleep on her lap. The Child’s slumber prefigures his death on the cross, as the image of the Crucifixion is reflected in the urn that the angel is showing to the Virgin. The column on Mary’s left highlights the suppleness of her bust and neck, but it could also be a reference to the incorruptible purity of the Virgin sung about in the Marian hymn Collum tuum ut columna: “Your neck is like a column”.

The small figure at the bottom on the right is St Jerome, who is unrolling his scroll as he turns towards an unfinished figure, St Francis (the artist only had time to paint one of his feet).

Although depicting a sacred theme, the artist does not forgo the typical sensuality of his artistic production: the figures with elongated limbs and refined poses, interpreted with sophisticated elegance, are permeated by a subtle eroticism, perceivable in the drapery clinging to the Virgin’s body, highlighting her curves, in the slender hand lifted to the breast, in the litheness of the naked leg of the young angel in the foreground.

This was painted for the church of Santa Maria dei Servi at Parma. It is the masterpiece of the culminating period in the art of Parmigianino, done almost the same time as the frescoes of the Steccata at Parma. The painter worked upon the picture for six years, but this notwithstanding, it remained unfinished. It is a work of intense if somewhat aloof poetical feeling, this effect mainly arising from the splendid abstraction of the forms, so smoothly rounded under the cool and polished colour.

The painting takes its subject from a simile in medieval hymns to the Virgin which likened her neck to a great ivory tower or column. Appropriate to the traditional understanding of the Virgin as an allegorical representation of the Church, this imagery was also exploited in poems. Thus the exaggerated length of the limbs of the Virgin and her son, as well as the presence of columns in the background of the painting, are not contrived merely for their decorative value, but clearly signal the painting’s religious meaning.

Parmigianino’s most important work survives in Emilia, principally in the Rocca at Fontenellato and in the church of Santa Maria della Steccata in Parma. He also worked in Rome (1524—27), where he painted The Vision of Saint Jerome (London, National Gallery), and at the end of his life in Casalmaggiore, where he was exiled for failing to complete the decorations in Santa Maria della Stec- cata begun in 1534. Pallas Athene would appear to be a late work and is comparable in style with Parmigianino’s last altarpiece, The Virgin and Child with Saint Stephen and Saint John the Baptist (Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen), painted for the church of San Stefano in Casalmaggiore in 1539-40. The gracefulness of the style evolved for the so-called ‘Madonna with the Long Neck’ of around 1535 (Florence, Uffizi) gives way to a greater sense of gravity in these late works, characterised by slower, more ponderous rhythms and simpler compositions. The warm flesh tones and the drapery that resembles thin sheets of beaten metal are also hallmarks of the artiste late style, although the elegant turn of the head, the etiolated fingers and the delicate treatment of the highlighted strands of hair evoke the earlier, more poetic style.

The appearance of Pallas Athene complies with Ovid’s description in his Metamorphoses VI. The figure wears armour but lacks the helmet and spear, perhaps because the artist chose to emphasise the association with wisdom and the arts as opposed to more warlike aspects. The plaque indicated by the hand is reminiscent of an antique cameo, but it is not a copy. The depiction of the city and the winged figure of Victory flying with a palm and an olive branch are references to Pallas Athene’s success over Poseidon concerning the ownership of Attica, of which Athens was the capital.

Lorenzo Cybo (1500-1549) he was the son of Franceschetto Cybo and Maddalena de’ Medici, daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici. His uncle was Pope Leo X and his paternal grandfather was Pope Innocent VIII. A skilled soldier, he held the position of commander-in-chief of the Papal Army.

The sitter’s straight posture and reserved gaze radiates a certain arrogance. Striking a relaxed pose, he holds a dagger and an impressive two-handed broadsword so heavy that a small, eager boy lends support.

The extraordinary intensity of the sitter’s expression is achieved through the use of a naturalistic language, with no attempt to idealize the face, but one which is at the same time capable of conveying penetrating psychological insight and a subtle sense of disquiet.

The panel is an example of the painter’s gift as a portraitist and bears witness to a crucial moment in his artistic development, influenced by his study of Raphael and Michelangelo in the months that preceded the dramatic Sack of Rome in 1527.

Parmigianino painted the portrait of the young lady (so-called Antea) whose identity remains unknown to this day; the name “Antea” is a fiction, but will doubtless stick.

A story dating from 1671, that it represents Parmigianino’s lover, lacks any evidential plausibility. Antea, who is mentioned in the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, and also in the writings of Pietro Aretino, was a popular courtesan in Rome. It is easy to imagine that the beauty of the young lady gave rise to the speculation that she was romantically linked with her portraitist Parmigianino, not least on account of the fascination exercised by the portrait. However, the painting is likely to have been executed in Parma in c. 1535, the time at which his Madonna with the Long Neck was also painted. Some people have even claimed to see a striking resemblance between Antea and an angel standing next to this Madonna, which suggests that the young woman could have been a studio model, and not just a sitter for her own portrait.

The type suggests an official commission. The lady is dressed in elegant clothes, with a yellow dress made of atlas silk. The top is patterned with lozenges, while from the hips down she is wearing a narrow white apron. Over her right shoulder, which curiously is far too broad, she is wearing a pine-marten fur stole complete with head. The animal’s nose is pierced with a ring on a chain, which she is holding in her gloved right hand, while the other hand is bare, and is grasping a necklet at stomach height. On her little finger, in her ears and in her precisely styled hair, she is wearing further costly jewellery. There is absolutely no doubt that importance was attached to the depiction of the expensive fabric and of the lady’s wealth, so that, if we exclude the courtesan thesis, she must be a lady of rank. Her youth suggests that she was still unmarried.

Francesco Mazzola, known as Parmigianino after his home town of Parma, was a highly talented and artistically precocious painter, in whom some contemporaries sought to see a reincarnation of Raphael, who had died young. They saw him as blessed with unparalleled talent, which however he wasted first through his louche lifestyle, and later in alchemist experiments.

Following a meteoric start to his career, he arrived in Rome in 1524 and enjoyed immediate success, albeit not at the papal court. The plunder of the city by imperial troops in 1527, an event which has gone down in history as the “Sack of Rome”, caused him to return to Parma, where he created all of his most important paintings from then on.

Giorgio Vasari wrote in his Lives of the Artists on the nineteen years old Parmigianino:

“Then came upon him the desire to see Rome, hearing men greatly praise the works of the masters there, especially of Raffaello and Michael Angelo, and he told his desire to his old uncles. They, seeing nothing in the desire that was not praiseworthy, agreed, but said that it would be well to take something with him which would gain him an introduction to artists. And the counsel seeming good to Francesco, he painted three pictures, two small and one very large. Besides these, inquiring one day into the subtleties of art, he began to draw himself as he appeared in a barber’s convex glass. He had a ball of wood made at a turner’s and divided in half, and on this he set himself to paint all that he saw in the glass, and because the mirror enlarged everything that was near and diminished what was distant, he painted the hand a little large. Francesco himself, being of very beautiful countenance and more like an angel than a man, his portrait on the ball seemed a thing divine, and the work altogether was a happy success, having all the lustre of the glass, with every reflection and the light and shade so true, that nothing more could be hoped for from the human intellect.

The picture being finished and packed, together with the portrait, he set out, accompanied by one of his uncles, for Rome; and as soon as the Chancellor of the Pope had seen the pictures, he introduced the youth and his uncle to Pope Clement, who seeing the works produced and Francesco so young, was astonished, and all his court with him. And his Holiness gave him the charge of painting the Pope’s hall.”

The painting was given to Pope Clement VII as a gift by the young artist.

For composing the narrative paintings in the Camerino in the castle of Fontanellato, Parmigianino executed several preliminary drawings. The present drawing is a sketch for a wall decoration with frieze of putti and the story of Actaeon.

For composing the narrative paintings in the Camerino in the castle of Fontanellato, Parmigianino executed several preliminary drawings. The present drawing is a sketch for a wall decoration with frieze of putti and the story of Europa.

This is a study of drapery for one of the canephori; whole-length standing, looking at an object which she holds in her left hand. The drapery corresponds with that of the Canephoros in the centre of the south wall of the vault of the Steccata in Parma. The sheet has been squared for transfer in red chalk. The head and arms, which are entirely different from those of the painted figure, are additions by a later hand.

The study of the legs of a seated figure and separate study of a left foot are associated with a design of ‘Daniel in the Lions’ Den’.

This unfinished painting is a variant of the composition of Raphael’s Garvagh Madonna (then in Bologna, now in the National Gallery, London).

The painting was commissioned by Maria Bufalini for her husband’s family chapel at S. Salvatore in Lauro, Rome. The commission required the presence of two saints in the lower part: St John the Baptist was the patron saint of Maria’s father-in-law, while Jerome was chosen because of his connection with the legal profession practiced by both her husband and his father. The artist chose to separate the two saints, with the Baptist dominating the lower portion while Jerome is shown sleeping to suggest that the painting represents his vision. John looks out and with an exaggerated gesture directs us to the Virgin and Child, who are floating in midair, a position that becomes popular in the sixteenth century. The complex and trained pose of the Baptist, the emphasis on foreshortened forms, and the long, unusually proportioned figures are all typical of Mannerist art.

Parmigianino brilliant career in Rome was cut short by the city’s infamous Sack in 1527. Initially retreating to Bologna, he returned to Parma in 1530, where he received a commission to decorate the vaults and the main apse of a new, centrally planned church dedicated to the Virgin, the Madonna della Steccata. This project gave him the opportunity to refine Correggio’s illusionistic effects and promote an even more elegant and graceful style which allied his patrons with the most sophisticated developments in contemporary Roman art.

In the church Parmigianino transformed the broad barrel vault in front of the main apse into a sumptuous gilt, blue, and red field which seems to be bounded by protruding arches overlaid with interlacing gilt strapwork. Only the bosses at the centre of the coffers are actually three-dimensional, every other figure, niche, and decorative detail is a fiction. The three female figures performing a balletic balancing act on a fictive ledge carry empty lamps which characterize them as the unprepared Foolish Virgins of one of Christ’s parables; their wise, mirror-image counterparts appear on the opposite side of the vault.

For composing the narrative paintings in the Camerino in the castle of Fontanellato, Parmigianino executed several preliminary drawings. In the initial conception, the frescoes were planned as individual scenes under a frieze of putti.

For composing the narrative paintings in the Camerino in the castle of Fontanellato, Parmigianino executed several preliminary drawings. On the verso of the present sheet a fragmentary study of Diana and Actaeon can be seen placed in a spandrel.

This study, showing two women and a child sitting on the floor, in an interior with steps to right, is probably a design for an engraving which was not executed.

This painting is unfinished. Parmigianino was consciously varying levels of finish in his paintings. It is indicated by the existence of works, even from late in his career, that have a smooth, almost enamelled surface; at the same time he also executed paintings with very visible brushwork and with such economy of technique that areas of the prepared painting surface remained uncovered.

This panel is the smallest painting in the entire oeuvre of Parmigianino, no wonder that it has been likened to a miniature.