Portrait of a Youth

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.