Parmigianino, “Portrait of Pier Maria Rossi di San Secondo”, Museo de Prado, Madrid, Spain
Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, also known as Parmigianino was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, Bologna, and his native city of Parma. His work is characterized by a “refined sensuality” and often elongation of forms and includes the 1527 “Vision of Saint Jerome” and the iconic the 1534 “Madonna with the Long Neck”. He remains the best known artist of the first generation whose whole careers fall into the Mannerist period.
He produced outstanding drawings, and was one of the first Italian painters to experiment with printmaking himself. While his portable works have always been keenly collected and are now in major museums in Italy and around the world, his two large projects in fresco are in a church in Parma and a palace in a small town nearby. He painted a number of important portraits, leading a trend in Italy towards the three-quarters or full-length figure, previously mostly reserved for royalty.
His prodigious and individual talent has always been recognised, but his career was disrupted by war, especially the Sack of Rome in 1527, three years after he moved there, and then ended by his death at only 37.