Parmigianino

Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror(c.1524); Oil on wood, diameter 24,4 cm ; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (11 January 1503- 24 August 1540), also known as Francesco Mazzola, or more famously as Parmigianino, was a painter, draftsman, and etcher of a family of artists in Parma, where he worked among other artists such as Correggio. He was an influential painter of the Mannerist style during his twenty-year career.

Biography

Mazzola was born in Parma, the eighth child of Filippo Mazzola and an unknown mother. Just two years later, his father died of the plague, leaving his sons to be brought up under their uncles, Michele and Pier Ilario.

Mazzola learned painting from his father and uncles. Giorgio Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists, notes, his grammar school teacher recommended training in painting after seeing the musing drawings of his student. In 1515, his uncles, Pier Ilario and Michele, received a commission from Nicolo Zangrandi for the decoration of a chapel in San Giovanni Evangelista. This work was later taken over by Mazzola. His career began early, and, by the age of sixteen, he had already completed an altarpiece for a local church.

In 1521 Mazzola fled to Viadana at the request of his uncles, after the battle between Francois I and the allied Charles V and Leo X. Here, he painted two panels in tempera, depicting Saint Francis for the church of the Frati de' Zoccoli, and the Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine for San Pietro. This year and the next, he also worked in San Giovanni and met Correggio on the scaffolding put up for the latter's fresco decorations of the cupola.

Mazzola received a major commission in 1522 to decorate the left transept arm of the cathedral of San Giovanni. However, this was hampered so much by delays that he was not able to execute the commissioned work. Between 1523 and 1524, Mazzola met Galeazzo Sanvitale, with whom he had a long relationship. Also in this time, he met Girolamo Bedoli, a fellow pupil in the shop of Parmigianino's uncles, and who had married Parmigianino's cousin.

In 1524, Mazzola visited Rome, and presented four small paintings, and his Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, to Clement VII, the new Medici pope, from whom Mazzola hoped to gain patronage. Clement kept the Circumcision. Vasari records that Mazzola was 'celebrated as a Raphael reborn'.

In January 1526, Mazzola and his uncle, Pier Ilario, agree with Maria Bufalina from Citta di Castello, to decorate the church of San Salvatore, in Lauro, with the Vision of Saint Jerome.

In 1527 the sack of Rome caused Parmigianino, like many other artists, to flee. He came to Bologna first, then in 1530 he returned to Parma, where he was hired to participate in the decoration of Santa Maria della Steccata.

In 1531, Mazzola received a commission for two altarpieces, depicting Saint Joseph, and Saint John the Baptist, from the unfinished church of the Steccata. The brotherhood was to erect suitable scaffolding and provide the rosettes for the coffers and the necessary gold. This led in the following year to a contract for the apse and barrel vault to be completed within 18 months. However, by 1535, Mazzola had still not finished them, and promises to do so within two years, or pay back the advance he had received. In December, he nominated Don Nicola Cassola, a Parman cleric at the Roman Curia, to act as his legal representative. Mazzola authorised him to collect the 50 gold scudi from Bonifazio Gozzadini for the Madonna with St. John the Baptist and St. Zacharias.

In 1534, it was decided that the Madonna dal Collo Lungo (the Madonna with the Long Neck) would hang in the chapel of the family of Elena Baiardi.

Mazzola had, naturally, probably expected to succeed Correggio in the favour of the church. However, in April 1538, the administrative office of the Church commissioned Girolamo Bedoli to decorate the apse and choir of the cathedral (duomo). The work had been initially assigned to Giorgio Gandini del Grano, who died prematurely. Worse, the next year, Mazzola was thrown in jail for two months, after the Confraternita decided unanimously to ban him from continuing in their church. He was replaced between 1539 and 1540 by Giulio Romano, who accepted the commission to finish the work of Mazzola. However, shortly afterwards in 1540, Romano requested to withdraw from the contract as the work of Mazzola surpassed his strength.

However, it is believed that at this time, he became a devotee of alchemy. Vasari hypothesized that this was due to his fascination with magic. Scholars now agree that Mazzola's scientific interests may've been due to his obsession with trying to find a new medium for his etchings. As a result of his alchemical researches, he completed little work in the church. He was imprisoned for breach of contract, but later escaped.

On the 24 August 1540, Mazzola died, being buried in the church of the Frati de' Servi "naked with a cross made of cypress wood on his chest".

Works

Is it believed that Mazzola was the first Italian artist to make etchings. His work in this influenced the technology and art of printmaking.

The Madonna with the Long Neck

Madonna with the Long Neck, 1534-40, Oil on wood, 216 x 132 cm, Uffizi, Florence
Left unfinished at the artist's death

I can well imagine that some may find [Parmigianino's] Madonna almost offensive because of the affectation and sophistication with which a sacred object is treated. There is nothing in it of the ease and simplicity with which Raphael had treated that ancient theme. The picture is called the 'Madonna with the long neck' because the painter, in his eagerness to make the Holy Virgin look graceful and elegant, has given her a neck like that of a swan. He has stretched and lengthened the proportions of the human body in a strangely capricious way. The hand of the Virgin with its long delicate fingers, the long leg of the angel in the foreground, the lean, haggard prophet with a scroll of parchment - we see them all as through a distorting mirror. And yet there can be no doubt that the artist achieved this effect through neither ignorance nor indifference. He has taken care to show us that he liked these unnaturally elongated forms, for, to make doubly sure of his effect, he placed an oddly shaped high column of equally unusual proportions in the background of the painting. As for the arrangement of the picture, he also showed us that he did not believe in conventional harmonies. Instead of distributing his figures in equal pairs on both sides of the Madonna, he crammed a jostling crowd of angels into a narrow corner, and left the other side wide open to show the tall figure of the prophet, so reduced in size through the distance that he hardly reaches the Madonna's knee. There can be no doubt, then, that if this be madness there is method in it. The painter wanted to be unorthodox. He wanted to show that the classical solution of perfect harmony is not the only solution conceivable; that natural simplicity is one way of achieving beauty, but that there are less direct ways of getting interesting effects for sophisticated lovers of art. Whether we like or dislike the road he took, we must admit that he was consistent. Indeed, Parmigianino and all the artists of his time who deliberately sought to create something new and unexpected, even at the expense of the 'natural' beauty established by the great masters, were perhaps the first 'modern' artists. We shall see, indeed, that what is now called 'modern' art may have had its roots in a similar urge to avoid the obvious and achieve effects which differ from conventional natural beauty.

From "The Story of Art", by E.H. Gombrich

List of works

• Madonna with the long neck, Madonna with the Long Neck, 1534-40, Oil on wood, 216 x 132 cm, Uffizi, Florence
• Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, c.1524; Oil on wood, diameter 24.4 cm; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Cupid, c.1523-24; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna[1]
• Madonna and Child 1525, Galleria Doria-Pamphili, Rome[2]
• Portrait of a Man with a Book (Attributed, York City Art Gallery).
• The Circumcision (Detroit Institute of Arts)
• Portrait of a Young Woman (Antea) Capodimonte Museum, Naples).
• Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, (Capodimonte)
• The Conversion of Saint Paul, (Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna)
• Saint Roch and Donor, Gamba Chapel San Petronio Bologna
• Allegorical Portrait of Charles V, (New York)
• The Annunciation, (Metrolpolitan Museum of Art, New York))

See also

• Mannerism

References

• Parmigianino, Cecil Gould. ISBN 1-55859-892-8
• The Story of Art, E.H. Gombrich
• [3]