Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

e a form of self portrait 3 . These two sheets are similar
in scale and graphic style and probably date from the
same period. Gnann lists the Louvre drawing amongst
the works executed in Rome 1524-1526, but, more
likely, Popham and to Dominique Cordellier place it
in the later Parmese period, around 1535 onwards 4 . A
third sheet formerly at Chatsworth, is also of interest
for its scale and style; although a larger sheet as a
whole, it shows a profile of a handsome, bearded man 5
exactly the size of the present head which itself, by the
comparison with the Chatsworth drawing, seems like
a cautionary tale of the progress of age.
Parmigianino’s fascination with profile heads is
evident from the wider group of such studies of single,
double and multiple heads, all dated to the Roman
period by Achim Gnann 6 , and mostly considered
to be later by Cordellier and Popham. These heads
of course reflect the artist’s engagement with the
Antique with their echoes of Roman coinage and
medals but are also reminiscent of late 15 th and early
16 th century portrait medals, occasionally feeling
Leonardesque. A small sheet in the Nationalmuseum
Stockholm 7 , like this drawing also from the Crozat
collection, shows two heads which with their scroll
like beards and strong expressions have elements of
the present head; the same is true of two further single
heads at Chatsworth, which have a similarly strange
and fanciful spirit, one has a foliate ear and the other,
a man in a feathered hat, the same curly hair 8 . David
Ekserdjian in his article Parmigianino and the Antique
wrote of the way that his drawings reveal an almost
omnivorous interest in the art of contemporaries
whilst also demonstrating that he was passionately
and inventively interested in the antique 9 . This
dialogue is clearly one of the animating forces behind
the profile drawings, together with a fascination with
comparative physiognomy which Martin Clayton
refers to as perhaps being, as it was for Leonardo,
a displacement activity, a substitute for real work 10 .
In the present case, the mask also suggests an awful
transmutation, something magical and ancient,
perhaps alluding to Parmigianino’s unsuccessful
alchemical experiments; as Dominique Cordellier
writes in the recent exhibition catalogue: It would
seem that unlike Dürer and Raphael, Parmigianino
was one of those artists who, on reaching maturity,
took on a manner that appeared strange to other
people. 11 . While Vasari, in his biography, described
him as losing, under this obsession, all that he
had been earlier; he writes of a beard long and
uncombed, hair overgrown and the impression given
of a wild man, half crazed 12 . Though speculative, the
dating of this fascinating drawing to Parmigianino’s
very last years could make it vividly self-illustrative
of the artist’s mercury-fuelled decline into madness.
The small numerals inscribed in an 18 th century hand
on the bottom right of the sheet, just to the left of the
older attribution to Parmigianino, are identifiable as an
inventory number from the collection of Pierre Crozat
(1665-1740), the best known amateur of drawings
of the 18 th century, treasurer to the King, patron of
Watteau and purchaser, as agent, of the collection of
Queen Cristina of Sweden. Relevant to the present
work is the artist and collector Jonathan Richardson’s
description of Crozat’s collection as cited in 1820
by the historian Henry Reveley, Mr. Richardson has
observed, that though many [drawings] were slight,
and others small, all were good 13 .
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