Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, called Parmigianino Parma 1503 - 1540 Casalmaggiore 22 Profile Head Study of a Man wearing a Mask Pen and brown ink and wash. Bears old inscription: Parmig ..and numbering in another hand: 260. 110 x 72 mm (4 1 /3 x 2 1 /2 in.) Provenance: P. Crozat; his numbering in brown ink, bottom right (L.3612) 1 , possibly his sale, Paris, 10 April - May 13, 1741; Private Collection, Paris. Parmigianino’s career though abruptly ended by fever at the age of 37 was extraordinarily influential, especially considering that he showed a certain lack of ambition and great difficulty in completing work. He developed a style rich in grace and refinement which deeply affected succeeding generations of artists, through his paintings and engravings and particularly through his prolific draughtsmanship; from Bedoli to the Carracci and on to Creti: in Vasari’s estimation: his manner has therefore been studied and imitated by innumerable painters, because he shed on art a light of grace so pleasing, that his works will always be held in great price and himself honoured by all students of design 2 . He achieved a high reputation quickly; at the age of sixteen he completed a fresco cycle at Fontanellato and an altarpiece of The Baptism of 1. Parmigianino, A Naked Young Man Hiding behind a Gigantic Mask, pen and brown ink, Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv.6652. Christ for the Santissima Annunziata church in Parma. Returning from a year in Viadana during the siege of Parma, he received commissions to decorate the transept of the cathedral, San Giovanni Evangelista. A year later he left for Rome and was given patronage by the then pope, Clement VII. Fleeing from the Sack of Rome in 1527, Parmigianino took himself to Bologna where he worked in the church of San Petronio and for patrons both secular and religious. His panel painting The Madonna of the Rose painted for Pietro Aretino was praised by Vasari and given to the Pope. 1530 was spent in Venice and Verona; Parmigianino returned to Parma at the end of that year and was commissioned to execute within eighteen months the decorations of the apse and the vault of Santa Maria della Steccata. On the intervention of his patron, Francesco Baiardo, Parmigianino agreed to paint an altarpiece in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi to commemorate Baiardo’s deceased brother in law. This work, the Madonna of the Long Neck, remained unfinished, like the Steccata decorations, on the artist’s death. The Steccata commission was twice extended before the confraternity finally sued Parmigianino for the delays. He was briefly imprisoned before fleeing to Casalmaggiore where he died some months later. According to Vasari Parmigianino played the lute most excellently and loved poetry but his chief obsession became alchemy and would to God that he had always pursued the studies of painting and not sought to pry into the secrets of congealing mercury .. for then he would have been without an equal. At once playful and slightly bizarre, this fascinating drawing has a remarkable vitality. With a single line of the pen locating the iris, Parmigianino lends the eye an expression of alarm, especially when taken with the open mouth of the mask. The features of the mask are realistic, with its rotting teeth and moles, wild eyebrows and long, straggling beard, but also fantastic, the ear being given a foliate form. The conceit is of the face of a young man looking through the mask of an old one. This combination of fantasy and reality compares very closely with a drawing in the Louvre of a naked young man with his arms and head thrust into another mask which this time, is giant in scale and finer in feature, and thought, hypothetically, to 96
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