PARMIGIANINO

Parmigianino: translation

(1503-1540).

Italian painter, usually identified with the emergence of themanneriststyle of art but also important for his skill at printmaking. Born as Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola at Parma, where he was trained by his father and two uncles, he dis-played even in his earliest works a skill at draftsmanship and a refined elegance that became hallmarks of his mature work. By the age of 20 he had come under the influence of the older artistCorreggio. In 1524 he went toRometo study ancient art and the modern works ofRaphaelandMichelangelo. He also presented to PopeClement VIIone of the most striking and unusual of his paintings,Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, which reproduces with remarkable sophistication the effects of the mirror on the image. The sack of Rome by an impe-rial army in 1527 disrupted the papal court and caused the young artist to move toBolognaand then back to Parma, where he produced his most famous painting, theMadonna with the Long Neck(ca. 1535), strikingly mannerist in its bold use of exaggerated, elongated forms and proportions that do not conform to the expectations of a viewer familiar with the works of his High Renaissance predecessors.