_Parmigiano_ (Parmese: 1503-1540).
A picture of great interest both for itself and for the
circumstances under which it was painted. Parmigiano was
painting it at Rome in 1527 when the city was sacked by the
army of the Emperor Charles V. under Constable Bourbon. So
intent, says Vasari, was our artist on his work that "when his
own dwelling was filled with certain of these men, who were
Germans, he remained undisturbed by their clamours, and did
not move from his place; arriving in the room therefore, and
finding him thus employed, they stood confounded at the beauty
of the paintings they beheld, and, like good and sensible men
as they must have been, they permitted him to continue his
occupation."[66] Parmigiano had other narrow escapes in his
career, which ultimately came to a bad end, owing, Vasari says,
to his forsaking painting for alchemy, "since he believed
that he should make himself rich much more rapidly by the
congelation of mercury than by his art."
Francesco Maria Mazzola was called Parmigiano from Parma, his
birthplace. After Correggio settled there, Parmigiano devoted
himself to the study and imitation of that master. In 1523 he
went to Rome, to study the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo.
In 1531 he returned to Parma, and undertook an important
commission to paint in one of its churches. He was paid in
advance, and when after five years he had not begun the work
he was imprisoned for breach of contract. He was released on
a promise that he would proceed with the frescoes, but he fled
the city, and shortly afterwards died, in his thirty-seventh
year. The chequered life of the artist finds a parallel in the
varying fortunes of his reputation as an artist. He was an
imitator both of Correggio and of Michael Angelo--here, for
instance, the head of the infant Christ recalls the former
master, the figures of St. Jerome and St. John recall the
latter; and in his own day was held to have imitated them
successfully, whilst Vasari adds that "the spirit of Raphael
was said to have passed into Parmigiano." Of one of his works
Reynolds, two hundred years later, expressed himself "at a loss
which to admire most, the correctness of drawing or grandeur
of conception." But the fashion in art has changed since
Reynolds's day, and modern critics have found Parmigiano's work
"incongruous," "insipid," and "affected." This difference of
opinion is well exemplified in the case of this picture. Vasari
calls it "singularly beautiful," and its subsequent popularity
is attested by the number of copies of it extant (visitors on
Students' Days will still often see copyists at work on it).
But other critics have attributed its fame "more to its defects
than its beauties" (Passavant), and have found it "mannered and
theatrical" (Mrs. Jameson), and "a pernicious adaptation of an
incongruous style" (Dr. Richter).
Leaving the visitor to form his own judgment, we may remind him that
the subject is a supposed dream of St. Jerome when doing penance in the
desert. He is asleep on the ground--doing penance, it might seem from
his distorted position, even in his sleep, with a skull before him and
a crucifix beside him. He is in the same desert where John the Baptist
once preached, and thinking, we may suppose, of him, St. Jerome sees
him in vision--with his camel skin about him--pointing upwards to the
sky. There is the Virgin Mary seated as queen of heaven on a crescent
moon, with a palm branch in her hand--the symbol now, not of martyrdom,
but of victory over sin and death. And on her knee is the Divine Child,
who rests his right hand on a little book on the Madonna's lap. It
is a volume, we may suppose, of the Scriptures which St. Jerome had
translated, and the vision thus foreshadows the time when it should be
said unto him, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant; ... enter
thou into the joy of thy Lord."