Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, called Parmigianino

Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680), London (L.2092);

Jonathan Richardson Jr. (1694-1771), London (L.2170);

Private collection;

sale, New York, Sotheby's, 16 January 1985, lot 42;

with Thomas Williams Fine Art Ltd., London, 2000,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

New York, The Morgan Library & Museum; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings, 2007, no. 8 (entry Rhoda Eitel-Porter);

Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art; Ithaca, New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Drawn to Excellence: Renaissance to Romantic Drawings from a Private Collection, 2012-2013, no. 8

D. Ekserdjian, 'Unpublished Drawings by Parmigianino. Towards a Supplement to Popham's catalogue raisonné', Apollo, August 1999, pp. 30-31, no. 55, fig. 72;

S. Béguin, M. Di Giampaolo, M. Vaccaro, Parmigianino, The Drawings, Turin, 2000, p. 211, no. 120, reproduced p. 264

The youth in the present drawing is depicted with exquisite delicacy, showing all the unhesitating and sinuous quality of line so typical of Parmigianino's draughtsmanship. Quickly sketched in pen and ink, and loosely based on classical references¹, it is evidence of the artist's fertile, creative imagination.

This young man looking to the left and resting his left arm on a nearby pedestal seems to be plucking a lyre, though as Eitel-Porter pointed out (see Exhibited) 'the horizontal position of the presumed instrument and the shape of the pick are highly unorthodox.' The slender, classically posed figure stands beside a large bifurcated tree trunk, which completes the image to the left. In previous literature the youth has been identified as the god Apollo², though he could also be Orpheus, the legendary musician and renowned poet of ancient mythology.

The figure’s striking proximity to antique statuary was already noticed by one of the drawing’s early owners, probably Jonathan Richardson Jr., who wrote on the verso of the old mount ‘Una Figura che non hà paura dell'Antinoo’ (‘a figure that need not fear comparison with Antinous’), referring to a Greek youth from Bithynia and the favorite of the emperor Hadrian, renowned for his beaty and elegance, who the emperor deified after his obscure and mysterious death.³ In publishing this drawing for the first time, David Ekserdjian observed that the position of the figure's arms bears a striking resemblance to those of a male nude in a drawing in Edinburgh.⁴

Ekserdjian dates the drawing to Parmigianino's second period in Parma, where he resettled from the 1530 until 1539, after travelling to Venice and Verona. It was in Parma in 1531 that the artist was presented with a uniquely prestigious opportunity, when the Confraternity of Santa Maria della Steccata employed him to decorate the apse and the eastern barrel vault of their church. However, Parmigianino’s repeated failure to complete the work in a timely fashion led first to a souring of his relationship with the Confraternity, and ultimately to his being briefly imprisoned for breach of contract, after which he fled to Casalmaggiore. Following the death of Parmigianino, Michelangelo Anselmi (1492-1554) would complete the still unfinished decoration of the semidome with a depiction of The Coronation of the Virgin after a design by Giulio Romano (1499-1546).

Vasari’s commentary on Parmigianino is telling. He records the artist as obsessed by alchemy, spending much of his time on dangerous experiments, rather than art: 'Perchè stillandosi il cervello, non con pensare belle invenzioni, nè con i pennelli o mestiche, perdeva tutto il giornoin tramenare carboni, legne, boccie di vetro, ed altre simili bazzicature, che gli facevano spendere più in un giorno chenon guadagnava a lavorare una settimana alla cappella della Steccata; e non avendo altra entrata, e pur bisognandogli davivere, si veniva cosi consumando con questi suoi fornelli poco a poco..' (Wherefore, wearing out his brain, but not in imagining beautiful inventions and executing them with brushes and colour-mixtures, he wasted all his time handling charcoal, wood, glass vessels, and other such like trumperies, which made him spend more in a day than he earned by a week's work at the Chapel of the Steccata. Having no other means of livelihood, and being yet compelled to live, he was wasting himself away little by little with those furnaces..’).⁵

Echoes of the Antique persisted also into Parmigianino's later works, as witnessed by the present sheet; the artist was passionately and inventively interested in the antique, drawing on multiple sources which, as Ekserdjian remarked, were 'well digested and therefore tend to be concealed'.⁶

^1. See, D. Ekserdjian, 'Parmigianino and the Antique', Apollo, 154 (July 2001), pp. 42-50

^2. Idem, op. cit., 1999, p. 31

^3. See Exhibited 2007, p. 24 and note 1; the final word has also been read, wrongly, as 'Antico'

^4. Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, inv. no. D 729; loc. cit., 1999; for an image see, K. Andrews, National Gallery of Scotland. Catalogue of Italian Drawings, London 1971, vol. I, p. 89, no. 729, vol. II, fig. 619

^5. Vasari, Le Vite de' più eccellenti Pittori Scultori ed Architettori, ed. Milanesi, Florence 1880, vol. V, p. 231; Translation, de Vere, London 1996, p. 941); for more information on Parmigianino's interest in alchemy, see, M. Fagiolo dell'Arco, Parmigianino, ''peritissimo alchimista'', Milan 2016

^6. Ekserdjian, op. cit., 2001, p. 42