Getty Museum
Two Studies for a Holy Family
Creator
Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)Italian Artist · 1503–1540
All works by this person →Parmigianino, born Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola in Parma, Italy, became Italy's most influential Mannerist painter in his brief twenty-year career. His father and uncles taught him the techniques of painting, and by age sixteen he had already completed an altarpiece for a local church. Beginning in 1520, the celebrated Renaissance artist Correggio became his primary inspiration. Scholars belie
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1526
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink, brush with brown wash, over red chalk, heightened with white gouache; incised line separating the two studies at the center of the sheet
- Culture
- Italian
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
Parmigianino crammed two interlocking studies of the Holy Family, one drawn upside down from the other, onto this sheet of paper. At the bottom, the Madonna sits on the ground holding her right breast, while a female attendant beside her holds the Christ Child. When the sheet is turned the other way up, a variant of the same group appears, this time including the Madonna and Child, perhaps with Saint Elizabeth and the infant John the Baptist. The two studies overlap at the center, showing how rapidly yet harmoniously the artist's train of thought sprang from one study to the other. The heads interlock across the middle of the sheet, and the bodies seem to mirror each other. Parmigianino then made his choice between the two, reinforcing with brush and wash the chiaroscuro in the more fully resolved one. An early drawings collector probably cut the sheet from a larger leaf of studies. Parmigianino almost certainly made these studies in preparation for a print of *The Adoration of the Shepherds* .
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