Parmigianino: Madonna dal collo lungo (1534-40)
Oil on wood (216 x 132 cm)
Despite what some people mistakenly think, Parmigianino is not a type of Italian hard cheese grated over pasta dishes, or shaved on to salads. It's the name, rather, by which the progidiously talented 16th century painter and printmaker Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola was commonly known.
Like other artists who worked in the Mannerist style, his work is characterised by its artificiality, its elegance and its sensuous distortion of the human figure. This is clearly seen in his iconic (but unorthodox and unfinished) picture known in English as the Madonna with the Long Neck (1534-40).
The painting depicts Mary seated on a high pedestal in luxurious blue robes and surrounded by half-a-dozen angels who have gathered round to take a peek at the (oversized) baby Jesus lying awkwardly on her blessed lap.
In the lower right-hand corner of the picture is the figure of St. Jerome, the theologian and historian who translated the Bible into Latin and a passionate devotee of the Virgin. Whether he's tiny in size or simply far away I'll leave for others to decide, but Parmigianino is clearly playing with perspective in this work.
Like other artists who worked in the Mannerist style, his work is characterised by its artificiality, its elegance and its sensuous distortion of the human figure. This is clearly seen in his iconic (but unorthodox and unfinished) picture known in English as the Madonna with the Long Neck (1534-40).
The painting depicts Mary seated on a high pedestal in luxurious blue robes and surrounded by half-a-dozen angels who have gathered round to take a peek at the (oversized) baby Jesus lying awkwardly on her blessed lap.
In the lower right-hand corner of the picture is the figure of St. Jerome, the theologian and historian who translated the Bible into Latin and a passionate devotee of the Virgin. Whether he's tiny in size or simply far away I'll leave for others to decide, but Parmigianino is clearly playing with perspective in this work.
The thing that immediately strikes most viewers, however, is the fact that Parmigianino has given Mary a swan-like neck in a bid to make her look graceful and perhaps relate her story to that of other figures within religious mythology. Her slender hands and long fingers also suggest a becoming-swan - either that, or the artist's model was suffering from the genetic condition known as Marfan Syndrome, which affects the connective tissue.
Notes
The Madonna with the Long Neck can be seen in the Uffizi Gallery (Florence).
To read the sister post to this one on Amedeo Modigliani's erotico-aesthetic fascination with long female necks, click here.
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