Slapende Cupido

summer 1524

Travels to Rome with his uncles

According to Vasari, on hearing Raphael and Michelangelo praised, Francesco longed to see Rome; his uncles approved and advised him to take some of his works to open doors to the lords and artists there. They arrived in Rome in the summer of 1524, and Parmigianino presented several paintings to Pope Clement VII, among them the “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” painted on a wooden hemisphere.

1527

The Sack of Rome finds him at work

During the Sack of Rome by the landsknechts of Emperor Charles V, soldiers burst into the studio where Parmigianino was painting “The Vision of Saint Jerome” but harmed neither the pictures nor the artist. Soon, however, he had to abandon his lodgings and Rome, and he left the altarpiece with the church of Santa Maria della Pace.

1531

Commissioned to decorate Santa Maria della Steccata

In May 1531 Parmigianino was commissioned to fresco the church of Santa Maria della Steccata in praise of the Virgin, with the Coronation as the main scene, and undertook to finish within eighteen months; the work stalled again and again over irregular supplies and the church administration's dislike of his unusual design. Other accounts say the commission was for two altarpieces, of Saint Joseph and Saint John the Baptist. The confraternity advanced him a salary.

1539

Jailed for breach of contract

Absorbed in alchemy (Vasari says the elegant, handsome man turned into a bearded, unkempt, almost savage recluse), the artist did little work in the church, and the Steccata confraternity, which had paid him in advance, had him imprisoned for two months. Released on his promise to finish the work, he again failed to keep it and fled Parma for the small town of Casalmaggiore.

5 August 1540

Illness and will at Casalmaggiore

Falling ill, possibly with malaria, the artist made his will: he named as heirs three underage servants, perhaps also his studio assistants, left 100 scudi to his sister Ginevra, and asked to be buried in the Servite church of La Fontana near Casalmaggiore, naked with a cross on his chest. Vasari gives the cause of death now as a severe fever, now as poisoning by the mercury he used in his alchemical experiments.

24 août 1540

Died