Anne Moorhouse | The Warburg Institute
‘Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome’, The National Gallery, 5 December 2024 – 9 March 2025
Vying for attention next to the sweeping crowds and queues of visitors jostling to enter the National Gallery's main collection and, for the majority of its display period, situated alongside the sell-out exhibition Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, is the no less engaging – albeit somewhat smaller – Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome.
This display focuses on the immense altarpiece, The Madonna and Child with Saints (1526-7). During the nineteenth century, this work became known as The Vision of Saint Jerome, no doubt due to the near-narcotised lolling of the figure of the Saint at the bottom right of the panel. As the first exhibition ever dedicated to the painting since its arrival at the Gallery in 1826 – and marking the first time it returns to the public eye in ten years following conservation – the wait to see Parmigianino’s astonishing work was well worth it.
The exhibition combines drawings that Parmigianino – ‘the little one from Parma’ – made in preparation for the altarpiece. The work is highly complex, and whether it represents Jerome’s divine vision is open to speculation. Through the burst of ethereal light that fills the work, the contorted poses of the figures, and the otherworldly depiction of the Virgin and Child seated on a cloud, some visitors might be persuaded to believe that this work represents a ‘vision’. Light appears to vibrate in energetic swathes of white and yellow paint around the throne-like Madonna. Clouds miraculously support her great being. Undoubtedly, this altarpiece was designed to instil feelings of awe and wonder in the viewer.
Drawing was foundational for the development of Parmigianino’s artistic career. On moving to Rome in 1524, he came under the patronage of Pope Clement VII – though this altarpiece was the result of a commission received by the artist from the noblewoman patron Maria Bufalini for a burial chapel in San Salvatore in Lauro. However, following the Sack of Rome in 1527, Parmigianino fled. He never saw the installation of his altarpiece. It was as a result of works such as this altarpiece that Parmigianino has rightly been heralded as one of the pioneers – alongside artists such as Giulio Romano and Rosso Fiorentino – of Italian Mannerism (a term used to describe the sixteenth-century European artform which first emerged in Italy and was characterised by artists’ stylised, exaggerated treatment of the human body).
Once the visitor has digested the astonishing fact that a twenty-three-year-old youth created this work as his first ever public commission in Rome – and has accepted to ignore the somewhat underwhelming lighting and choice of colour for the walls to showcase this masterpiece – you come to entertain a strong appreciation for the clever dialogue fostered between the painting and the surrounding preparatory studies. The display maps the creative vision of this artist. Drawing was used by this artist not only to experiment with the relationships between figures, but also between the subjects and their surroundings.
In a display case to the left of the altarpiece is the only surviving drawing which reveals Parmigianino’s conception of the painting as a whole. This placement is particularly effective and encourages the visitor to allow their eye to jump between the two works and gauge the extent to which Parmigianino continued to change his mind about the composition and scale of the subjects throughout the creative process. Through the rich use of brown ink and wash, we see how Parmigianino conceived of drawing as not only a platform to trial the scale and posture of the figures, but also to understand how the light fell on his subjects and how this could render two-dimensional sketches with an almost sculpted appearance.
Perhaps the starkest change is the representation of Christ. The child kicks his foot into our space; the crafted illusionism of this moment invites us to partake in the divine ‘vision’. Christ is coquettish, twirling his golden curls with his finger and toying them with the pages of his mother’s bible. This is not the same figure that we see in the drawing nearby. What made Parmigianino switch from presenting Christ as the protected child almost dwarfed by the Madonna’s embrace, to the muscular, flirtatious individual competing for our attention? Parmigianino departs from normative Renaissance portrayals of the holy infant; earlier depictions which prized grace, intimacy and harmony have been usurped. Renaissance grandeur and a sense of the serious have been utterly infused with tropes of rebellion. Mannerism made manifest in mocking.
And what about that, frankly bizarre, finger of John the Baptist? Held erect and reaching towards the ‘vision’, this sense of touch functions as a bridge-like tool between the earthly and divine realms. The remarkable harmonious contortion (contrapposto) of the saint’s body would no doubt have impressed his affluent patron as a reminder of Parmigianino’s artistic abilities. It would appear that this young artist had such a liking for the rippling curve of St John’s right arm that he decided to render the arms of both Jerome and Christ also in this way. The marvellously mannerist style of Parmigianino was sustained in his later works – his Madonna with the Long Neck (1535-40), for example, is swimming in bizarrely elongated limbs – and lends works such as this altarpiece an unmistakable sensuality.
Death and desire do not escape this painting. Saint Jerome is supposed to be entranced by a divine vision, not slumped in what appears to be a heap of transcendental erotic ecstasy. Or is he? His cardinal robes are draped in a deliberately seductive manner over his muscular body. Mingled with undertones of desire is the interplay of symbols alluding to death. Jerome clutches a crucifix. Pointing in a direction parallel to Jerome’s head, an overturned skull rests on the ground with its jaw broken, seemingly gripping Jerome’s cardinal hat. Ingeniously echoing this motif is a cross held by St John the Baptist, whose penetrating gaze under the shadow of his brow is both seductive and unnerving. As with the skull, the cross is split. The allusion to Christ’s inevitable fate is powerfully evoked.
This exhibition crafts a compelling narrative about one of the great sixteenth-century Italian artists. The display of the altarpiece may only be one room, but this work is deserving of no less than an entire space to itself in which the visitor may marvel and partake in Parmigianino’s own vision.
Further Reading:
Maria Alambritis, Matthias Wivel, Larry Keith, Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome, National Gallery Company Ltd., 2024
Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome | Exhibitions | National Gallery, London
Anne Moorhouse studied Art History for four years at the University of St Andrews and recently completed her MA in Art History, Curatorship and Renaissance Culture at The Warburg Institute with a dissertation titled, ‘‘Baroque Theatricality’: Light as a Tool of Performance and Persuasion in the Churches of Rome’. Whilst undertaking her MA, Anne also studied Italian Language and English Palaeography. She lives and works in London.