This Peculiar Painting From the Experimental Mannerist Movement Is Back on Display After a Stunning Ten-Year Restoration

A beautifully restored 16th-century painting is now on public display in London. The tall, narrow altarpiece, called The Madonna and Child With Saints (1526-7), was created by Parmigianino, a young master who belonged to a subversive artistic movement in the early 1500s: Italian Mannerism.

The artwork had been hidden from view since the conservation efforts began ten years ago. London’s National Gallery will showcase the painting alongside Parmigianino’s sketches as part of its 200th anniversary programming.

“It will be such a thrill to have this masterwork back on our gallery walls, its visionary qualities once again on display to the public,” says Matthias Wivel, the gallery’s curator of 16th-century Italian paintings, in a statement.

Parmigianino, who was born in the Italian city of Parma in 1503, was only 23 when he was commissioned to paint The Madonna and Child With Saints for a chapel of the Church of San Salvatore in Rome.

He was at work on the piece during the 1527 sack of Rome, when the armies of Charles V invaded the city. According to an account by fellow artist Giorgio Vasari, troops burst into Parmigianino’s studio during the invasion, but they “were so amazed by what they saw that they allowed him to continue, demanding he make drawings for them in exchange for leaving him unharmed,” per the statement.

The 12-foot-tall altarpiece—also known as The Vision of St. Jerome—is “wild, quirky and gets more subversive the longer you look at it,” as the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones writes. From background to foreground, the painting depicts a haloed Virgin Mary, a young Jesus standing between her knees, St. Jerome asleep on the ground, and St. John the Baptist, clad sparsely in animal skins, pointing a crooked finger toward the figures behind him.

Parmigianino’s “unusual” depiction of Jerome has been interpreted in numerous ways, as exhibition curator Maria Alambritis tells Artnet’s Vittoria Benzine. Perhaps the artist was referencing the Vatican’s sculpture Sleeping Ariadne, a copy of a second century B.C.E. artwork, or emphasizing Jerome’s “dream state.” Alternatively, as the Guardian writes, Parmigianino may have been referencing Correggio’s sensual Venus and Cupid With a Satyr (1524-25), in which the goddess sleeps in a similar position.

“In the whole of art, in all the zillions of altarpieces out there, there cannot be many depictions of religious events as wayward and wacky as this,” writes the London Times’ Waldemar Januszczak.

By the 1520s, Renaissance artists like Michelangelo had mastered realism. Parmigianino was part of a new wave of painters who experimented with artifice. These artists became known as the Mannerists for their new “manner” of painting. They played with proportions, distorted space and exaggerated human anatomy (see Parmigianino’s so-called “Madonna with the long neck”). Per the Guardian, “Parmigianino is the most mannered Mannerist of all.”

The National Gallery will display a selection of chalk and ink drawings Parmigianino made before painting The Madonna and Child With Saints, “allowing us all to partake vicariously in his dynamic, fluid and ever-shifting creative process,” as Wivel says in the statement.

Parmigianino left Rome before his painting was installed, and he spent most of his remaining life in Parma. The piece was hidden for safekeeping and wasn’t recovered until long after Parmigianino’s death, per the statement. The National Gallery acquired the piece in 1826.

The Madonna and Child With Saints has never been a highlight of the gallery’s collection. However, according to the Guardian, the recent restoration has upped the painting’s starpower: “What seemed a mustard-yellow monstrosity has become sharper, brighter.” As the Times writes, conservators “revealed gorgeous details,” such as a “funny little cross” held by John and streams of heavenly light illuminating the vegetation—an “abundance of greens.”

As Wivel says in the statement, “I have little doubt that this show will be a transporting experience.”

“Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome” is on view at the National Gallery in London through March 9, 2025.

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.