Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent three-week online course from the National Gallery focusing on Parmigianino’s “Vision of St Jerome” from 1526 which was the subject of a small exhibition at the gallery at the time. Richard Stemp used the six sessions to gradually broaden out from the painting itself to the life of the artist and then onto themes which the painting highlighted. It was cleverly structured and covered a lot of ground. Week one focused on the painting and the exhibition discussing its context, influences and composition. He then looked at the life of the artist and his other works. In week two we looked at the role of women linked to the painting beginning with a useful overview of the history of painting the Virgin Mary and the different archetypal images placing this work within ideas of the Immaculate Conception. We then looked at women as commissioners of art as this work had been commissioned by a widow, Maria Bufalini in memory of her husband. Stemp ran though examples of paintings ...

Useful exhibition at the National Gallery focusing on an altarpiece by Parmigianino during his time in Rome. This strange tall picture has been off display for 10 years and has been conserved before this show. My previous blog post was on a curators’ talk on the show which shone a light on the drawings included in the show. The altarpiece is still powerful and people were standing in awe before it. The strange composition and in particular the powerful figure of John the Baptist draws you in. It was lovely to see it with a selection of drawings by the artist, made to work out the composition in a variety of styles. They helped to understand the choices he made. Closed 9 March 2025 Re views Times Guardian  

Useful online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their exhibition on a painting from 1526 by Parmigianino. Maria Alambritis, the project curator and Mattias Wivel, a former curator at the gallery, told us the history of the work including telling us how Parmigianino was working on it during the Sack of Rome but the German soldiers were so impressed by the work that they let him finish it. The show also includes a number of the drawings for the project and they outlined what each had been used for and how we can see him working out problems in the composition. They also looked at possible influences for the work. They spent some time discussing some of the theological ideas behind the work in particular “The Immaculate Conception” and the “Woman of the Apocalypse”. I went to the exhibition the following day so look out for the next blog post describing it!

Delightful exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery showcasing their prints and drawings by the 16th century artists Parmigianino. There was a lovely selection of work which showed how Parmigianino worked out ideas for his paintings and frescos on paper as well as including some more finished works. There was also a number of his prints including a beautiful etching of a woman sitting on the ground. I loved this charming finished head of a girl which show real tenderness as well as an almost Daliesque crayfish. I was pleased that I had done an earlier study afternoon on the exhibition as I felt that gave me a better depth of understanding of his technique and how ground breaking his prints were than just a viewing of the show itself would have done. Closes 5 June 2022

Excellent online seminar from the Courtauld Gallery to compliment their exhibition of Parmigianino drawings and prints. Five talks took us through various aspects of Parmigianino’s work on paper from an analysis of the handwriting on the drawings, his use of reversal in images and the drawings in Vienna. Catherine Jenkin’s an independent researcher and Naoko Takahatake from the Getty Research Institute took us though Parmigianino’s innovative print production looking at both his woodcuts and etchings. They speculated that he had learnt his techniques in Rome and discussed how he advanced the use of this relatively new technology. My favourite talk used the baptismal records in Parma to trace the links between artists in the city in the last ten years of Parmigianino’s life. Mary Vaccaro found the artist as godfather to four children of other artists and talked about how this honour implied a close link between people and families. I thought this was an innovative approach and as...