Parmigianino (born Jan. 11, 1503, Parma, duchy of Milan [Italy]—died Aug. 24, 1540, Casalmaggiore, Cremona) was an Italian painter who was one of the first artists to develop the elegant and sophisticated version of Mannerist style that became a formative influence on the post-High Renaissance generation.
The story behind Madonna with the Long NeckWith a name like Madonna with the Long Neck, it's no surprise that this painting isn't a typical depiction of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child.
There is no doubt that Correggio was the strongest single influence on Parmigianino’s early development, but Parmigianino probably was never his pupil. The influence is apparent in Parmigianino’s first important work, the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (c. 1521). About 1522–23 he executed two series of frescoes: one series, in two side chapels of S. Giovanni Evangelista, in Parma, was executed contemporaneously with Correggio’s great murals on the dome and pendentives of that church, and the other, representing the Legend of Diana and Actaeon, was executed on the ceiling of a room in the Rocca Sanvitale at Fontanellato just outside Parma. The scheme of the latter decoration recalls Correggio’s work in the Camera di San Paolo in Parma.
After the summer of 1524, Parmigianino moved to Rome, taking with him three specimens of his work to impress the pope, including the famous self-portrait that he had painted on a convex panel from his reflection in a convex mirror. His chief painting done in Rome is the large Vision of St. Jerome (1527). Although this work shows the influence of Michelangelo, it was Raphael’s ideal beauty of form and feature that influenced his entire oeuvre. While at work on the Vision of St. Jerome in 1527, he was interrupted by soldiers of the imperial army taking part in the sack of Rome, and he left for Bologna. There he painted one of his masterpieces, the Madonna with St. Margaret and Other Saints. In 1531 he returned to Parma, where he remained for the rest of his life, the principal works of this last period being the Madonna of the Long Neck (1534) and the frescoes on the vault preceding the apse of Sta. Maria della Steccata. The latter were to have been only part of a much larger scheme of decoration in the church, but Parmigianino was extremely dilatory over their execution, and he was eventually imprisoned for breaking his contract, while the frescoes were contracted to Giulio Romano and Michelangelo Anselmi.
Parmigianino was one of the most remarkable portrait painters of the century outside Venice. Some of his best portraits are in Naples, in the National Museum and Gallery of Capodimonte, including the Gian Galeazzo Sanvitale (1524) and the portrait of a young woman called Antea (c. 1535–37).
The style that he developed was, in its suave attenuations and technical virtuosity, one of the most brilliant and influential manifestations of Mannerism. It was an extreme development of Raphael’s late manner and opposed the naturalistic basis inherent in High Renaissance art.
Parmigianino’s works are distinguished by ambiguity of spatial composition, by distortion and elongation of the human figure, and by the pursuit of what the art historian Giorgio Vasari called “grace”; that is to say, a rhythmical, sensuous beauty beyond the beauty of nature. This last quality of attenuated elegance is evident not only in Parmigianino’s paintings but also in his numerous and sensitive drawings. One of the first Italian artists to practice etching, Parmigianino used the etching needle with the freedom of a pen, usually to reproduce his own drawings, which were in great demand.
What are the characteristics of Renaissance art, and how does it differ from the art of the Middle Ages?
Renaissance art is marked by a gradual shift from the abstract forms of the medieval period to the representational forms of the 15th century. Subjects grew from mostly biblical scenes to include portraits, episodes from Classical religion, and events from contemporary life. Human figures are often rendered in dynamic poses, showing expression, using gesture, and interacting with one another. They are not flat but suggest mass, and they often occupy a realistic landscape, rather than stand against a gold background as some figures do in the art of the Middle Ages. Renaissance art from Northern Europe emphasized precise detail as a means of achieving a realistic work.
When and where did Renaissance art start and end?
Characteristics of Renaissance art, notably naturalism, can be found in 13th-century European art but did not dominate until the 15th century. Scholars have traditionally described the turn of the 16th century as the culmination of the Renaissance, when, primarily in Italy, such artists as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael made not only realistic but complex art. About 1520 the Renaissance gave way to Mannerism, wherein a sense of drama pervaded otherwise realistic art.
How did humanism and religion affect Renaissance art?
Interest in humanism, a philosophy that emphasized the individual and the human capacity for fulfillment through reason, transformed the Renaissance artist from an anonymous craftsman to an individual practicing an intellectual pursuit. Artists introduced new subjects to their work, which reflected the growing emphasis on the individual, including portraits, scenes of contemporary life, and historical narratives. Although Renaissance culture was becoming increasingly secular, religion was still important to daily life, especially in Italy, where the seat of Roman Catholicism was located. A good portion of Renaissance art depicted scenes from the Bible or was commissioned by the church. Emphasis on naturalism, however, placed such figures as Christ and the Madonna not on a magnificent gold background, as in the Middle Ages, but in landscapes from the observable world.
What made Renaissance art revolutionary?
The developments of the Renaissance changed the course of art in ways that continue to resonate today. Interest in humanism transformed the artist from an anonymous craftsman to an individual practicing an intellectual pursuit, enabling several to become the first celebrity artists. A growing mercantile class offered artists new patrons that requested novel subjects, notably portraits and scenes from contemporary life. Moreover, scientific observations and Classical studies contributed to some of the most realistic representations of the human figure in art history. Figures have accurate anatomy, stand naturally through the Classical scheme of contrapposto, and have a sense of mass, an accomplishment made easier by the flexibility of oil paint, a medium that was gaining popularity. They also occupy believable space—an achievement based on the development of linear perspective and atmospheric perspective, illusionistic devices to suggest depth on a two-dimensional surface.
What are some famous Renaissance artworks?
Two of the most famous artworks in history were painted during the Renaissance: the Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19) and the Last Supper (c. 1495–98), both executed by Leonardo da Vinci, which show an interest not only in representing the human figure realistically but also in imbuing it with character through expression, gesture, and posture. Other famous artworks include Michelangelo’s sculpture of David (1501–04) and his paintings for the Sistine Chapel (ceiling, 1508–12; The Last Judgment, 1536–41), in which the artist pushed the accurate representation of human anatomy to challenging extremes with complicated elegant poses. Raphael’s School of Athens (c. 1508–11) celebrates the intellectual by populating a deep hall, skillfully executed using the recently codified linear perspective, with notable Western thinkers. Donatello’s David (early 15th century) recalls Classical sculpture through the use of contrapposto, wherein the figure stands naturally with the weight on one leg. Albrecht Dürer exemplifies the Northern European interest in meticulous detail in his Self-Portrait (1500), while Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) illustrates the Venetian interest in representing soft light and vibrant color.
Renaissance art, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and literature produced during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries in Europe under the combined influences of an increased awareness of nature, a revival of classical learning, and a more individualistic view of humans. Scholars no longer believe that the Renaissance marked an abrupt break with the values of the Middle Ages, as is suggested by the French word renaissance, literally “rebirth.” Rather, historical sources suggest that interest in nature, humanistic learning, and individualism were already present in the late medieval period and became dominant in 15th- and 16th-century Italy concurrently with social and economic changes such as the secularization of daily life, the rise of a rational money-credit economy, and greatly increased social mobility.
Proto-renaissance
Giotto: LamentationLamentation, fresco by Giotto, 1303–05; in the Arena Chapel, Padua, Italy.
In Italy the Renaissance proper was preceded by an important “proto-renaissance” in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, which drew inspiration from Franciscan radicalism. St. Francis had rejected the formal Scholasticism of the prevailing Christian theology and gone out among the poor praising the beauties and spiritual value of nature. His example inspired Italian artists and poets to take pleasure in the world around them. The most famous artist of the proto-renaissance period, Giotto, reveals a new pictorial style that depends on clear, simple structure and great psychological penetration rather than on the flat, linear decorativeness and hierarchical compositions of his predecessors and contemporaries, such as the Florentine painter Cimabue and the Siennese painters Duccio and Simone Martini. The great poet Dante lived at about the same time as Giotto, and his poetry shows a similar concern with inward experience and the subtle shades and variations of human nature. Although his Divine Comedy belongs to the Middle Ages in its plan and ideas, its subjective spirit and power of expression look forward to the Renaissance. Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio also belong to this proto-renaissance period, both through their extensive studies of Latin literature and through their writings in the vernacular. Unfortunately, the terrible plague of 1348 and subsequent civil wars submerged both the revival of humanistic studies and the growing interest in individualism and naturalism revealed in the works of Giotto and Dante. The spirit of the Renaissance did not surface again until the beginning of the 15th century.
Lorenzo Ghiberti: Gates of ParadiseGates of Paradise, gilded bronze doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti, 1425–52; on the east side of the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence.
In 1401 a competition was held at Florence to award the commission for bronze doors to be placed on the Baptistery of San Giovanni, in the Piazza del Duomo. Defeated by the goldsmith and painter Lorenzo Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi and Donatello left for Rome, where they immersed themselves in the study of ancient architecture and sculpture. When they returned to Florence and began to put their knowledge into practice, the rationalized art of the ancient world was reborn. The founder of Renaissance painting was Masaccio. The intellectuality of his conceptions, the monumentality of his compositions, and the high degree of naturalism in his works mark Masaccio as a pivotal figure in Renaissance painting. The succeeding generation of artists—Piero della Francesca, Pollaiuolo, and Andrea del Verrocchio—pressed forward with researches into linear and aerial perspective and anatomy, developing a style of scientific naturalism.
copy of Donatello's St. GeorgeSt. George, copy of a marble statue by Donatello, c. 1415; in a niche of Orsanmichele, Florence. Donatello's original sculpture is now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.
The situation in Florence was uniquely favorable to the arts. The civic pride of Florentines found expression in statues of the patron saints commissioned from Ghiberti and Donatello for niches in the grain-market guildhall known as Orsanmichele, and in the largest dome built since antiquity, placed by Brunelleschi on the Florence cathedral. The cost of construction and decoration of palaces, churches, and monasteries was underwritten by wealthy merchant families.
The Medici
Cosimo de' MediciPortrait of Florentine banker and patron of the arts Cosimo di Medici.
Principal among these were the Medici, who dominated Florence from 1434, when the first pro-Medici government was elected, until 1492, when Lorenzo de Medici died. During their ascendancy the Medici subsidized virtually the entire range of humanistic and artistic activities associated with the Renaissance. Cosimo, made wealthy by his trading profits as the papal banker, was a scholar who founded the Neoplatonic academy and collected an extensive library. He gathered around him the foremost writers and classical scholars of his day, among them Marsilio Ficino, the Neoplatonist who served as the tutor of Lorenzo de Medici, Cosimo’s grandson. Lorenzo became the center of a group of artists, poets, scholars, and musicians who believed in the Neoplatonic ideal of a mystical union with God through the contemplation of beauty. Less naturalistic and more courtly than the prevailing spirit of the first half of the Quattrocento, this aesthetic philosophy was elucidated by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, incarnated in painting by Sandro Botticelli, and expressed in poetry by Lorenzo himself. Lorenzo also collaborated with the organist and choirmaster of the Florence cathedral, Heinrich Isaac, in the composition of lively secularchoral music which anticipated the madrigal, a characteristic form of the High Renaissance.
The Renaissance in Northern Europe
The Adoration of the ShepherdsThe Adoration of the Shepherds, center panel of the Portinari Altarpiece, by Hugo van der Goes, c. 1477–78; in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
The Medici traded in all of the major cities in Europe, and one of the most famous masterpieces of Northern Renaissance art, the Portinari Altarpiece, by Hugo van der Goes (c. 1477–78), was commissioned by their agent, Tommaso Portinari. Instead of being painted with the customary tempera of the period, the work is painted with translucent oil glazes that produce brilliant jewel-like color and a glossy surface. Early Northern Renaissance painters were more concerned with the detailed reproduction of objects and their symbolic meaning than with the study of scientific perspective and anatomy even after these achievements became widely known. On the other hand, central Italian painters began to adopt the oil painting medium soon after the Portinari Altarpiece was brought to Florence in 1483.
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Raphael: Saint MichelSaint Michel (also known as The Small Saint Michaelor Saint Michael Overwhelming the Demon), oil on wood by Raphael, 1503/05; in the Louvre Museum, Paris. 30 × 26 cm.
High Renaissance art, which flourished for about 35 years, from the early 1490s to 1527, when Rome was sacked by imperial troops, revolves around three towering figures: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Each of the three embodies an important aspect of the period: Leonardo was the ultimate Renaissance man, a solitary intellectual to whom no branch of study was foreign; Michelangelo emanated creative power, conceiving vast projects that drew for inspiration on the human body as the ultimate vehicle for emotional expression; Raphael created works that perfectly expressed the classical spirit—harmonious, beautiful, and serene.
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci: The Virgin of the RocksThe Virgin of the Rocks (also called The Virgin, the Child Jesus, Saint John the Baptist, and an Angel), oil on wood (transferred to canvas at later date) by Leonardo da Vinci, 1483–94; in the Louvre, Paris.
Although Leonardo was recognized in his own time as a great artist, his restless researches into anatomy, the nature of flight, and the structure of plant and animal life left him little time to paint. His fame rests mainly on a few completed paintings; among them are the Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19), The Virgin of the Rocks (1483/94), and the unfortunately deteriorated fresco Last Supper (1495–98).
Michelangelo
Michelangelo: The Creation of AdamThe Creation of Adam, detail of the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco by Michelangelo, 1508–12; in Vatican City.
Michelangelo’s early sculpture, such as the Pietà (1498) and the David (1501–04), reveals a breathtaking technical ability in concert with a disposition to bend rules of anatomy and proportion in the service of greater expressive power. Although Michelangelo thought of himself first as a sculptor, his best known work is the giant ceiling fresco of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, Rome. It was completed in four years, from 1508 to 1512, and presents an incredibly complex but philosophically unified composition that fuses traditional Christian theology with Neoplatonic thought.
Raphael
Raphael: School of AthensDetail from School of Athens, fresco by Raphael, 1508–11; in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican.
Raphael’s greatest work, School of Athens (1508–11), was painted in the Vatican at the same time that Michelangelo was working on the Sistine Chapel. In this large fresco Raphael brings together representatives of the Aristotelian and Platonic schools of thought. Instead of the densely packed, turbulent surface of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, Raphael places his groups of calmly conversing philosophers and artists in a vast court with vaults receding into the distance. Raphael was initially influenced by Leonardo, and he incorporated the pyramidal composition and beautifully modeled faces of The Virgin of the Rocks into many of his own paintings of the Madonna. He differed from Leonardo, however, in his prodigious output, his even temperament, and his preference for classical harmony and clarity.
Architecture from the High Renaissance
TempiettoTempietto, designed by Donato Bramante, c. 1502; in the courtyard of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome.
The creator of High Renaissance architecture was Donato Bramante, who came to Rome in 1499 when he was 55. His first Roman masterpiece, the Tempietto (c. 1502) at San Pietro in Montorio, is a centralized dome structure that recalls classical temple architecture. Pope Julius II (reigned 1503–13) chose Bramante to be papal architect, and together they devised a plan to replace the 4th-century Old St. Peter’s with a new church of gigantic dimensions. The project was not completed, however, until long after Bramante’s death.
Humanistic studies continued under the powerful popes of the High Renaissance, Julius II and Leo X (reigned 1513–21), as did the development of polyphonic music. The Sistine Choir, which performed at services when the pope officiated, drew musicians and singers from all of Italy and northern Europe. Among the most famous composers who became members were Josquin des Prez (c. 1450–1521) and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525–94).
Late Renaissance
The Renaissance as a unified historical period ended with the fall of Rome in 1527. The strains between Christian faith and classical humanism led to Mannerism in the latter part of the 16th century. Great works of art animated by the Renaissance spirit, however, continued to be made in northern Italy and in northern Europe.
Seemingly unaffected by the Mannerist crisis, northern Italian painters such as Correggio and Titian continued to celebrate both Venus and the Virgin Mary without apparent conflict. The oil medium, introduced to northern Italy by Antonello da Messina and quickly adopted by Venetian painters who could not use fresco because of the damp climate, seemed particularly adapted to the sanguine, pleasure-loving culture of Venice. A succession of brilliant painters—Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese—developed the lyrical Venetian painting style that combined pagan subject matter, sensuous handling of color and paint surface, and a love of extravagant settings. Closer in spirit to the more intellectual Florentines of the Quattrocento was the German painter Albrecht Dürer, who experimented with optics, studied nature assiduously, and disseminated his powerful synthesis of Renaissance and Northern Gothic styles through the Western world by means of his engravings and woodcuts.
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