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Madonna with the Long Neck
Parmigianino · Renaissance & Mannerism
- Artist
- Parmigianino (Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola) (1503–1540)
- Date
- 1534–1540
- Dimensions
- 216 x 132 cm
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Location
- Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
The Madonna with the Long Neck shows the Virgin Mary seated with the sleeping Christ Child sprawled across her lap, watched by a group of angels. The figures are strangely stretched and elegant.
A closer look
Everything is elongated: Mary's swan-like neck, her long fingers touching her breast, the child's oversized body, the angels' slender legs. The proportions are deliberately unnatural, aiming at refinement and grace rather than realism, the hallmark of the style called Mannerism. The space is puzzling too: on the right, a row of columns stands without a building, and a tiny prophet unrolls a scroll far below. The sleeping child may foreshadow the dead Christ in Mary's lap after the Crucifixion. Parmigianino left the painting unfinished at his death.
History of the painting
The painting stayed unfinished in the Servite church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Parma, for which Elena Baiardi had commissioned it, until 1698, when Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, a passionate collector of altarpieces, acquired it for Florence. It hung in the Palatine Gallery of the Pitti Palace and moved to the Uffizi in 1948.
