Attributed to Parmigianino
Mannerism
The story
Attributed to Parmigianino is the heading for a small portrait of a young man in the Louvre, painted on wood, and the museum itself writes a question mark after the name. The same record offers a second candidate, Correggio, with a question mark of its own.
The two candidates were neighbours in time and place. Around 1520 Correggio was the leading painter in Parma, frescoing the domes of the city's churches. The young Francesco Mazzola, later called Parmigianino after his home town, worked in the same buildings, painting side chapels in San Giovanni Evangelista while Correggio covered its dome. A portrait made in that circle and in those years can reasonably be given to either man, and with no signature and no document the question stays open.
Parmigianino's own life and his undisputed works are on his own page.
