Bardi Altarpiece

In 1521 imperial and papal armies were closing on Parma, and a local family sent their gifted teenage son out of danger to relatives in the nearby town of Viadana. He was about 17. There he painted this altarpiece, the mystic marriage of Saint Catherine, in which the Christ child leans from the Virgin's lap to slip a ring onto the kneeling saint's finger, flanked by the two Saint Johns. For a boy it is astonishingly assured, the figures already turning with the elongated grace that would make Parmigianino famous. The panel later wandered: sold or carried off during a 17th-century war, it came to rest in a village church at Bardi, where it went unrecognized as his work until well into the 20th century.