Madonna della Scodella

By 1528 Correggio had just finished the dizzying dome of Parma's cathedral, where he painted the Virgin spiralling up into a sky full of tumbling angels. You can feel that same habit here, in the little swirl of angels overhead. The commission itself came out of a will. A Parma man named Cristoforo Bondini, dying in 1524, left 15 lire for an altarpiece to Saint Joseph, which is why Joseph is busy at the left, reaching up into a date palm. The scene comes from an old apocryphal gospel: on the road back from Egypt the Holy Family rests, the tree bends down to offer its fruit, and Mary dips a bowl into a spring that has appeared for the thirsty child. That bowl gave the picture its everyday nickname, the Madonna of the Bowl. It was the last altarpiece Correggio painted for a Parma church.