Portrait of Camilla Gonzaga and Her Three Sons

Parmigianino died in 1540, only 37, his last years a mess. He had been jailed briefly in Parma for failing to deliver a fresco cycle he'd been paid for and kept putting off. This portrait comes right at the end, around 1539, and some scholars think he never finished it himself, that his workshop completed it from his design. It shows Camilla Gonzaga, wife of an imperial general, in a deep scarlet gown with her three young sons gathered around her. She looks off to one side, toward a companion portrait of her husband that was painted as its pair. Arranging a mother with her children this way was, as far as anyone can tell, new in Italian painting.