Saint Barbara

Around 1522, a painter still in his teens was watching an older master at work. Correggio had arrived in Parma two years earlier, and his soft, glowing figures were changing how everyone in the city painted. You can see that lesson here, in the gentle modelling of the young saint. The tower she cradles tells you who she is. Barbara was a Christian girl locked away in a tower by her pagan father, and later killed by him for her faith. It is an early work, and specialists still point to small slips in the drawing of her hands and her pose. Parmigianino was learning in public, on a saint's calm face, how to make paint look like warm skin.