Virgin and Child with a Monk

This panel is only about 27 centimetres tall, a picture meant to be held close in a private room. Behind the Virgin and Child stands a Carthusian monk. The Carthusians were among the strictest orders of the Church, men who lived almost as hermits, each in his own cell, keeping silence for most of the day. The museum leaves it open whether this one is Saint Bruno, who founded the order, or the man who commissioned the picture. One suggestion is that it was made for the head of the Certosa di Pavia, the great Carthusian monastery south of Milan.

The question of the hand is a little more open than the label suggests. The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool owns a red chalk drawing of the same composition in reverse, and gives it to Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli, a painter who married into Parmigianino's family. Munich keeps the panel under Parmigianino's own name and dates it to around 1530.