Santa Maria Addolorata

In this church in Bardi, a village in the Apennine hills south-west of Parma, hangs an early work by Parmigianino. He painted it in 1521, at about 17, when his family sent him away from Parma, then threatened by war, to stay with a cousin in Viadana near Mantua. It was made for a church there and shows the mystic marriage of Saint Catherine, who receives a ring from the Christ Child, between Saint John the Evangelist, holding a chalice with snakes, and Saint John the Baptist. The elongated figures and twisting poses of his later work are already visible.

In 1629, during the War of the Mantuan Succession, the panel was taken from Viadana to Parma, and later, in circumstances that are not documented, it reached Bardi. Its author was forgotten until 1860, when members of Parma's Academy of Fine Arts recognised it as a Parmigianino, and scholars argued over the attribution until the 1930s.