La Vierge à la rose

Parmigianino began this Madonna around 1529 for a most unlikely owner, the writer Pietro Aretino, famous across Italy for his savage wit and his openly erotic verse. The picture keeps some of that worldliness. The Virgin is soft and sensuous, the naked Christ child sprawled across her lap with his fingers resting on a small globe. But events redirected it. That winter the Emperor Charles V came to Bologna to be crowned by Pope Clement VII, and in the shuffle of gifts and diplomacy the painting was handed to the pope instead. The rose the Madonna holds gives the work its name, a flower long tied in Christian imagery to Mary herself.