Ritratto di Pier Maria Rossi di San Secondo

By the 1530s a gold background in a portrait was almost a century out of fashion. Painters had spent generations learning to open a window onto real space behind their sitters, and gold leaf belonged to the age of altarpieces. Parmigianino used it here anyway, and it is the only one of his portraits to do so. The sitter is Pier Maria Rossi, count of the small state of San Secondo near Parma, a soldier who hired out his sword to the pope, the emperor, and the king of France in turn to keep his lands his own. The gold flatters him with the aura of an older, grander order. To one side a niche opens onto a shelf of books, a hint that he cultivated letters as well as war.