Autoritratto in uno specchio convesso

Parmigianino was about twenty one when he painted this, and it was essentially a calling card. He had a woodturner make him a rounded wooden panel that matched the curve of a barber's convex mirror, then painted his own reflection exactly as the mirror bent it. So his face sits calm and clear in the middle while the hand nearest the glass swells up huge in the foreground, and the room curves away behind him. In 1524 he carried it and two other small works to Rome to show what he could do. It worked. The story goes that people were amazed, and the panel eventually passed through a pope and the writer Pietro Aretino before reaching Vienna. The distortion he chose to keep, rather than correct, is what everyone remembered.