Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (also known as Francesco Mazzola or, more commonly, as Parmigianino, "the little one from Parma") was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, Bologna, and his native city of Parma.
Background
He was born on anuary, 11, 1503. Parmigianino was the eighth child of Filippo Mazzola and one Donatella Abbati. His father died of the plague two years after Parmigianino's birth, and the children were raised by their uncles, Michele and Pier Ilario, who according to Vasari were modestly talented artists.
Career
He was influenced by the soft and fluid modeling of Correggio and, after a trip to Rome, by Raphael, whose influence can be seen in Jerome (National Gallery, London) and Maddona della Rosa (Dresden Gallery). His style is refined and somewhat artificial, with a decorative linearism and silvery tonality which foreshadow the rococo. Parmigianino returned from Rome to Parma about 1531 and stayed there until his death, Aug. 24, 1540. In Parma his works, which include the frescoes in the Church of the Madonna della Steccata and the mythological scenes representing Diana and Actaeon in the Palazzo Fontanellato, show the slim, elongated proportions, languid grace, and the search for decorative effect typical of the manneristic style then current. His style later developed increasing rigidity and abstraction, and in the Madonna with the Long Neck (Uffizi Gallery, Florence) the aesthetic formula becomes almost neoclassic in the fixed pose, carefully defined contours, and cold aristocratic elegance. His portraits include the Courtesan Antea (Pinacoteca, Naples) and the Self-Portrait (Uffizi Gallery, Florence); as a portrait painter Parmigianino is the northern counterpart of Bronzino.