Art UK has updated its cookies policy. By using this website you are agreeing to the use of cookies. To find out more read our updated Use of Cookies policy and our updated Privacy policy.

(b Parma, 11 Jan. 1503; d Casalmaggiore, nr. Parma, 24 Aug. 1540). Italian Mannerist painter, draughtsman, and printmaker; his nickname (the Little Parmesan) comes from his native city, which was also his main place of work. He was precociously gifted, and as early as 1522–3 he painted highly accomplished frescos in two chapels in S. Giovanni Evangelista, Parma; they show his admiration for Correggio, who was working in the same church at this time. The originality and sophistication he displayed from the beginning, particularly his love of unusual spatial effects, is most memorably seen in his Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1524, KH Mus., Vienna), in which Vasari said he looks ‘so beautiful that he seemed an angel rather than a man’.

Text source: The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford University Press)


Do you know someone who would love this resource?
Tell them about it...