Metamorphosis of a Masterpiece

A seated Virgin Mary dandles the Christ Child in her lap, shifting Him from one leg to another as the Infant Messiah fitfully fidgets. John the Baptist keeps altering his pose while St. Jerome reads, writes, then nods off into a deep sleep, dreaming of the Virgin dandling the Child on this leg then that, the Infant Messiah fitfully fidgeting, John the Baptist restlessly changing poses… The young painter Francesco Mazzola – known to posterity as “Parmigianino” – tirelessly filled his preparatory sketches with different configurations. By the time he’d settled on the proper composition and work on the commissioned altarpiece had begun, Lutheran Lansquenets unleashed the Sack of Rome in 1527, visiting imperial mayhem upon the Eternal City and sending Parmigianino straight back to Parma after three brilliant but rather unproductive years. Indeed, his Roman period yielded but one masterpiece: his Madonna and Child with Saints, alternately known as The Vision of St. Jerome, the center panel of that commission. After a delicate, decade long restoration, the painting will enjoy pride of place in London at the National Gallery’s bicentennial, together with its preliminary sketches, surrounding it like a wreath of chrysalises.