Italian mannerist Parmigianino's altarpiece is no cosy nativity scene
"It's a cosy tradition at the National Gallery to showcase one of its Christmassy paintings at this time of year," said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. Its 2024 offering, however, "is different". Now back on display after a decade of restoration work, the Italian mannerist Parmigianino's "huge" altarpiece "The Vision of Saint Jerome" (1526-27) is no cosy nativity scene. It's a true oddity. The composition sees Jerome sleeping in the wilderness, as the Virgin and Child materialise above him in the night sky. In the foreground, a loincloth-clad John the Baptist gestures towards the divine vision. Yet instead of following conventional representations, Parmigianino chose to pack the already hallucinatory scene with "flamboyant" gestures, creating a painting that is "wild, quirky" and "subversive".
The work's genesis wasn't short of drama either, said John Evans in the Camden New Journal. Parmigianino (b.1503) was only 23 when he was commissioned to paint the altarpiece, but was already celebrated as "a Raphael reborn". He was living in Rome when he began "The Vision of Saint Jerome", the painting of which was interrupted when "Charles V's mutinous imperial troops brutally sacked the city". Soldiers broke into the artist's studio; but, according to the art historian Giorgio Vasari, they were so impressed by the work in progress that they allowed him "to carry on with it".
When the altarpiece was unveiled in Rome, it must have "turned heads", said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. "There cannot be many depictions of religious events as weird and wacky as this": John the Baptist, "with action hero muscles and a kung fu pose", seems to lean out of the picture into our world as Mary and Jesus float down from the heavens. Saint Jerome, meanwhile, "looks as if he's been hitting the grappa and has fallen over in a hedgerow". The excellent restoration has done nothing to dull the picture's originality, instead giving "a new lease of life" to this "weird, gripping and spectacularly inventive masterpiece".