This winter Parmigianino's hauntingly beautiful portrait of a young woman known as Antea (c.1531-34) will be on view in the United States for the first time in over twenty years at The Frick Collection. Generously lent by the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, this painting is one of the most important portraits of the entire Italian Renaissance. Like Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (c. 1500-03, Mus√ɬ©e du Louvre, Paris), Parmigianino's Antea is a consummate example of a portrait with compelling psychological presence. The sitter's sta... Read more

This winter Parmigianino’s hauntingly beautiful portrait of a young woman known as Antea (c.1531-34) will be on view in the United States for the first time in over twenty years at The Frick Collection. Generously lent by the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, this painting is one of the most important portraits of the entire Italian Renaissance. Like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (c. 1500-03, Mus√ɬ©e du Louvre, Paris), Parmigianino’s Antea is a consummate example of a portrait with compelling psychological presence. The sitter’s startlingly penetrating gaze and naturalistic presentation suggest we are encountering a real person, yet the identity of this beguiling young woman is unknown and it is uncertain whether she was a real woman at all.

Many questions about the painting remain unanswered. Of these, the most persistent concerns the sitter’s identity. One of the earliest mentions of the painting, dating from the late seventeenth-century, claims she is Antea, the famous Roman courtesan, and Parmigianino’s mistress. Other theories suggest she is the daughter or servant of Parmigianino, a noble bride, or a member of an aristocratic northern Italian family. Her distinctive face is identical to that of an angel in another painting by Parmigianino, his Madonna of the Long Neck (c. 1534-39, Uffizi, Florence), commissioned by a Parmese noblewoman, Elena Baiardi, which has led some scholars to propose that the subject of Parmigianino’s Antea was a member of the Baiardi family. Others have suggested that it is not a representation of a real woman at all, but a painting of an “ideal beauty”. This single-painting presentation will offer an unprecedented opportunity to explore the many proposals put forward regarding the sitter’s identity based on a close analysis of her costume and jewelry and a study of the painting’s provenance, as well as the chance to consider the work within its original social and cultural context.

The fully-illustrated catalog accompanying the exhibition, written by Andrew W. Mellon Fellow Christina Neilson, will offer a thorough assessment of these diverse identifications, concluding that whoever the sitter was, in his Antea Parmigianino succeeded in revolutionizing the genre of female portraiture by creating a woman with whom the viewer would fall in love. The publication will offer also the possibility of a tentative new dating for the Antea based on a close examination of two related drawings, both studies of her left hand. Based on a consideration of the chronology suggested by these drawings, the catalog will suggest a date of c.1530 – c.1535 for the painting, several years earlier than scholars have tended to propose, placing it within Parmigianino’s second period in Parma.