Parmigianino’s painting “Galeazzo Sanvital, Prince Fontanelatto”. The size of the painting is 109 x 81 cm, wood, oil. Already in the early period, Parmigianino showed himself to be an outstanding portrait painter, who can impressively emphasize the aristocratic nobility of his models and envelop them, thanks to the emblematic details of the entourage, with an aura of meaningful secrets.
Such is the portrait of Galeazzo Sanvital, written by the artist in 1524. Despite the military attributes, the picture is permeated with subtle aristocracy and restrained dignity. The face of the young prince, filled with spirituality and nobility, deserves attention with inquisitive and attentive eyes.
The portrait occupies a special place in the work of the Italian master – this is the only genre in which the art of Mannerism retained a certain contact with reality. The portraits of Parmigianino, who, along with Bronzino, was the largest portraitist of the Mannerist direction, are marked by great inconsistency, but represent a very significant aesthetic phenomenon.
Some of them bear a clear imprint of the crisis of the master’s worldview: the image of a person in them is deprived of vivid specificity and fullness, representativeness is usually created not by the heroic significance of the image, but by the magnificence and pomp of accessories. But, on the other hand, the artist has managed to catch in the soul of a contemporary an internal breakdown, confusion, anxiety, which informs a number of his portraits of anxious spirituality, notes of concealed mental pain or deep melancholic reverie.
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