In the portraits of Parmigianino, the crisis of the Renaissance worldview was most clearly expressed. Almost all of his models are similar in part to Pechorin, and in part to Dr. Faust.
All of them were given by nature great talents, they are all wise by experience, and all – as if undermined, worms from the inside. Even the young man, almost a boy, depicted in the Portrait of a Young Man, “looks at us as if he already managed to see and taste too much. The sadness of the heart was probably also characteristic of the artist himself.
Therefore, each portrait of his brush is, to a certain extent, a self-portrait. As for the portraits here, to a greater degree this statement relates to the Portrait of a man with a book “. Portrait of a man” – less autobiographical, “but at the same time no less expressive.
Galeazzo Sanvital, Prince Fontanelato by Francesco Parmigianino 
Portrait d’un homme avec un livre – Francesco Parmigianino 
Portrait of a man by Francesco Parmigianino 
Vision of St. Jerome by Francesco Parmigianino 
Self-portrait in a convex mirror by Francesco Parmigianino 
Portrait d’un homme – Francesco Parmigianino 
Retrato de un hombre con un libro – Francesco Parmigianino 
Cupid planing bow by Francesco Parmigianino