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Count the nine figures, including the faint heads at the back of the group at left, and see how the brown wash gives weight to the long cloaks.
Parmigianino drew this group in the style he formed in Rome between 1524 and 1527, when Raphael’s Vatican frescoes were there for him to study. The drawing may have prepared a religious painting, and its figures have been linked to a Marriage of the Virgin and to a group of apostles. The sheet came from the collection of the Earl of Arundel in England and later belonged to the Venetian collector Anton Maria Zanetti, one of many who copied it.
Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, on tan laid paper, laid down on tan laid card · 12.4 × 13.1 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · High Renaissance and Mannerism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Group of Nine Standing Figures
- Artist
- Francesco Mazzola, called Parmigianino Italian, 1503-1540
- Date
- 1524/27
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, on tan laid paper, laid down on tan laid card
- Dimensions
- 12.4 × 13.1 cm (4 15/16 × 5 3/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Margaret Day Blake Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Artist’s life 1503–1540
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.