History
The Parmesan collections were established in Renaissance times by the Farnese family, with Pope Paul III and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese.
In 1734, Charles III of Spain had most of the Farnese Collection moved to Naples. Some were kept thanks to the intervention of Philip, Duke of Parma.
Later, the remaining collection was increased with the addition of Greco-Roman findings, donations, and with the restitution of some of the works that had been taken to Naples, as well as, through new acquisitions under Duke Ferdinand (1758).
During the French occupation of Parma (1803–1814), the works were moved to Paris, returning in 1816. Duchess Marie Louise reordered the collections in the Palazzo della Pilotta and built the hall that now bears her name. She also acquired several noble collections in the duchy to avoid their dispersal.
Agostino Carracci was an Italian painter, printmaker, tapestry designer, and art teacher. He was, together with his brother, Annibale Carracci, and cousin, Ludovico Carracci, one of the founders of the Accademia degli Incamminati in Bologna. Intended to devise alternatives to the Mannerist style favored in the preceding decades, this teaching academy helped propel painters of the School of Bologna to prominence.
Antonio Allegri da Correggio, usually known as just Correggio, was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the High Italian Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the sixteenth century. In his use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, Correggio prefigured the Baroque art of the seventeenth century and the Rococo art of the eighteenth century. He is considered a master of chiaroscuro.
Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, also known as Francesco Mazzola or, more commonly, as Parmigianino, was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, Bologna, and his native city of Parma. His work is characterized by a "refined sensuality" and often elongation of forms and includes Vision of Saint Jerome (1527) and the iconic if somewhat anomalous Madonna with the Long Neck (1534), and he remains the best known artist of the first generation whose whole careers fall into the Mannerist period.
Giovanni Lanfranco was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.
Museo di Capodimonte is an art museum located in the Palace of Capodimonte, a grand Bourbon palazzo in Naples, Italy designed by Giovanni Antonio Medrano. The museum is the prime repository of Neapolitan painting and decorative art, with several important works from other Italian schools of painting, and some important ancient Roman sculptures. It is one of the largest museums in Italy. The museum was inaugurated in 1957.
The Bolognese School of painting, also known as the School of Bologna, flourished between the 16th and 17th centuries in Bologna, which rivalled Florence and Rome as the center of painting in Italy. Its most important representatives include the Carracci family, including Ludovico Carracci and his two cousins, the brothers Agostino and Annibale Carracci. Later, it included other Baroque painters: Domenichino and Lanfranco, active mostly in Rome, eventually Guercino and Guido Reni, and Accademia degli Incamminati in Bologna, which was run by Lodovico Carracci. Certain artistic conventions, which over time became traditionalist, had been developed in Rome during the first decades of the 16th century. As time passed, some artists sought new approaches to their work that no longer reflected only the Roman manner. The Carracci studio sought innovation or invention, seeking new ways to break away from traditional modes of painting while continuing to look for inspiration from their literary contemporaries; the studio formulated a style that was distinguished from the recognized manners of art in their time. This style was seen as both systematic and imitative, borrowing particular motifs from the past Roman schools of art and innovating a modernistic approach.
Bartolomeo Schedoni was an Italian early Baroque painter from Modena.
The Assumption of the Virgin Mary does not appear in the New Testament, but appears in apocryphal literature of the 3rd and 4th centuries, and by 1000 was widely believed in the Western Church, though not made formal Catholic dogma until 1950. It first became a popular subject in Western Christian art in the 12th century, along with other narrative scenes from the Life of the Virgin, and the Coronation of the Virgin. These "Marian" subjects were especially promoted by the Cistercian Order and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.
The Annunciation is the biblical episode of the announcement by the archangel Gabriel to Mary that she would become the mother of Jesus.
The decade of the 1480s in art involved some significant events.
The Galleria Estense is an art gallery in the heart of Modena, centred around the collection of the d’Este family: rulers of Modena, Reggio and Ferrara from 1289 to 1796. Located on the top floor of the Palazzo dei Musei, on the St. Augustine square, the museum showcases a vast array of works ranging from fresco and oil painting to marble, polychrome and terracotta sculpture; musical instruments; numismatics; curios and decorative antiques.
San Giovanni Evangelista is a church in Parma, northern Italy, part of a complex also including a Benedictine convent and the San Giovanni Old pharmacy.
San Paolo is a former convent in central Parma, Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy. It is best known for housing the Camera di San Paolo, decorated by a masterpiece of fresco work (1519) by Correggio.
The Madonna and Child with the Infant John the Baptist is a 1518 oil-on-panel painting by the Italian painter Antonio da Correggio.
La Zingarella is a 49 x 37 cm oil-on-panel painting executed ca. 1516–17 by the Italian Renaissance painter Correggio. It shows the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, although it omits the figure of Saint Joseph. It is now in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples.
Madonna of the Cat is a 1522-1523 oil on wood painting by Giulio Romano, now in the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples.
Madonna and Child with Saints is an oil on canvas painting by Agostino Carracci, from 1585, dated on the lowest step of the Virgin Mary's throne. An example of a sacra conversazione. Long in the Benedictine abbey of San Paolo in Parma, French troops took it to Paris in 1796 and on its return to Italy in 1816 it was moved to the Galleria nazionale di Parma, where it still hangs.
Madonna and Child with Saints is a common theme in Christian art, and is thus the title of a number of works.
Madonna of the Rose is a 1530 oil on panel painting by Parmigianino, now in the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden.
