_Parmigiano_ (Parmese: 1503-1540). A picture of great interest both for itself and for the circumstances under which it was painted. Parmigiano was painting it at Rome in 1527 when the city was sacked by the army of the Emperor Charles V. under Constable Bourbon. So intent, says Vasari, was our artist on his work that "when his own dwelling was filled with certain of these men, who were Germans, he remained undisturbed by their clamours, and did not move from his place; arriving in the room therefore, and finding him thus employed, they stood confounded at the beauty of the paintings they beheld, and, like good and sensible men as they must have been, they permitted him to continue his occupation."[66] Parmigiano had other narrow escapes in his career, which ultimately came to a bad end, owing, Vasari says, to his forsaking painting for alchemy, "since he believed that he should make himself rich much more rapidly by the congelation of mercury than by his art." Francesco Maria Mazzola was called Parmigiano from Parma, his birthplace. After Correggio settled there, Parmigiano devoted himself to the study and imitation of that master. In 1523 he went to Rome, to study the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo. In 1531 he returned to Parma, and undertook an important commission to paint in one of its churches. He was paid in advance, and when after five years he had not begun the work he was imprisoned for breach of contract. He was released on a promise that he would proceed with the frescoes, but he fled the city, and shortly afterwards died, in his thirty-seventh year. The chequered life of the artist finds a parallel in the varying fortunes of his reputation as an artist. He was an imitator both of Correggio and of Michael Angelo--here, for instance, the head of the infant Christ recalls the former master, the figures of St. Jerome and St. John recall the latter; and in his own day was held to have imitated them successfully, whilst Vasari adds that "the spirit of Raphael was said to have passed into Parmigiano." Of one of his works Reynolds, two hundred years later, expressed himself "at a loss which to admire most, the correctness of drawing or grandeur of conception." But the fashion in art has changed since Reynolds's day, and modern critics have found Parmigiano's work "incongruous," "insipid," and "affected." This difference of opinion is well exemplified in the case of this picture. Vasari calls it "singularly beautiful," and its subsequent popularity is attested by the number of copies of it extant (visitors on Students' Days will still often see copyists at work on it). But other critics have attributed its fame "more to its defects