Exhibition: Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome

The National Gallery celebrates the first public display in a decade, following conservation, of a masterpiece of Italian Mannerism, Parmigianino’s Madonna and Child with Saints, also known as ‘The Vision of Saint Jerome’.

It is the only major altarpiece by Parmigianino in UK collections.

This will be the first exhibition dedicated to the painting since it was presented to the Gallery in 1826, two years after the gallery's foundation. Part of their bicentenary celebrations, this exhibition presents this pre-eminent work afresh to the public, showcasing its place within the development of 16th-century Central Italian painting and the history of the collection.

The Madonna and Child with Saints was undertaken by Parmigianino when he was just 23 years old during his brief period in Rome, where he worked from 1524‒7. It was intended to adorn a chapel in the church of San Salvatore in Lauro belonging to the Caccialupi, a family of noted church officials. Depicting a Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Jerome at her feet, it was an important public commission for the young artist, but it was to be his first and the only one he finished in Rome.

According to Giorgio Vasari, Parmigianino was at work on this very altarpiece in 1527 during the disastrous Sack of Rome. When the imperial troops of Charles V broke into his studio, they were so amazed by what they saw that they allowed him to continue, demanding he make drawings for them in exchange for leaving him unharmed. Parmigianino eventually fled Rome, never to see his greatest achievement to date installed. The painting was hidden away for safekeeping, and only recovered long after the artist’s death when the patron’s heirs transferred it to their family church in Città di Castello.