last he published, as we have said, in copper-plates and woodengravings, while he was yet in Bologna.
For the church of Santa Maria de’ Servi, this master painted Our Lady with the Divine Child sleeping on her bosom. Beside the Virgin are Angels, one of whom bears in his arms an urn of crystal, within which there is a glittering cross, and on this the eyes of the Madonna are fixed in contemplation. Francesco was not entirely satisfied with that work, and therefore left it unfinished; it has, nevertheless, been highly commended, and is full of the grace and beauty peculiar to his manner.[1]
Our artist meanwhile now began to neglect the frescoes of the Steccata, or at least to proceed in so dilatory a fashion, that all perceived him to have no good will to the work; and this was occasioned by the fact that he had already commenced the study of matters connected with alchemy, which caused him altogether to neglect his painting, since he believed that he should make himself rich much more rapidly by the congelation of mercury, than by his art. No longer did he now employ his hours with those exquisite inventions which he had formerly realized with his pencils and colours, but wasted all his days in the burning of coals and wood, the handling of bottles and other trumpery, varied by the distillation of his own brains in absurdities, over which he would spend much more money in a day, than he could make good in a week, by his labours at the Steccata. Having no other means of life meanwhile, and being yet compelled to live, he gradually found himself getting through the little that he had, and consuming every thing in his furnaces.[2] Nay, what was worse, the members of the
- ↑ This is the work known as the Madonna del collo lungo, (the longnecked Madonna.) It is now in the Pitti Palace. There is a study from the heads of the Angels, which are surprisingly beautiful, in the Barberini Palace in Rome; and the work has been engraved, but not in a very satisfactory manner, by P. Lorenzini. A copy now replaces the original work in Servite Church in Parma.
- ↑ Dolce, Dialogo della Pittura, denies, as do some other writers, that Parmigiano ruined himself by these absurd dreams; but it is to be remarked that Vasari said little of this matter in his first edition, and would appear to have received the further intelligence, given in his second and much amended edition, in Parma, and from the cousin of Parmigiano, Girolamo Mazzola. Della Valle suggests that the furnaces required
