The Little One of Parma

A finalist of KHM Vienna and Tokapi open call, this AI-collaborative portrait is a personal and symbolical interpretation of the famous “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” by Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, aka Parmigianino. My extensive research about his dramatic life and Renaissance art, as well as some speculative ideas, are meticulously encrypted across this digital canvas. Oil paint became popular in Renaissance and new techniques redefined realism in painting. Interestingly, it was thanks to Jan van Eyck — creator of another famous convex mirror. Parmigianino took it step further, using curved wooden panel imitating a mirror. A few techniques characteristic for Renaissance are chiaroscuro (contrast bringing sense of depth), sfumato (soft transitions), perspective and forthshortening. All of them can be found on this portrait. Parmigianino was obsessed with alchemy, which most likely led to his demise. A dark study lit only by a few candles, filled with unknown utensils, almanacs and spheres, resemble an alchemist’s lab, not a painter’s studio. Next to Parmigianino’s elbow is a rose, an alchemic symbol for the final stage of material transformation (also present in his “Madonna della Rosa”). Visible on the artwork are alchemical manuscripts: “Aurora consurgens” (mid-bottom), folding almanac MS9832 (left corner) and MS446 (mid-right). All were available and studied in artist’s times. As the Asian landscape painting had some influence on Renaissance art, so we find on this canvas an inspiration for a mirror coming from Chinese art. Parmigianino’s hands both point us to an ancient Song dynasty fan painting by Su Hanchen 蘇漢臣, playfully using a mirror as the artwork’s crucial element. Parmigianino was a drawing geek and one of the first painters to engage in etching and engraving, thus an open sketchbook with his drawings, as well as a needle surrounded by wood shavings (bottom-left). Easel in the back-right shows an unknown landscape of Parmigianino - a symbol for his paintings that were lost over the ages. For those who know the way artist requested to be buried like, the top of this easel becomes quite suggestive. Finally, a beam of light, falling on the innocent figure of a mad alchemist, metaphorically vanishing into the darkness of his studio. This was best commented by Giorgio Vasari: „Oh, if only the Lord wished him to continue to paint, and not get carried away with the dream of freezing mercury, for the sake of acquiring riches greater than what nature and the sky have endowed him with! Indeed, in this case, he would become truly unique and incomparable in painting. Whereas he lost time seeking for something he could never find, he disgraced his art and ruined his life and glory.”