Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli (parma, 1500 Ca - 1569) Attr., Allegory Of The Immaculate

Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli (Parma, 1500 ca - 1569) attr.

Allegory of the Immaculate

Oil on canvas, cm 99 x 73

Wooden frame in gold, cm 122 x 95

The work in question, set in a splendid golden wood frame, represents the sketch of an altarpiece placed at the National Gallery of Parma, attributed to the Parmesan mannerist artist Girolamo Bedoli called "Mazzola" (Parma, 1500 ca - Parma, 1569), referring to the 16th century. The two canvases, in fact, have the same iconography taken in every detail, that of the Allegory of the Immaculate Conception in the presence of numerous characters inserted in an environment marked by sinuous statues and ancient monuments, This is an element that supports the hypothesis of direct descent between the two paintings.

Born around 1500 in Padua, from a Lombard family, Girolamo Bedoli was the cousin of the famous painter Girolamo Mazzola, better known as "Parmigianino" (Parma, 1503 - Casalmaggiore, 1540), with whom he undertook a journey to Vadiana, in the province of Mantua, in 1521 and with whom he collaborated on several projects, including the apse of the church of Santa Maria della Steccata, in Parma. From the Parmigianino and the Correggio, Bedoli derived some compositional and visual thematic schemes that led him to an abstract formalism, well visible in the canvas presented here: the jam of clouds from which emerges the beam of light that invades the Virgin recalls, in some ways, the fresco depicting the Assumption of the Virgin made by Correggio in the dome of the Cathedral of Parma (1524 - 1530), or the one depicting the episode of the Ascension of Christ among the apostles inside the dome of the Parmense church of San Giovanni Evangelista (1520 - 1524).