Madonna of the rose

Parmigianino's Madonna of the Rose from around 1529 depicts the Virgin and Child with the young John the Baptist, an intimate sacred conversation distinguished by the rose that gives the work its name — a symbol of the Virgin's purity and of Christ's future Passion. Parmigianino was among the most elegant of the Italian Mannerists, his elongated figures and refined coloring creating an atmosphere of crystalline perfection that distinguished his work from both the High Renaissance grandeur of his predecessors and the emotional extremity of some Mannerist contemporaries. The painting was made in Bologna, where Parmigianino had fled after the Sack of Rome in 1527 interrupted his ambitious fresco program in the Vatican. His characteristic graceful forms and pearly surfaces give the sacred subject an otherworldly beauty that reflects Mannerism's transformation of religious imagery into vehicles for aesthetic contemplation.

The panel merges a traditional Madonna and Child composition with a garden setting populated by carefully observed birds, rendered in the precise draftsmanship and delicate tempera technique that distinguished Pisanello among his contemporaries.