Parmigianino as Narcissus

SOURCE: Notes in the History of Art, 16. 4 (1997) © Norman E. Land

27 the misshapeneddoorway to the right, and, in the foreground and middle ground, the artist's enlarged right hand and his seemingly undistorted head and shoulders-all echo the bizarre effects that would be produced were the same scene reflected in an acfual convex mirror. Furthermore, as Vasari implies, when we first look at Parmigianino's painting, we are deceived by it.6 If we-the viewers of the panel-have not been forewarned, we believe for an instant that we are looking at a mirror. As Vasari says, Parmigianino has imitated the mirror so precisely that we see no difference between fact and fiction. ln the next moment, however, the illusion is gone, and we realize that we have been duped. The viewer recognizesthat he has been looking at a painting of a mirror in which is reflected not himself, but a beautiful youth identifiable as the artist. Although Vasari addressesseveralimportant features of the style and intention of Parmigianino's Self-Portrait, other aspects of the painting also deserve attention. For example, Vasari seemsto suggest that the artist's interest in the convex mirror was entirely spontaneous. In this regard, we should recall that Parmigianino was not the first artist to depict a mirror. From the early fourteenth century onward, mirrors were often found in ltalian art (and even more often in Netherlandish art). For instance, Giotto painted it as an attribute of Prudence in the Arena Chapel, Padua, Pietro Lorenzetti's Vainglory holds one in the Allegory of Bad Government rn the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena; and Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian included a mirror in at least one of their paintings. Given the fact that mirrors are conrmon in Renaissance art, Parmigianino's interest in the convex barber's glass wrrs surely not due simply to

his desire to imitate its curious reflection. He was also subject to the profound and widespread attraction that reflections had for Renaissanceartists. This fascination with reflection is vividly exemplified in numerousRenaissirncepaintings. For example, in Piero della Francesca's Baptism of Chrisl (National Gallery, London), the river Jordan mirrors the sky and rolling hills above it. Other exarnples of artistic interestin reflectionare to be found in Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, where, for instance, he likened painting to the reflection in a mirror. For him, a painting is like a mirror, and the artist should comparethe reflected image with the one he has depicted.' According to Leonardo,both paintings and mirrors reflect nature, and the more the painted image resembles the reflected image, the better-an idea that Parmigianino seemsto have taken quite literally. T\e Self-Portrait conveysother meanings as well. Becausea mirror reflects what is in front of it, Parmigianino's face, hand, and upper torso as depicted in the panel imply his presence.t Indeed, the artist is the imaginal viewer of the painting, everlastingly presentas he gazesat his image in the mirror. The fiction of the panel,then, is that the artist has placed his left hand close to the mirror and looks into it as if delighted by the reflectionof his appearance. We should notice here the long-standing recognition that self-portraits are painted with the help of mirrors. Pliny the Elder (Natural History 35.147-148), citing Marcus Varro, says that Iaia of Kyzikos, who specializedin portraits of women, used a mirror when painting her own image, and Filippo Villani says that Giotto used a mirror when painting a portrait of himself.e In Parmigianino's painting, however, instead

28 of using a mirror simply as a tool to create a self-portrait, the artist imitates Ins reflection as he looks into it. His painting is not simply a likeness of himself, but a likeness of himself as reflected in a mirror. Parmigianino's panel is the depiction of a reflection, and he is forever situated in front of his own image. Accepting the painting's invitation to imagine the artist in front of this illusionistic mirror and gazng into it, we realize that Parmigianino is like Narcissus, who, as Ovid tells us (Metamorphoses 3.341-510), was enamoredof his own reflection in a pool of water.l0 Parmigianino, like his mythological counterpart,is oblivious to his surroundings,absorbed by his image, fixed by his reflection, frozen forever in front of it. That Parmigianino's panel suggests a link between himself and Narcissus is not surprising, for Alberti and Filarete had identified the mythological figure as a painter.tr Indeed,in Book II of his treatise on painting, Alberti says that Narcissus was the first painter and compares his attempt to embrace his reflection on the surface of the water to the artist's desire to embrace nature. Because Parmigianino appearsto have pausedmomentarily in the act of drawing or painting, his panel might be seen as a visual counterpart to Alberti's notion of the artist as one who simultaneously embraces both himself and nature. Art in this view is not only the imitation of nature,it is also a reflectionof the artist.r2 There is a further parallel betweenOvid's Narcissus and Parmigianino's painting. Narcissusis fooled by his image in the pool of water. He mistakes his reflection for an actual person and initially believesthat the watery image is someone other than himself. As we have suggested,the fiction of Parmigianino'spainting is that of his phys-

ical presencein front of it, which invites us to imagine that the artist looks into it as if it were an actual mirror. In other words, like Narcissus, Parmigianino, or his implied presence,mistakes the depiction of an object for the object itself; he is duped by the panel's illusionism and, therefore, by his own skill as an artist. Ovid says that Narcissus was beautiful and that he fell in love with the beauty of his own image. Parmigianino, too, as we witness in his painting, was an attractive young man. And Vasari explains that he "had an air of great beauty, with a face and aspectfull of grace, in the likenessrather of an angel than of a man, his image on that ball [that is, the Self-Portra.r] had the appearanceof a thing divine."'' According to Vasari, Parmigianino successfully represented his own divine beauty, a beauty of which the artist would certainly have been aware. As he gazesat his reflection in the illusionistic mirror, Parmigianino,like Narcissus, contemplatesthe beauty of his own image. In Vasari's view, Parmigianino's SrU Portrait is a tour de force of illusionistic representation;his painted mirror seemsto be an actual mirror. This emphasison artistic skill is echoedby the painting itself, in which the hand of the artist, the instrument of his skill, occupies a prominent place.ra The painting, however, as suggestedhere, is more than an example of the artist's mastery. In the Self-Portrait, Parmigianino, like the mythical figure of Narcissus, is fascinatedby his reflectionand aware of his own beauty, which Vasari describesas angelic and divine. Moreover, just as Narcissus tried to touch his image in the pool of water, Parmigianino makes a similar gesture toward his reflection, for through the very act of painting he embraceshis own image.

29 We may also see the panel from yet another perspective-that of the rich symbolism of the mirror in Renaissanceart.'' Parmigianino's painting reminds us that personifications of Vanity and Pride (Superbia) usually hold a mirror, which can also symbolize both truth and self-knowledge as it relates to Prudence.Given these conventional meanings of the mirror as symbol, we might assume that Parmigianino's painting playfully signals both an awarenessof his own self-enchantmentand a knowledge of his own vanity, which is like that of Narcissus.'oThe truth of the mirror is not only its convincing imitation of nafure; the mirror's truth is also the artist's self-knowledge,the recognition of his vanity as well as his pride. On the other hand, Parmigianino seems to ignore the conventionalassociationof the mirror and prudence; indeed, subverting convention, the figure in the painting seemsto exult in his reflection and his vanity. Rather than

condemnvanity in his painting, Parmigianino's figure vainly and pridefully indulges his own beauty,grace,and loveliness. If Parmigianinowas narcissistic,he was so not only in the psychological sense of neurosis,but in the moral senseof imprudently loving himself too much, and Vasari's account of the artist's abandonment of his calling for alchemy might have been intendedto suggestas much. In other words, Vasari might have thought Parmigianino to be like the Narcissus of Andrea Alciati's Emblemata (1549, Lyons), in which there appearsan epigram addressed to the mythological figure. The epigram reads: "l\arcissus becauseyou are happy with yourself, you have beenchangedinto a flower that carries your name. It is a flaw and a lack of judgment to love oneself. Such a love has driven many men to blindness, because, abandoning the ancient ways. thev only desire to follow their fantasies."lT

NOTES l. G. Vasari, Le vite de piil eccellenti pittoi scultoi e architettori, ed. R. Bettarini and P. Barocchi, 6 vols. (Florence: 1987),IV, p. 532. All translations are from id., Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. G. du C. de Vere, 2 vols. (t{ew York and Toronto: 1996),II, pp. 932-944: 2. L. Schneider Adarns, Art and Psychoanalysis (New York: 1993), pp.265-266. Adams, however, does not claim that Vasari's anecdotesare literally true. Rather, his anecdotes, she says (p. 64), are "consistent with an artist's work as well as with his psychology." See also id., "Mirrors in Art," P,qychoanalyticInquiry 5 (1985):319-320;R. Brilliant, Portraiture (Cambridge,Mass.: l99l), p. 158, who speaks of the artist's "narcissistic vanity"; and R. Wittkower and M. Wittkower, Born under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists (New York: 1963),pp. 85-87. 3. Vasari-Bettarini,IV, pp. 534-535.

4. For an illustration of this painting, see C. Gould, Parmigianino Qrlew York: 1994), p. 43, frg.

27.

5. I am echoing P. Barolsky, Giotto's Father and the Family of Vosari's Lives (University Park, Pa.: 1992), pp. 83-84, who also suggeststhat Vasari's story about Parmigianino embracing alchemy is a hction. 6. See also S. J. Freedberg, Parmigianino: His lVorks in Painting (rpt., Westport, Com.: 1950), p. 105, who noticesthe trompe l'oeil effect of Parmigianino's painting. 7. Leonardo da Vinci, The Literary lltorks of Leonardo da Vinci, ed. J. P. Richter, 2 vols. (Londo n: 1 9 7 0) , I,p . 3 20 . 8. Cf. Brilliant, p. 158, who writes that Parmigianino's painting "sets up an opposition between his actual but perishable body and its transient reflection, a reflection that not only survives him but pre-

30 servesthe true natureof his beingas an artist." 9. F. Villani , Liber de civitatis Florentiaefamosis civibus(Florence:l8y'.7),p. 36. 10.We should notice that rn Inferno 30.128 Dantecalls water "the minor of Narcissus." I l. L. B. Alberti, On Painting, trans. C. Grayson (Harmondsworth:l99l), p. 61, and A. Averlino, called Il Filarete, Trattato di Architettura, ed. A. M. Finoli andL. Grassi,2 vols.(Milan: 1972),1,p. 260. In 1548, two decades after Parmigianino painted hrs Self-Portrait, the Venetianartist and art theoristP. Pino, Dialogo di Pittura, ed. R. Pallucchini and A. Pallucchini(Venice: 1946),pp. 138139,comparesthe painter,who melts into his art, to Narcissusgau;ngathis reflectionin a pool of water. SeealsoN. Land, "NarcissusPictor," SOURCE16, no.2 (Winter1997):10-15. 12.For the belief that art reflects its creator,see d Florenceau temps A. Chastel,Art et humanisme de Laurent le Magntfiquu(Paris: 1961),pp. 102104,and M. Kemp, "'Ogni dipintori dinpingese': A NeoplatonicEcho in Leonardo'sArt Theory?"in Cultural Aspects of the Renaissance:Essays in Honour of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. C. Clough pp. 3l l-312. (Manchester:1976), 13.Vasari-Bettarini,IV,p. 535. 14.L. SchneiderAdams, A History of Western An,2d ed.(London:1997),p. 306:"The role of the

artist's hand in the artifice [of the Self-Portraitl is thus an integralpart of the pichre's iconography." 15.For the symbolismof the mirror and for fi.rther bibliography,seeG. de Tervarent,Attibuts et swboles dans I'art profane, 1450-1600,2 vols. (Geneva: I 958-1959),II, cols.27l-27 5;H. Schwaz, "The Mirror of the Artist and the Mirror of the Devout: Observationson Some Paintings, Drawings and Prints of the Fifteenth Century," in Studiesin the History of Art Dedicatedto lltilliam E. Suida on His EightiethBitthday (London:1959),pp. 90-105; id., "T'heMirror in Art," Art Quarterly 15 (Spring, 1952):96-118;and R. van Marle, Iconographiede I'Art Profaneau Moyen-Ageet d la Renaissance,2 vols.(The Hague:1932),II, pp. 43 and54-60. See alsoAdams,"Mirrors in Art," 283-324. As far as I know, no one has consideredthe possible symbolillusionisticmirror. ism of Parmigianino's 16.For a discussionof the mirror as a symbolof vanity,seede Tervarent,II, col. 273. For Michelangelo's witty allegoryon the themesof Prudenceand Vanity, seeP. Barolsky, TheFaun in the Garden: Michelangelo and the Poetic Oigins of ltalian Renaissance Art (UniversityPark, Pa.: 1994),pp.

9-r2.

I7.P. M. Daly, ed., Andreas Alciatus, 2: Emblems in Translatfon (Toronto: 1985), emblem 69.