Antea by Parmigianino | Louvre Exhibit | Naples in Paris

Who is this woman? Why has she captivated viewers for hundreds of years, even though no one knows her name? And what role did she play in Italy's path from the Renaissance to the Baroque? On a beautiful morning in Paris, we travel to the Louvre to see a presentation of a mysterious portrait by a lesser known Italian artist who arrived in the world after the incredible achievements of the Renaissance. Working in the mannerist style, he innovated away from his predecessor's realism towards something far more theatrical and just so, a style both elongated in body and compressed in dimensions. But there are moments where this achieves something no less intimate than the work of a da Vinci. From June 7th, 2023 to January 8th, 2024, the Louvre is hosting work from the Museo di Capodimonte for an exhibition titled Naples in Paris. The painting from that show that we'll be exploring today is a masterpiece of mannerism, Antea by Parmigianino. If you love art and Paris, like and subscribe for more content. Look at the features of this painting of a woman standing just at the edge of the dark. She is still. It is the viewer that must greet her. Parmigianino gives her life. Look how she idly plays with her jewelry, a sign that she's going to be married, and the ermine seems to bite into her gloved hand. Her true identity is a mystery. The name Antea was only given to the painting more than a century later. There are, however, some clues, not to solve the mystery, but to appreciate it all the more. She wears extravagant attire, yet she is not known in the records. This is a commoner dressed in the finery of the aristocracy and given an ermine as her familiar, a symbol of purity and innocence and wealth. She is not given a shirt to cover her neckline, exposing part of her breast, which could be announcing her pregnancy or fertility. And that glove? A typical gift in a wedding basket. The contradiction between her anonymity and her attire, along with the nuptial imagery, led to the theory that we are seeing a poor woman purchased as a rich man's bride, though there are many interpretations. One is that the young lady is Pargenino's lover. Perhaps he simply wanted an excuse to adorn her in beautiful things and spend time staring at her in his studio. He gives her the padded shoulders, shimmering fabric, and highly detailed apron one might expect of a noble lady. Her hair is braided with ribbons of gold, brought together with a golden clasp complete with a ruby. So perhaps Pargenino enjoyed placing his lover in such auspicious attire, and after all, it was his decision to put her half in shadow, maybe winking at the mystery of the woman's identity. The idea that they were lovers or at least friends makes sense. She shows up again in his work as a background character in the artist's most famous painting, Madonna with the Long Neck, completed a little over a decade after Antea. See in this religious painting how his mannerist impulses lend the name to the painting itself and even stretch out the infant Jesus. Pargenino, alive from 1503 to 1540, was a great painter in his time, active from the age of 21 until his early death. But while many of his achievements were important to the development of Western art, they are little remembered in the popular imagination, overshadowed as they are by the works of Italian masters in the 1400s, what is sometimes nostalgically called the Quattrocento. We can see those earlier influences in Antea, like Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine and Portrait of an Unknown Woman. The latter actually sits in the gallery of the Louvre nearby this work while it visits the museum for the Naples in Paris exhibition. To read more about art history in Paris, visit palmart.guide. To see more videos featuring the stunning art and culture in the City of Lights, remember to like and subscribe. And if there are any paintings in Paris you would like to see receive this treatment, tell us in the comments below. Until then, au revoir!