Girolamo mazzola bedoli biography for kids
The Annunciation
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Title:The Annunciation
Artist:Attributed to Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli (Italian, Viadana ca. 1505–ca. 1570 Parma)
Medium:Oil on wood
Dimensions:33 3/8 x 23 1/8 in. (84.8 x 58.7 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Purchase, Gwynne Andrews Fund, James S. Deely Gift, special funds, and other gifts and bequests, by exchange, 1982
Object Number:1982.319
This picture—evidently an informal study, or modello—is notable on several counts: its nocturnal treatment of a subject conventionally shown as taking place during the day; the technique of painting directly on a rough panel with a minimum of preparation; and the compositional relationship with an altarpiece by Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli, the cousin of Parmigianino (Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, 1503–1540). The altarpiece, now in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples (see fig. 1 above), was commissioned for the church of Santa Maria Annunciata in the town of Viadana, north of Parma (see The Age of Correggio and the Carracci, exh. cat., New York, 1986, p. 70; fig. 2). Bedoli’s altarpiece was acquired for the Farnese collection in 1713 as the work of Parmigianino and was transferred to Naples in 1734. Annunciation to the Virgin, in a Lunette Pen and brown ink and wash, lead white opaque watercolor, over black chalk, on laid paper; incised with stylus and compass. 8 x 13 3/8 inches (204 x 339 mm) Purchased on the Edwin Herzog Fund. Description: Born in Viadana in Lombardy, Bedoli moved to Parma, where he married a cousin of Parmigianino, born Francesco Mazzola. Bedoli’s first recorded commission, which came to him from the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in Parma, is the imposing altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception from 1533, now in the Galleria Nazionale in Parma. It was only after the premature death in 1540 of his famous cousin-in-law that Bedoli assumed the name of Mazzola, presumably because he wished to be seen as Parmigianino’s artistic heir. There is no evidence, however, that he ever received any training from the latter, or that the two ever worked together. Nonetheless, Bedoli’s paintings and drawings reveal him as Parmigianino’s closest follower and, indeed, patrons entrusted him with commissions left unfinished by Parmigianino, such as the one for the church of Santa Maria della Steccata. Numbering about forty sheets, the corpus of Bedoli’s known drawings is relatively small. His work has usually been confused with that of Parmigianino, the present example included. From the time it was first recorded in the Crozat collection until 1964, when Popham convincingly argued the case for an attribution to Bedoli, the drawing was considered “one of the most exquisite pieces from the hand of this artist [i.e., Parmigianino] that one may come across,” to quote the catalogue of the 1775 Mariette sale. It is arguably one of Bedoli’s masterpieces, showing gracefully arranged figures within a perspectival architectural setting with meticulously drawn still-life details, such as the Virgin’s sewing basket placed next to a candlestick in the foreground and her richly engraved lectern. Finely brushed white heightening pick (Italian, ca. 1510–ca. 1569) The Annunciation, ca. 1546 Pen and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white, over black chalk Purchased on the Edwin Herzog Fund, 1999 Before entering Mariette’s collection, this drawing belonged to Pierre Crozat (1665–1740), a wealthy banker who was a close friend and fellow collector. In the catalogue of the Crozat sale, compiled by Mariette himself, the sheet was described as a “capital drawing” by the celebrated Mannerist Parmigianino. Only in the twentieth century have scholars recognized in this work the hand of Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli, a painter whose reputation had been forgotten in Mariette’s time but who was one of Parmigianino’s most talented successors in sixteenth-century Parma. Not on view WAG 1995.238 The drawing appears to be a study in reverse for a small painting (now in Munich Alte Pinakothek and there attributed to Parmigianino) possibly created in 15234-35 for the abbot of the Carthusian monastery in Pavia, Italy. St. Bruno being the Carthusian Order's founder. Like many of Bedoli's works the drawing was once thought to be by Parmiginanino, Bedoli's great mentor and relative by marriage, from whom he took his middle name, and whose style and compositions he closely imitated, as this tender red-chalk study shows. Bedoli particularly favoured the medium of red chalk, employed in this drawing with a light feathery stroke, which deftly increased the drawing's mysterious air. Bedoli was the most popular artist in mid 16th-century Parma, because he was versatile, industrious and reliable. Works like this could be used to evoke an emotional response through the representation of motherhood, domestic life and religion. They also reinforce the traditional role of women in Italian Renaissance society.
A nocturnal Annunciation illuminated by candlelight was something of an innovation in the sixteenth century and depends on no canonical literary source. However, a number of sixteenth-century artists became interested in the painting of nocturnes, foremost among them Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo, who painted an Annunciation for the church of San Domenico in Venice in which the Virgin is shown in her dark bedroom dimly illuminated by a hanging lamp (see Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo, exh. cat., Brescia and Frankfurt, 1990, p. 104, no. I.4). Like Correggio, Giulio Romano, and—later—Jacopo Bassano, Parmigianino, too, was fascinated by candlelit interiors, as seen in his early Circumcision (Detroi Madonna and Child with Saint Bruno in a Doorway