Madonna with the Long Neck

Parmigianino created this iconic image of Mannerist elegance between 1534 and 1540. The Virgin Mary holds an unusually large Christ Child on her lap, her neck and fingers impossibly elongated. A crowd of beautiful angels press in from one side while a tiny prophet figure appears in the distance at right, holding a scroll.

Elena Baiardi commissioned the work for her husband's funeral chapel. The contract specified five months for completion, but Parmigianino hadn't finished when he died in 1540. An inscription was added to the painting: "Adverse destiny prevented Francesco Mazzola from Parma from completing this work." The incomplete column behind the prophet and the empty space at right reveal his intentions.

The painting breaks every Renaissance rule of proportion and balance. Parmigianino crowds figures to one side, distorts anatomy, and twists bodies into spiraling poses called figura serpentinata. It spent 150 years at Santa Maria dei Servi in Parma before Ferdinando de' Medici bought it in 1698. The Uffizi has displayed it since 1948.