Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror

The work is mentioned by Late Renaissance art biographer Giorgio Vasari, who lists it as one of three small-size paintings that the artist brought to Rome with him in 1525. Vasari relays that the self-portrait was created by Parmigianino as an example to showcase his talent to potential customers.[1]

The portrait was donated to pope Clement VII, and later to writer Pietro Aretino, in whose house Vasari himself, then still a child, saw it. It was later acquired by Vicentine sculptor Valerio Belli and, after his death in 1546, by his son Elio. Through the intercession of Andrea Palladio, in 1560 the work went to Venetian sculptor Alessandro Vittoria, who bequeathed it to emperor Rudolf II. It arrived in Prague in 1608, and later it became part of the Habsburg imperial collections in Vienna (1777), although attributed to Correggio.

The painting depicts the young artist (then twenty one) in the middle of a room, distorted by the use of a convex mirror. The hand in the foreground is greatly elongated and distorted by the mirror. The work was painted on a specially-prepared convex panel in order to mimic the curve of the mirror used.

• Self-portrait
• Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery: the portrait is the subject of a long poem in a poetry collection by Ashbery, both the poem and the collection of the same name. The book won all three of the major prizes awarded to collections by American poets.

• Viola, Luisa (2007). Parmigianino. Parma: Grafiche Step.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror by Parmigianino.

• Page at the museum's website (in German)
• Parmigianino's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, video at Smarthistory at Khan Academy