Parmigianino

Francesco Mazzola, called Parmigianino, "the little one from Parma", trained with his painter uncles and was working in Parma churches in his teens. His Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror helped win him a welcome in Rome in 1524; Vasari says soldiers sacking the city in 1527 found him at his easel and spared him. His elongated, elegant figures, as in the unfinished Madonna with the Long Neck, define early Mannerism. He was also among the first Italian painters to make etchings himself.