Eloise Donnelly, National Gallery Curatorial Trainee, discusses a masterpiece of portraiture from the Lycett Green collection at York Art Gallery.

Judging from his collection, Lycett Green must have been an avid reader. A surprising number of his paintings feature subjects engrossed in books and letters, sometimes looking up from their material as if suddenly interrupted by the viewer.

One of Lycett Green’s readers was painted by an artist famed for his novel approach to portraiture: Francesco Mazzola, a.k.a. Parmigianino.

Born in 1503 into a family of painters in Parma, Italy, Parmigianino began painting at a very early age and received prestigious commissions when he was still only a teenager.

He was so ambitious that by the time he was 21 he had outgrown Parma, and decided to follow in the footsteps of Michelangelo and Raphael by moving to Rome.

It was there that he acquired his nickname: Parmigianino (‘the little one from Parma’), so perhaps his ambition exceeded his stature.

Without the benefit of websites and social media at his disposal, Parmigianino had to come up with innovative ways of promoting his work and attracting new patrons.

Before leaving for Rome, he painted a series of portraits to bring with him as calling cards: works that displayed his skills as a painter that could he could show off to potential clients and secure lucrative commissions.

This painting was executed just before he travelled to Rome in 1524, and is a model in capturing psychological intensity.

The sitter gazes away from his reading, as if deep in contemplation or meditation. A gloomy, ominous atmosphere seems to permeate the image, the dramatic shadows swallowing up half of his face in darkness.

You’re never quite sure what you’re looking at – is he leaning on a balustrade or on the side of his chair? Is that a curtain in the background, or a painted decoration? – and the inscription on the cover of his book adds further to this sense of the unfathomable, reading ‘In Aeternum et ultra’ or ‘Into eternity and beyond’.

With his dishevelled hair, open shirt and crooked beret he seems to be the image of the tortured artistic genius, and in the past, it was suggested that the sitter may be Parmigianino himself. He did have a reputation for being a bit wild.

The artist and writer Vasari described him as a long-haired, unkempt savage, an eccentric who was obsessed with spells and alchemy. However, there is no real evidence that this is a self-portrait, and the true identity of the sitter, like the painting itself, remains shrouded in mystery.

In the age of camera phone and selfies, this picture may lose something of its radical nature, but Parmigianino’s depiction of the sitter’s psychological state, as well as his appearance, was a brand new development in art, and shows why this picture is such a masterpiece.