Francesco Mazzola known as Parmigianino (1503-1540) and Studio

The Emperor Charles V Receiving the World

Italian, 1529-1530
Oil on canvas
68 x 47 inches
(with frame: 85 1/2 x 64 inches, 217.2 x 162.6 cm)

Parmgianino had traveled to Bologna to witness the lengthy summit meeting between Pope Clement VII and Charles V leading to his coronation by the Pope. In what was to be the first in a tradition of allegorical portraits of monarchs, Parmigianino depicted the results of negotiations defining Charles' rule of a global empire resulting from his dynastic inheritance of Austria, Burgundy, the Netherlands and Spain as well as Spanish hegemony in the New World.

The present painting is a new and highly original iconographic representation based on this historic event.  The Emperor is shown in armor as the "sword of Christendom" defending the globe handed him by a child Hercules (a Hapsburg emblem) in the presence of a classical figure bearing laurels (reference to the direct lineage of the title back to imperial Rome). There is a drawing in the Morgan Library by Parmigianino of the subject (see Literature Popham below).

This was not a commissioned portrait and Parmigianino was said by Vasari to have worked up Charles' likeness merely from observing him at public dinners.  This would explain the more lavish attention paid to the depiction of the symbolic elements. According to Vasari, the artist showed the painting first to the Pope, who approved and sent him to show the work to Charles. When the Emperor asked to keep the painting Parmigianino refused claiming it to be unfinished. It was soon purchased by Cardinal Ippolito de Medici, a young member of the Pope's entourage in Bologna and an enthusiastic patron of Parmigianino.

Peter Paul Rubens executed an allegorical portrait of Charles V derived from this painting. It was sold from the Northwick Park Collection, the property of the late Captain E.G. Spencer Churchill M.C., in 1965, and is today in the Residenzgalerie in Salzburg.

Provenance:
Cardinal Ippolito de Medici

Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga

The Dukes of Mantua (until at least 1630)

William Angerstein, London

“Lesser”

Sir Francis & Sir Herbert Cook, Richmond, England (catalog London, 1932, no. 97)

Exhibited:
The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Major Masters of the Renaissance,  catalogue no. 14, 1963

Vassar College Art Gallery, Sixteenth Century Paintings from American Collections, 1964, checklist no. 11

The Oklahoma Museum of Art, Masters of the Portrait, 1979, no. 1

The Age of Correggio and the Carracci,  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987, no.62 (also exhibited at the National Gallery, Washington, and Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna

Kaiser Karl V (1500-1558),  Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn & Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 2000-2001, # 79, p. 161,ils. P.2  color frontispiece, additional commentary on the painting p. 61.

Parmigianino e il manierismo, Galliera Nazionale, Parma & Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 2003, Lucia Fornari Schianchi &

Silvia Ferino-Pagden, #2.2.23  p.226, ils. Color p. 227.

Titien – Le Pouvoir en face, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 2006, catalog # 4 pages 86-89, illustrated (entry by Liliana Leopardi).