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The Marriage of the Virgin
Some painters, such as Francesco Xanto Avelli and his assistants, excerpted individual figures from prints after Parmigianino to create entirely new compositions. A witness to the event in The Marriage of the Virgin becomes, in the ceramic plate, a terrified man raising his arms in horror at the tragic deaths of Hero and Leander. The two lovers had lived on opposite sides of the Hellespont (a narrow waterway in northwestern Turkey) and each night Leander would swim across it to visit Hero in her tower. One stormy night he drowned, causing Hero to leap from her tower in despair. Her awkward pose, unconvincing as a falling body, is clearly indebted to that of a kneeling woman in an engraving by the Monogrammist FA. |