The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (357 page)

 
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Paris, School of
(École de Paris)
.

A term that originally applied to a number of artists of non-French origin, predominantly of Jewish background, who in the years immediately after the First World War lived in Paris and painted in figurative styles that might loosely be called poetic
Expressionism
, forming the most distinctive strand in French painting between
Cubism
and
Surrealism
.
Chagall
(Russian),
Foujita
(Japanese),
Modigliani
(Italian),
Pascin
(Bulgarian), and
Soutine
(Lithuanian) are among the most famous artists embraced by the term. However, particularly outside France, the meaning of the term was soon broadened to include all foreign artists who had settled in Paris since the beginning of the century (van
Dongen
,
Gris
,
Picasso
, for example), and then it expanded still further to cover virtually all progressive art in the 20th cent. that had its focus in Paris. In this broadest sense, the term reflects the intense concentration of artistic activity, supported by critics, dealers, and connoisseurs, that made Paris the world centre of advanced art during the first 40 years of the 20th cent. After the Second World War, New York replaced Paris as the world capital of avant-garde art.
In the context of manuscript
illumination
, the term ‘School of Paris’ is applied to the manuscript illuminators who in the 13th cent. made Paris the leading centre of book illustration in Europe.

 
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(
c.
1330–99).
German architect and sculptor, the most famous member of a dynasty of masons active in the 14th cent. and early 15th cent. In 1353 he was appointed architect of Prague Cathedral and much of the present structure was designed by him. He also built the celebrated Charles Bridge over the River Vltava in Prague. As a sculptor he is best known for a series of portrait busts in the triforium of Prague Cathedral, including a self-portrait and one of the emperor Charles IV.

 
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(1503–40).
Italian
Mannerist
painter and etcher, born in Parma, from which he takes his nickname. He was a precocious artist, and as early as 1522–3 painted accomplished frescos in two chapels in S. Giovanni Evangelista , Parma, showing his admiration for
Correggio
, who had worked in the same church a year or two before. The originality and sophistication he displayed from the beginning, particularly his love of unusual spatial effects, is, however, most memorably seen in his celebrated
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
(Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1524), in which
Vasari
said he looks ‘so beautiful that he seemed an angel rather than a man’. In 1524 Parmigianino moved to Rome, possibly via Florence, and his work became both grander and more graceful under the influence of
Raphael
and
Michelangelo
.
The Vision of St Jerome
(NG, London, 1526–7) is his most important work of this time, showing the disturbing emotional intensity he created with his elongated forms, disjointed sense of space, chill lighting, and lascivious atmosphere. Parmigianino left Rome after it was sacked by German troops in 1527 and moved to Bologna. In 1531 he returned to Parma and contracted to paint frescos in Sta Maria della Steccata. He failed to complete the work, however, and was eventually imprisoned for breach of contract. Vasari says he neglected the work because he was infatuated with alchemy—‘he allowed his beard to grow long and disordered…he neglected himself and grew melancholy and eccentric.’ His later paintings show no falling off in his powers, however, and his work reaches its apotheosis in his celebrated
Madonna of the Long Neck
(Uffizi, Florence,
c.
1535). The forms of the figures are extraordinarily elongated and tapering and the painting has a refinement and grace that place it among the archetypal works of Mannerism. Parmigianino's range extended beyond religious works. He painted a highly erotic
Cupid Carving his Bow
(Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1535), and was one of the subtlest portraitists of his age (two superb examples are in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples). The landscape backgrounds to his religious works have a mysterious and visionary quality that influenced Niccolò dell'
Abbate
and through him French art (see
FONTAINEBLEAU, SCHOOL OF
). Parmigianino , whose draughtsmanship was exquisite, also made designs for engravings and
chiaroscuro
woodcuts and seems to have been the first Italian artist to produce original etchings from his own designs.

 
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Parrhasius
.

Greek painter from Ephesus, active in the later 5th cent. BC. He is said to have been particularly skilful in the use of contour and in depicting character through facial expression, and his mastery of illusionism is recorded in one of
Pliny's
most famous anecdotes. It concerns a contest Parrhasius had with
Zeuxis
, who painted some grapes so naturalistically that birds came to peck at them. Victory seeming to be his, he called on Parrhasius to draw back the curtain concealing his picture, but this turned out to be a painted curtain. Zeuxis conceded the contest; he had deceived the birds, but Parrhasius had deceived him.

 
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