Portrait of Lorenzo Cybo (1524) is a painting by the Italian late Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 artist Parmigianino

Parmigianino

Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola , also known as Francesco Mazzola or more commonly as Parmigianino or sometimes "Parmigiano", was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, Bologna, and his native city of Parma...

. It is housed in the Statens Museum for Kunst

Statens Museum for Kunst

Statens Museum for Kunst is the Danish national gallery located in Copenhagen....

, Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

.

History

The painting is mentioned by late Renaissance art biographer Giorgio Vasari  as among those that Parmigianino executed during his sojourn in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

. Lorenzo Cybo

Lorenzo Cybo

Lorenzo Cybo Malaspina was an Italian general, who was duke of Ferentillo.Born at Sampierdarena , he was the son of Franceschetto Cybo and Maddalena de' Medici: his grandafather was Lorenzo de' Medici and his uncle Pope Leo X...

 was a captain of the papal guards and a brother of cardinal Innocenzo Cybo

Innocenzo Cybo

Innocenzo Cybo was an Italian cardinal and archbishop.-Family and education:From the Genoese family Cibo or Cybo, in 1488 the Cybo family purchased Florentine citizenship for a considerable sum of money   Innocenzo was born in Florence on 25 August 1491 to Franceschetto Cybo and...

, and at the time was 23/24, as specified in an inscription in the lower part of the painting: "Laurentius Cybo Marchio Massa atque Comes Ferentilli anno M.D.XXIII". The date 1523 is generally considered to be a mistake of the unknown man who added the inscription, since at the time Parmigianino was still in Emilia

Emilia (region of Italy)

Emilia is a historical region of northern Italy which approximately corresponds to the western and north-eastern portions of today’s Emilia-Romagna region...

.

The portrait is known since 1749, when it was part of the collections of cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga

Silvio Valenti Gonzaga

Silvio Valenti Gonzaga was an Italian nobleman and Catholic priest.Gonzaga was born in Mantua. He was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 1738 by Pope Clement XII. On the 15 May 1747 he was given the titular church of San Callisto...

, and is in fact included in a painting depicting his pictures by Giovanni Paolo Pannini

Giovanni Paolo Pannini

Giovanni Paolo Panini or Pannini was a painter and architect, who worked in Rome and is mainly known as one of the vedutisti ....

. The whole collection was sold at Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 in 1763 and in that occasion it was transferred to Denmark.

There are several known copies, including one at the Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, which once belonged to countess Frenfanelli Cybo.