A self-portrait drawing of Parmigianino as a youth. He is shown full face, wearing a cap.

The supposition that this is a self-portrait of Parmigianino has not been challenged, for the freshness and immediacy of the likeness, and the frontal pose, are typical of such drawings. It would have been made when the artist was about 20 years old, though he looks younger. It was drawn rapidly and with a minimum of preparation: the artist outlined his jaw and the brim of his hat with a stylus, simply pressing into the surface of the paper, then worked up the shadows with gentle close hatching before fixing a few accents with the point of the chalk. But the effects are carefully considered, for the shadow cast by the broad brim of the hat stops sharply at his eyes, which are enlarged to a disturbing degree. As so often, it is the eyes staring back at themselves in a mirror – and now at the viewer of the drawing – that are the focus of attention. 

Though made around the same time, the drawing is not directly related to Parmigianino's painted Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), one of the most celebrated self-portraits of the Renaissance. In that work the artist re-created on a convex circular panel, shaped by a wood-turner, the appearance of a reflection in a convex mirror. The interior of the painted room is shown with all the attendant distortions, and Parmigianino’s left hand, resting in the foreground of the composition, is greatly (and correctly) enlarged with respect to his face. It is ‘show-off’ painting of the highest order, and accordingly was one of the three paintings presented to Pope Clement VII by the artist when he arrived in Rome in 1524.