From 18 October 2025, a dossier exhibition will be open to visitors in Room 14 of the National Gallery, placing in dialogue two works preserved in the deposits of the Pilotta Monumental Complex, which provide an opportunity for this unprecedented comparison.
At the Galleria since 1851, the Ritratto di uomo con berretto rosso was attributed to Francesco Mazzola, known as Parmigianino, in the inventory of the Dalla Rosa Prati collection, from which it originated. This attribution was generally accepted by 20th-century critics, who in some cases advanced the hypothesis that it was a self-portrait of the painter, who in the last years of his life appeared rather unkempt. Vasari, in fact, recounts that “continually studying alchemy… he had taken on the air of a half-fool, and with his beard and hair already grown, he had the face of a wild man rather than of the gentleman he was.”
More recently, numerous critical contributions have tended to attribute the Portrait of a Man with a Red Beret to Michelangelo Anselmi, also based on an analysis of the drawing on the back of the work, a reproduction of which is displayed in the exhibition alongside the paintings.