The painting represents a Sacred Conversation, in other words, Madonna and Child surrounded by saints and angels.
The sacred characters are gathered on a landscape of gray and blue tones in the background, inspired by Leonardo. In the center you can see the Virgin with her Child, smiling at her son and sitting on a rock and not on a throne, as in tradition. Behind her you can see a spectacular raised cloth, reminiscent of the typical canopy in the Sacred Conversations, and in the distance trees and mountains. On Mary’s sides you can see St. Jerome, doctor of the Church, standing on the left with a lion, an attribute that refers to him as a hermit, and an Angel with features inspired by Raphael, smiling and showing Jesus the Vulgate, the Bible that St. Jerome had translated into Latin to which the scroll on the saint’s hands alludes. On the right is Mary Magdalene, a beautiful young woman with long blond hair, wearing an elegant dress, leaning towards the mother and son. The figure leans almost sensually on the body of the child, holding the little foot in her hand, while Jesus caresses her head. Behind the saint stands infant St. John, Christ’s cousin, holding a jar of ointment, an attribute of Mary Magdalene, or perhaps a jar of myrrh.

The figures are very close to each other, standing around the Virgin and Child, who form the center of the composition. Their looks and gestures reflect realism and spontaneity in a scene of great tenderness and intimate naturalism, which is the base of Correggio’s works.
The painting, also known as The Day, the opposite work of the Adoration of Shepherds of Dresden, also known as The Night, was commissioned to the painter in 1523 by Briseide Colla, wife of Ottaviano Bergonzi. In 1528 the woman placed the painting to her private chapel in the church of Sant’Antonio in Parma. The work was moved to the Cathedral chapter of Parma in 1749. In the 16th century the work was described by Giorgio Vasari as “wonderful and stupendous”, and in the 18th century many private persons tried, in vain, to acquire it. In 1764 Duke Don Filippo of Bourbon finally succeeded. In the Napoleonic era the painting was brought to France, in the Grande Galérie of the renovated Louvre Museum, but it was returned to Parma in 1816 and placed in the museum of Maria Luigia, the origin of Pinacoteca Nazionale, inside a tabernacle where it is still today.

The painting received great admiration, not only from its contemporaries, but even later. In the 18th century, for example, it was admired by German artist Anton Raphael Mengs, while famous English painter Joshua Reynolds, who saw the work during his trip to Parma in the mid-century, described it praising the attitude of the figures, the faces and expressions, which gave him “the greatest enjoyment he has ever had from any painting”.

The life of Antonio Allegri, known as Correggio, was not well documented and little is known about his movements. It is known that he was born in Correggio, a town near Parma, from where he took his name of which the artist is best known and where he probably had his early artistic education with his uncle and cousin. It also known that he visited Mantua, where he perhaps met old Andrea Mantegna at the Gonzaga court, and where he probably saw the famous Camera degli Sposi in Palazzo Ducale and its ceiling painted by Mantegna, characterized by the illusionistic perspective, that will influence Correggio’s representation of space.

In fact, the artist’s first works are influenced by Mantegna also for their greater harshness and rigidity, in the garments for example, compared to his later paintings which were influenced by Leonardo’s works as well, especially by his sfumato effect, and Raphael, whose works Correggio studied during a trip to Rome from whom he learned the soft sweetness of forms that would become a typical feature in his painting.

In 1520 the artist, who had returned to Parma, began the decoration of Camera della Badessa in the monastery of San Paolo. The fresco paintings, commissioned by abbess Giovanna di Piacenza, showed how the artist had assimilated the decorative examples of Raphael in Rome, taking inspiration from Loggia di Psiche, but above all the artist’s ability to represent illusionistic perspective of space in the vault decorated with a fake pergola that opens to the sky, with similar illustionistic effects as in Camera degli Sposi of Mantegna.

The decoration of Camera della Badessa brought Correggio success and important commissions such as the frescoes of the dome of the church of San Giovanni Evangelist, which he made between 1520 and 1524, and of the cathedral of Parma, both characterized by spectacular perspective effects with surprising and daring elements, as well as figures with flowing clothes that move lightly in the air with spectacular spirals.

Correggio was a highly sought-after painter for religious altarpieces, such as the famous Madonna of St. Jerome at the National Gallery of Parma (1528), the Adoration of the Shepherds, made between 1525 and 1530, preserved today at the Gemälde Galerie of Dresden. The artist also dedicated himself to profane themes, such as the two Allegories of Vice and Virtue for the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este from 1531, and the series of lovers of Jupiter (Danae, Leda and the Swan, Jupiter and Io) for her son, Federico II Gonzaga, painted in the thirties of the century.
Correggio died suddenly in his hometown on March 5, 1534.

The construction of Palazzo della Pilotta started in 1583 for the order of the duke of Parma and Piacenza, Ottavio Farnese, who entrusted the task to architect Francesco Paciotto from Urbino. The name Pilotta derives from the game pelota, played by Spanish soldiers in the courtyard of Guazzatoio.

Today, the building holds the museum of archeology, national gallery, Palatine library, Farnese theater, and the Bodonian museum as well as the Accademia Nazionale di Belle Arti, the artistic lyceum of Paolo Toschi, the Department of Cultural Heritage and Performing Arts of the University of Parma.

After the extinction of the Farnese dynasty their collection was moved to Naples by Charles III of Spain in 1734. Pilotta remained without its artistic treasures until the duke Philip of Spain arrived in Parma in 1749. The son of the king of Spain and his wife Louise Elizabeth, the favorite daughter of the king Louis XV of France. At this occasion, Pilotta became a cultural center, a real symbol of the enlightenment and the French politics. Accademia di Belle Arti was founded in 1757 and a new artistic collection was created, from which will originate the Galleria Nazionale. The Palatina library (1769) and archaeological museum (1769) were added to the complex.

During the years of the restoration, under the duchy of Marie Louise of Austria (1816-1847) the cultural institutions of the Pilotta underwent considerable transformations. The halls of representation of the court were rearranged and the façade of the Palazzo was remade between 1833 and 1834, creating its elegant neoclassical character. Th task was entrusted to the architect Nicola Bettoli and the aim was to giver greater dignity to the ducal residence.

During the 1944 bombardments the building was severely damaged and from this point began a series of restoring interventions renovating the interiors, which became suitable to host the Galleria Nazionale, starting from 1991. The collection includes La Scapiliata by Leonardo da Vinci, the Turkish Slave and the Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine by Parmigianino, Correggio’s Madonna of St. Jerome and the Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, Guercino’s Susanna and the Elders and a view by Canaletto.