Parmigianino’s “Antea” (Photo courtesy of the Frick Collection.)

In the age of the blockbuster museum show, where people would kill if they could only see The Ancient Gold of the Impressionists, it’s exhilarating to see The Frick Collection mount an exhibit of a single painting. Antea (c. 1531-1534) is by the mannerist painter Parmigianino (1503-1540). He’s the artist famous for The Madonna of the Long Neck — a title every art student loves to say out loud. Antea is a gorgeous portrait of an achingly beautiful young woman, and it hangs at the Frick, on its own wall that was specially built for this show, through April 27th.

On special loan from the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Antea is making her first trip to the U.S. in 20 years. She looks to be about 16 years old (she remains forever this age, of course, since she possesses the secret to eternal youth — get yourself born as a painting). Her perfect oval face, her delicately pressed-together lips, and her rosebud complexion make Nicole Kidman’s features look coarse by comparison. She’s got an improbably huge right shoulder and a gigantic right hand that, by all rights, should make her grotesque. Mannerism’s magic lies in making strange elongations like these elegant and startling rather than ugly.

You don’t have to be a Renaissance scholar to know that Antea’s clothes (a gold satin dress with a fancily embroidered apron) and her jewels (a gold chain and head brooch) indicate that someone with a lot of money takes good care of her. A skinned, furry marten (a weasel-like creature that was doomed, poor thing, to be a hot fashion item of the time) drapes over her shoulder.

For years, scholars have argued over Antea’s identity. Was she the famous 16th-century Roman courtesan by that name? Was she Parmigianino’s mistress? Was she the daughter of Parmigianino’s servant? An unidentified member of an aristocratic family? A noble bride?

The exhibition’s title — Parmigianino’s Antea: A Beautiful Artifice — reveals the answer. Antea, who looks so sensuously real, who gazes out of the picture plane with such boldness, who clearly loves and is loved in return, is not real but rather an utter invention of the artist.

This conclusion, achieved after a beautiful and persuasive argument in a catalog essay written by Christina Neilson, contradicts our direct experience of the painting. Neilson, an Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Frick, who organized this special exhibition (working with the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture), tells us that the very idea of the invented beauty was a Renaissance convention, and that we should not be surprised to realize that Antea never existed in real life.

But we are. Go to the Frick, look at this painting, and then tell yourself that Antea never really walked the earth. Beware the lady. She’s very, very good at pretending to be what she is not.