and the "talons" gripping that baby's hand and thought...hmmm, here is one exceptional example of the art form CTyankee isn't normally too thrilled by. And I just learned about a year ago, right here, why she's lukewarm on most Mannerist work (which pretty much defines it) and that one of my all-time favorite paintings was done by one. I knew nothing whatsoever about Mannerists until I went off googling my dear El Greco, after CTyankee nudged me over that creepy cliff.
On the beauty in the Parmigianino, I right away thought her neck seemed a tad too long, along with weird bony fingers...also wondered if that might be a Mannerist so I googled "classical mannerist painting woman with breastplate" and Pallas Athene popped up immediately, the second hit.
I had just come back to type up my answer last night, right when you pegged it 
and was going to include this:
http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/microsites/theartofitaly/object.asp?object=405765&row=7&detail=about
and this, a detail you can click on with magnification where you can actually see that the cameo has "Athene" written on it:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva_(Parmigianino)
(I don't know why I can't get this "dettaglio" link to post correctly, if I paste the direct link to the "detail" page it shows up with a stupid tongue smiley in it (because of a colon and capital P) and the main untranslated Italian page is showing as an incomplete link, so just copy the whole link into a new window, scroll down to the second pic (dettaglio) and go take a close-up peek at this gal's armor.)
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