The Frick Collection rarely shakes things up in its permanent galleries. Certain works, such as the paintings in the Fragonard Room, are part of the architecture. The museum’s charter forbids it to make loans, and the Frick’s curators seldom shuffle objects from gallery to gallery, so you can count on your favorite artworks — Bellini’s “St. Francis,” Vermeer’s “Mistress and Maid,” Duccio’s “Temptation,” or Ingres’s “Comtesse,” for instance — always to be there when you need them.

The Frick’s built-in comfort zone of permanence and homey familiarity (many of the artworks feel like occupants of the former residence as much as they do works of art) contributes to the museum’s warmth and charm. In recent years, however, the Frick has secured some stellar loans, which have brought new blood into the household: In 2006, Cimabue’s “The Virgin and Child Enthroned With Two Angels,” on loan from London’s National Gallery, was reunited with Cimabue’s “The Flagellation of Christ”; Cézanne’s superb still life “Bouilloire et Fruits,” lent from a private collection, was on view in the Frick’s North Hall, and the museum’s two large allegorical paintings by Veronese were reunited with three Veroneses from the Met and from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, respectively. And in 2005, the Frick was graced with Raphael’s “La Fornarina,” on loan from the National Gallery of Art at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. Now, “Antea” (c. 1531–34), Parmigianino’s beautiful and mysterious nearly full-length portrait of a young woman, on loan from the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, has taken temporary residence in the Frick’s Oval Gallery.

Many questions regarding “Antea” remain unanswered, the show’s curator, Christina Neilson, reminds us in the wall text. The identity of the woman is unknown. The earliest mention of the painting claims she is Antea, a famous Roman courtesan, and Parmigianino’s mistress. Some scholars believe she was an aristocrat or a bride, or possibly the artist’s model and lover or his daughter or servant. “Antea” is decked out with the attributes — the elaborate, silver-embellished, gold satin dress, the finely embroidered white apron, the rubies, pearls, and gold chains, as well as the marten fur draped over her shoulder — of a well-kept mistress. She may be — as the show’s subtitle, “A Beautiful Artifice,” suggests — an “ideal beauty,” the popular genre of Renaissance female portraiture. In that case, “Antea” is Parmigianino’s own invention exploring the themes of beauty, purity, desire, and sexual awakening, as well as the transformation from childhood to adulthood. One thing is certain, however: “Antea,” whoever she was, is more than compelling enough to merit a special trip to the Frick.

Balthus is the master of the adolescent — the passage, the between. His paintings of girls, somewhere between girl and woman, between dream and waking — even between flora or fauna and human being — explore transformation and gestation (the bittersweet passing of childhood, the rousing of self-awareness, and the budding of desire) with as much depth and tenderness as any artworks I have ever seen. In Balthus’s paintings, the adolescent is a theme for the ages of man, as well as the movement of the seasons — the cool, colorful turning of fall, winter’s hibernation, spring flowering, summer heat.

Parmigianino’s life-size portrait “Antea” explores those same themes. The girl is not, however, like Balthus’s subjects, in the throes of pubescent change. Nearer to 16 years of age, the girl in “Antea” is at the exalted height of young womanhood. Also, “Antea,” though subtly distorted, does not resemble the extremely exaggerated figures in Parmigianino’s other works, such as the artist’s well-known “Madonna of the Long Neck.” And I believe it is a better painting for it.

Immediately apparent in “Antea,” besides the fact that she shines like a pearl, is the tension between her sense of moving forward and of holding back. The girl is both firmly lodged yet nearly falling, if not being forced, forward from the cool, verdant, mossy green ground of the canvas. Cut off just below the knees, the wide architecture of her shins is flattened and pushed up against the baseline of the picture. She is a pyramid, a monument of a woman, but her face is that of a child. She is a jewel being presented (if not flowering or birthed from out of the painting), but she manages to contain herself, to remain inward and distant, as well as surprised. It is as if her beauty, and her own astonishment at its power, is leading — pulling her along with it.

Also apparent in the painting is the discrepancy between one side and the other. In the left side of the picture, Antea’s shoulder is twice as wide as it is on the right. This is also true of her face, the side of her head, and her much longer lips, all of which begin slowly to swell and pull and turn her head to the side. She is facing us but she appears about to turn away. Her enlarged right arm, hand, and shoulder, as well as the enormous, swollen breadth of her right hip, all act equally in the roles of protective barrier and of puffed-up excitement.

Certainly, the girl is interested in engaging with us. She is beautiful and seductive. She holds our gaze with wide, almond, nearly upturned, innocent eyes. Her body is lit from behind or within, as if by an aura. Her gold and silver dress, especially on her left shoulder, glows, rises, and licks like flames. And the marten fur, which cuts her right arm in half — an arabesque that is a continuation of her left arm — acts as if it were the animal within her, leaping forward to seize its prey; it bites, it protects, and it paws suggestively at her sleeve.

But she is clearly conflicted: Her body appears to turn and to open from the back and sides, but her white apron is a classical fluted column. In areas, that column is as diaphanous as rain, but all across her torso, Antea remains a façade — an impenetrable wall. Her left arm jumps back, recoils with a jerk, pulling her body into the green ground; and, although she fingers the gold chain, as well as her breast — possibly an erotic overture — she appears to have reached, at the center of the painting, into the hollow of her chest, making us focus on the location of her heart.

“Antea” remains a mystery. And that mystery may never be solved. But there is no mystery as to why she deserves our close attention — at least for the next few months, while keeping company with the family at the Frick. She may be conflicted, but it is her mysterious confliction that is so seductive — and so well worth unraveling and getting to know.

Until April 27 (1 E. 70th St., between Fifth and Madison avenues, 212-288-0700).