READINGS IN

KTALKAN
MANNJERK§M

Edited by Liana De Girolami Cheney

with a Foreword by Craig Hugh Smyth
Readings in Italian Mannerism
American University Studies

Series XX
Fine Arts

Vol. 24

PETER LANG
New York • Washington, D.C./Baltimore
Bern • Frankfurt am Main • Berlin • Vienna • Paris
 Readings in
Italian Mannerism

Liana De Girolami Cheney, Editor

with a Foreword by Craig Hugh Smyth

PETER LANG
New York • Washington, D.C./Baltimore
Bern • Frankfurt am Main • Berlin • Vienna • Paris
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Readings in Italian mannerism/ Liana De Girolami Cheney, editor.
p. em.~ (American university studies, XX, Fine arts; v. 24)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Mannerism (Art)~ltaly. 2. Art, Italian. I. Cheney, Liana. II. Series:
American university studies. Series XX, Fine arts; vol. 24.
N6915.5.M3R43 709'.45'0903I~dc21 96-48734
ISBN 0-8204-24~B-8 (hardcover)
ISBN-0-8204-7063-5 (paperback)
ISSN 0890-421X
ISBN 978-1-4539-1013-9 (eBook)

Die Deutsche Bibliothek-CIP-Einheitsaufnahme

Readings in Italian mannerism/
Liana De Girolami Cheney, editor. -New York; Washington, D.C./
Baltimore; Bern; Frankfurt am Main; Berlin; Vienna; Paris: Lang.
(American university studies: Ser. 20, Fine arts; Vol. 24)
ISBN 0-8204-2483-8
NE: Cheney. Liana De Girolami [Hrsg.]; American university studies/ 20

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 DEDICATION

In memory of my friend and colleague

Iris Hofmeister Cheney

(1929-1994)
This page intentionally left blank
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The publication of the included essays in this book was made

possible thanks to the permissions of the listed publishers with
their respective essays.

Giorgio Vasari, "Preface to the Third Part," in The Lives of the Most
Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston Du C. de
Vere, intro Kenneth Clark, 3 vols., New York: Harry N. Abrams,
Inc., 1979, II, 771-775. (Translation of the 1568 edition of Le vite
de' piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti.)

Walter F. Friedlaender, "The Anticlassical Style," in Mannerism

and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting, intro Donald Posner, 2nd
ed. New York: Schocken, 1965, pp. 3-43. (Translation of the
original, "Die Entstehung des antiklassichen Stiles in der
italienischen Malerei urn 1520," Repertorium filr Kunstwissenschaft,
46 (1925), pp. 49-86.

Max Dvofak, "El Greco and Mannerism," trans. John Coolidge,

Magazine of Art 46 (1953), pp. 14-23. (Shorter version of "uber
Greco und den Manierismus," Kunstgeschichte als Geisteschichte,
Munich: Piper, 1928.)

Craig Hugh Smyth, "Mannerism and Maniera," in Studies in

Western Art: Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the
History of Art, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963, pp.
174-99. (Reprinted with notes in Mannerism and Maniera, Locust
Valley, New York: J.J. Augustin, 1963.)

Ernst Hans Gombrich, "The Historiographic Background of the

Concept of Mannerism," in Studies in Western Art: Acts of the
Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art, Princeton:
viii

Princeton University Press, 1963, pp. 163-173. (Reprinted in

Norm and Form, Studies in the Art of the Renaissance t London and
New York: Phaidon, 1966 reprinted. 1978, pp. 99-106.)

John Shearman, "Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal/' in Studies in

Western Art: Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the
History of Art, Princeton University Press, 1963, pp. 200-21.
(Reprinted in Renaissance Art, ed. Creighton Gilbert, New York:
Harper and Row, 1970, pp. 181-221.)

Sydney Joseph Freedberg, "Observations on the Painting of the

Maniera/' Art Bulletin 47 (1965), pp. 187-97.

Henri Zerner, "Observations on the Use of the Concept of

Mannerism/' in The Meaning of Mannerism, eds. Franklin W.
Robinson and Stephen G. Nichols, Jr., Hanover, New Hampshire:
University Press of New England, 1972, pp. 105-21.

David Summers, "Maniera and Movement: The Figura

Serpentinata/' Art Quarterly 35 (1972), pp. 269-301.

Malcolm Campbell, "Mannerism, Italian Style," in Essays on

Mannerism in Art and Music. Papers Read at the West Chester State
College Symposium on Interdisciplinary Studies, November 18, 1978,
eds. Sterling E. Murray, Ruth Irwin Weidner, West Chester,
Pennsylvania: West Chester State College, 1980, pp. 1-33.

The editor, contributors, and publishers wish to thank the

galleries, libraries, museums, private collectors, and publishing
presses for permitting the reproduction in black-and-white of
architectural edifices, drawings, paintings, prints, sculptures, and
other pertinent materials from their collections herewith
reproduced. Photographs and permissions have been supplied by
 ix

the generosity and assistance of Art Resource in New York, in

particular by the efforts of Daisy Hu, as well as by the collections,
galleries, and museums listed in each illustration whose courtesy is
gratefully acknowledged.
My gratitude is extended to the Healey Grant Foundation and
the University of Massachusetts Lowell for their support of my
research. The assistance of Nancy Desmond, Research
Foundation of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, was
invaluable in the preparation of the manuscript. The support of
the Peter Lang's staff is as well recognized and appreciated.
Lastly, I wish to thank my students, in particular, Elizabeth
Donnelly, Deborah Griffin, Dian Jazynka, Linnea Olson, Susan
Poinatowski, Sandra Rei, Karen Spinelli, and Virginia Robson,
who continue to teach me to probe on the beauty of Italian
Mannerism.
This page intentionally left blank
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ....................................................... xiii

FOREWORD
Craig Hugh Smyth ........................................................ xxiii

PREFACE
Liana De Girolami Cheney ............................................ xxv

INTRODUCTION - STYLISTIC PROBLEMS IN

MANNERISM AND MANIERA
Liana De Girolami Cheney ...................................................... I

VASARI'S POSITION AS AN EXPONENT OF THE

MANIERA STYLE
Liana De Girolami Cheney ...................................................... 9

PREFACE TO THE THIRD PART

Giorgio Vasari ....................................................................... 27

MANIERA AS AN AESTHETIC IDEAL

John Shearman....................................................................... 35

MANNERISM AND MANIERA

Craig Hugh Smyth ................................................................. 69

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PAINTING OF THE

MAN IERA
Sydney J. Freedberg ............................................................. ll3
xii

MANNERISM AND ANTI-MANNERISM IN ITALIAN

PAINTING
Walter F. Friedlaender .................................................. 143

EL GRECO AND MANNERISM

Max Dvorak .................................................................... 193

MANNERISM: THE HISTORIOGRAPHIC

BACKGROUND
Ernst Hans Gombrich .................................................... 213

OBSERVATIONS ON THE USE OF THE CONCEPT

OF MANNERISM
Henri Zerner ................................................................... 227

MANNERISM, ITALIAN STYLE

Malcom Campbell. ......................................................... 247

MANIERA AND MOVEMENT: THE FIGURA

SERPENTINATA
David Summers .............................................................. 273

MANNERIST ART: SURVIVAL AND

COLLECTION
Iris Hofmeister Cheney ................................................. 315

BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................... 323

INDEX ......................................................................................... 337

 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover Giorgio Vasari, Self Portrait, 1568. Woodcut.

Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei piii eccellenti pittori,
scultori ed architettori.
(Photo: Author)

Giorgio Vasari's Position as an Exponent of the

Maniera Style

Fig. 1 }acopo Pontorrno, Descent from the Cross, 1525.

Florence, Santa Felicita, Capponi Chapel .................... 20
Fig. 2 Rosso Fiorentino, Putto Playing the Lute, c.1525.
Florence, U ffizi... ........................................................... 20
Fig. 3 Parrnigianino, Madonna of the Rose, 1530-35.
Dresden, Gemaeldegalerie ............................................. 21
Fig. 4 Parmigianino, Amor, 1535-40. Vienna,
Kunsthistorisches Muse urn ........................................... 21
Fig. 5 Agnolo Bronzino, Eleonora of Toledo Chapel, 1540.
Florence, Palazzo Vecchio ............................................ 22
Fig. 6 Francesco Salviati, Sala dell' Udienza, 1543-45.
Florence, Palazzo Vecchio ............................................ 22
Fig. 7 Giorgio Vasari, Sala dei Cento Giorni, 1546. Rome,
Palazzo della Cancelleria ............................................. 23
Fig. 8 Perino del Vaga, Sala Paolina, 1545. Rome, Castel
Sant' Angelo ................................................................... 23
Fig. 9 }acopino del Conte (after a design by Perino del
Vaga ?), Preaching of the Baptist, 1538-40.
Rome, Oratory of San Giovanni Decollato ................... 24
xiv

Fig. 10 Giorgio Vasari, Allegory of the Immaculate

Conception, 1540. Florence, Church of Santissimi
Apostoli ........................................................................ 24
Fig. 11 Giorgio Vasari, The Supper of St. Gregory, 1539.
Bologna, Pinacoteca ...................................................... 25

Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal

Fig. 1 Michelangelo, Nude, 1508-12. Rome, Vatican,

Sistine Chapel ............................................................... 59
Fig. 2 Michelangelo, Flagellation, c.1515. London, British
Museum ......................................................................... 59
Fig. 3 Raphael, St. Michael, 1517. Paris, Musee du Louvre ... 60
Fig. 4 Raphael, St. Cecilia, 1514. Bologna, Pinacoteca ......... 60
Fig. 5 Parmigianino, Drawing after Raphael's Palazzo
Branconio dell' Aquila, c.1522. Florence, U ffizi... ....... 61
Fig. 6 After Polidoro da Caravaggio, Facade Decoration,
c.1525. Rome, Palazzo Milesi.. .................................... 61
Fig. 7 After Perino del Vaga, Massacre of the Ten Thousand,
c.1535. Cambridge, Harvard University, Fogg Art
Museum ......................................................................... 62
Fig. 8 Jacopo Pontormo, Massacre of the Ten Thousand,
c.1529. Hamburg, Kunsthalle ....................................... 62
Fig. 9 Rosso Fiorentino, Dead Christ, 1525. Boston,
Museum of Fine Arts ..................................................... 63
Fig. 10 Rosso Fiorentino, Angel (detail of Dead Christ),
1525. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts ............................ 63
Fig. 11 Michelangelo, Nude (detail), 1508-12. Rome, Vatican,
Sistine Chapel ............................................................... 64
Fig. 12 Rosso Fiorentino, Head of Christ (detail of Dead
Christ), 1525. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts ............... 64
 XV

Fig. 13 Rosso Fiorentino, Head of Christ (detail of

Deposition), 1521. Volterra, Pinacoteca Comunale ...... 65
Fig. 14 Raphael, Head of Saint Michael (detail), 1517. Paris,
Musee du Louvre ........................................................... 65
Fig. 15 Parmigianino, Head of Madonna (detail of Vision
of St. Jerome), 1526. London, National Gallery ........... 66
Fig. 16 Michelangelo, Teste Divine, 1524-26. Florence,
Uffizi ............................................................................. 66
Fig. 17 Benvenuto Cellini, Base of the Perseus, 1545-54.
Florence, Piazza della Signoria ..................................... 6 7
Fig. 18 Francesco Salviati, Peace (detail), 1543-45.
Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Sala dell' Udienza ............. 67

Mannerism and Mauiera

Fig. 1 Jacopo Pontormo, Christ Before Pilate, 1523.

Florence, Certosa del Galluzzo ..................................... 9 8
Fig. 2 Agnolo Bronzino, Martyrdom of St. Lawrence,
1565-69. Florence, San Lorenzo .................................... 98
Fig. 3 Giorgio Vasari, Immaculate Conception, 1540.
Florence, Santissimi Apostoli ....................................... 99
Fig. 4 Alexandro Allori, Descent of Christ into Limbo.
c.1595. Florence, San Marco ........................................ 99
Fig. 5 Agnolo Bronzino, John the Baptist, c.1540-45.
Rome, Galleria Borghese .............................................. 1 00
Fig. 6 Giorgio Vasari, Pope Paul III Receives the Homage
of the Nations, 1546. Rome, Palazzo della
Cancelleria, Sala dei Cento Giomi .............................. 100
Fig. 7 Federigo Zuccaro, Flagellation of Christ, 1573.
Rome, Santa Lucia del Gonfalone ............................... 1 01
xvi

Fig. 8 Francesco Salviati, Deposition, c.1547. Florence,

Museo di Santa Croce ................................................. 101
Fig. 9 Battle Sarcophagus (detail), Roman, 2nd to
4th century. Rome, Galleria Borghese ........................ 102
Fig. 10 Vasari School, Study for figures of the Three
Graces, c.1585-89, in preparation for the marriage
of Francesco de' Medici. Florence, Uffizi .................. 102
Fig. 11 Battista Naldini, Miracle of the Manna, c.1575-80.
Florence, Uffizi, no. 2785F .......................................... 103
Fig. 12 Alessandro Allori, Birth of the Virgin, c.1602.
Florence, Santissima Annunziata ............................... 103
Fig. 13 Amazonomachy with Achilles and Penthesilia
Sarcophagus, Roman, 2nd to 4th century. Rome.
Villa Pamfili ................................................................ 104
Fig. 14 Battle Sarcophagus, Roman, 2nd to 4th century.
Rome, Capitoline Museum .......................................... 104
Fig. 15 Gigantomachy Sarcophagus, Roman, 2nd to
4th century. Rome, Vatican Museum ......................... 105
Fig. 16 Season Sarcophagus (right side), Roman, 2nd to
4th century. New York, The Metropolitan Museum
of Art. .......................................................................... 105
Fig. 17 Prometheus with the Gods Sarcophagus, Roman,
2nd to 4th century. Naples, National Museum ......... 106
Fig. 18 Giorgio Vasari, Siege of Pisa, 1565. Florence,
Palazzo Vecchio, Sala dei Cinquecento ...................... 106
Fig. 19 Agnolo Bronzino, Stigmatization of St. Francis,
1540. Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Eleanora of
Toledo Chapel.. ........................................................... 107
Fig. 20 Agnolo Bronzino, St. Michael, 1540. Florence,
Palazzo Vecchio, Eleanora of Toledo Chapel.. .......... 107
 xvii

Fig. 21 Agnolo Bronzino, Allegorical Figure, 1530-32.

Pesaro, Villa Irnperiale ................................................ 108
Fig. 22 Agnolo Bronzino, Allegorical Figure, 1530-32.
Pesaro, Villa lmperiale ................................................ 108
Fig. 23 Giorgio Vasari, Immaculate Conception, 1540.
Florence, Uffizi, no. 1181E ......................................... 109
Fig. 24 Giorgio Vasari, Immaculate Conception, 1540.
Florence, Uffizi, no. 1183E ......................................... 109
Fig. 25 Giorgio Vasari, Deposition, 1540. Camaldoli,
Arcicenobio ................................................................. 11 0
Fig. 26 Giorgio Vasari, Lorenzo the Magnificent and the
Ambassadors, 1555-60. Florence, Uffizi,
no. 1185E .................................................................... 110
Fig. 27 Battista Naldini, Adoration of the Child,
c.1575-80. Florence, Uffizi, no. 705F ........................ 111
Fig. 28 Battista Naldini, Presentation of the Child, 1577.
Florence, Uffizi, no. 9011.. .......................................... 111
Fig. 29 Craig Hugh Smyth's sampling of poses and
gestures characteristic of maniera ................................ 112

Observations on the Painting of the Maniera

Fig. 1 Andrea del Sarto, Borgherini Holy Family, c.1515

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art ................... 136
Fig. 2 Agnolo Bronzino, Holy Family, 1550. Vienna,
Kunsthistoriches Museum ........................................... 13 6
Fig. 3 Jacopino del Conte (on a design by Perino del
Vaga?), Preaching of the Baptist, 1538-40.
Rome, Oratory of San Giovanni Decollate ................. 13 7
Fig. 4 Daniele da Volterra, David and Goliath, c.1545.
Paris, Musee du Louvre .............................................. 137
:xviii

Fig. 5 Agnolo Bronzino, Allegory of Lust (detail), 1540.

London, National Gallery .......................................... 138
Fig. 6 Francesco Salviati, Triumph of Camillus, 1543-45.
Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Sala dell'Udienza ........... 138
Fig. 7 Medici Venus, 3rd Century B.C. Florence, Uffizi.. .... 139
Fig. 8 Agnolo Bronzino, Resurrection, 1552. Florence,
Santissima Annunziata ............................................... 139
Fig. 9 Giorgio Vasari, Paul III Rewards Merit (detail),
1546. Rome, Palazzo della Cancelleria,
Sala dei Cento Giorni ................................................. 140
Fig. 10 Francesco Salviati, Sala dell'Udienza, 1543-45.
Florence, Palazzo Vecchio (The Ceiling on
Designs by Benedetto da Maiano ).............................. 140
Fig. 11 Giorgio Vasari, Forge of Vulcan, 1558. Florence,
Uffizi ........................................................................... 141
Fig. 12 Agnolo Bronzino, Deposition, c.1547. Besan<;on,
Museum of Art ............................................................ 141
Fig. 13 Jacopo Pontormo, St. Michael Empoli, 1519-20.
Empoli, Museo della Collegiata .................................. 142
Fig. 14 Rosso Fiorentino, Marriage of the Virgin, 1523.
Florence, San Lorenzo ................................................. 142

Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting

Fig. 1 Jacopo Pontormo, Visitation, 1515. Florence.

Chiostro della Santissima Annunziata ....................... 185
Fig. 2 Jacopo Pontormo, Madonna and Child with
Saints, 1518. Florence, San Michele Visdomini.. ....... 185
Fig. 3 Jacopo Pontormo, Vertumnus and Pomona, 1520.
Florence, Poggio a Caiano ........................................... 18 6
 xix

Fig. 4 Jacopo Pontormo, Study for Lunette Decoration of

Poggio a Caiano, 1520. Florence, Uffizi.. .................... 186
Fig. 5 Jacopo Pontormo, Christ before Pilate, 1523.
Florence, Certosa del Galluzzo ................................... 18 7
Fig. 6 Jacopo Pontormo, Pieti'l, 1523. Florence,
Certosa del Galluzzo .................................................. 18 7
Fig. 7 Jacopo Pontormo, Resurrection, 1523. Florence,
Certosa del Galluzzo .................................................. 188
Fig. 8 Rosso Fiorentino, Assumption of the Virgin, 1515.
Florence, Santissima Annunziata ............................... 188
Fig. 9 Rosso Fiorentino, Marriage of the Virgin, 1523.
Florence, San Lorenzo ................................................. 189
Fig. 10 Rosso Fiorentino, Deposition, 1521.
Volterra, Pinacotecta .................................................. 18 9
Fig. 11 Rosso Fiorentino, Moses and the Daughters of
Jethro, 1524. Florence, Uffizi.. .................................... 190
Fig. 12 Parmigianino, Vision of St. Jerome, 1526. London,
National Gallery .......................................................... 190
Fig. 13 Parmigianino, Madonna dal Colla Lungo, 1535.
Florence, U ffizi.. .......................................................... 191

Observations on the Use of the Concept of Mannerism

Fig. 1 Francesco Primaticcio, Concert, c. 1545. Chalk

Drawing with White Heightening. Vienna,
Albertina Museum ....................................................... 244
Fig. 2 Anonymous Sixteenth-Century Painter, Concert,
After Primaticcio. New Haven, Yale University
Art Gallery .................................................................. 244
Fig. 3 Francesco Salviati, Visitation, 1538. Rome,
Oratory of San Giovanni Decollato ............................ 245
XX

Fig. 4 Alessandro Allori, Pearl Fishermen, 1570-73.

Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Studiolo of
Francesco I ..................................................................... 245
Fig. 5 Michelangelo, The Deluge, 1508-12. Rome,
Vatican, Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.. ...................... 246
Fig. 6 Benvenuto Cellini, Saltcellar of Francis I, 1540-43.
Gold and Enamel. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches
Museum .......................................................................... 246

Maniera and Movement: The Figure Serpentinata

Fig. 1 Paolo Veronse, Portrait of Alessandro Vittoria,

c. 1570-1575. New York, Metropolitan
Museum of Art .............................................................. 307
Fig. 2 Donatello, David, c.1430. Florence, Bargello, ........... 307
Fig. 3 Leonardo da Vinci (Cesare da Sesto?), Leda,
1493-95. Wilton House, Collection Pembroke ......... 308
Fig. 4 Leonardo da Vinci, Virgin and Child with
St. Anne, c.1499. London, National Gallery .............. 308
Fig. 5 Michelangelo, Madonna and Child, 1503-5.
Bruges, Cathedral of Notre Dame .............................. 309
Fig. 6 Leonardo da Vinci, St. Sebastian, c.1500.
Hamburg, Kunsthalle ................................................... 309
Fig. 7 Michelangelo, Virgin and Child with St. Anne,
1524-26. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum ..................... 310
Fig. 8 Michelangelo, St. Matthew, 1504-8. Florence,
Accademia ...................................................................... 310
Fig. 9 Michelangelo, The Brazen Serpent, 1508-12.
Rome, Vatican, Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel ........... 311
Fig. 10 Michelangelo, Victory, 1527-30. Florence,
Palazzo Vecchio .............................................................. 311
 xxi

Fig. 11 Michelangelo, Study for a Resurrection, 1533.

London, British Museum ............................................. 312
Fig. 12 Leonardo da Vinci, St. John the Baptist,
1510-13. Paris, Musee du Louvre .............................. 312
Fig. 13 Raphael, St. Michael, 1517. Paris, Musee du
Louvre ......................................................................... 313
Fig. 14 Michelangelo, Study for a Flagellation, c.1530.
London, British Museum ............................................. 313
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 FOREWORD

Arts of sixteenth-century Italy from the second decade to

approximately the last decade are being approached nowadays in
newly affirmative ways. For anyone beginning to consider these
arts, Liana De Girolami Cheney's book makes past approaches
available as background for the new.
Mannerism is the label that painting first, and then the other
arts, from this long span of time-most of the sixteenth century,
by far-have borne in our century. Implications of the term
Mannerism since the eighteenth century and the variety of new
concepts of Mannerism since 1900 have partly opened, partly
closed, twentieth century eyes and minds to the arts of these most
mature years of the Italian Renaissance.
Predictably, there is change. When, to cite my own experience,
it became evident that painting at mid-sixteenth century could be
recognized as the culmination of Renaissance efforts to achieve in
pictures a modern version of antique form, veils seemed lifted,
opening toward positive views of painting long dismissed as
decline. By now, many studies have given us new affirmative
knowledge and understanding of the arts still labelled Mannerism.
At last there are full catalogues of work by leading artists of the
time. All the arts are open to fresh examination. Striking to me is
a new generation's exploration of the complex variety of image
and content achieved by sixteenth-century painting in its
modernly antique language. For a recent example, there is word
now of an innovative study of "the rhetoric of style" in mural
painting at mid-century, exploring relations of language to imagery
in the context of sixteenth-century culture: interdisciplinary study
much focused upon meaning.
Liana De Girolami Cheney has long concerned herself with the
critical history of Mannerism while concentrating her own
researches especially on Italian art of the mid-sixteenth century.
xxiv

Convinced of the usefulness of this volume by the early

prospectus she wrote for it, I look forward now with anticipation
to seeing the volume itself with her commentary and to the
substantial help the volume will give newcomers to arts of the
Cinquecento by introducing them to the history of critical thought
concerning them.

Craig Hugh Smyth

June 1996
 PREFACE

One of the most complex and stimulating issues in the history

of art concerns Mannerism, whose beginning roughly coincides
with the death of Raphael in 1520 ends around 1585 with the
innovations of the Carracci. There is a minority of scholars who
consider Mannerism to be a late manifestation of the Renaissance,
and accordingly deny its existence altogether. On the other hand,
the majority of scholars who treat sixteenth-century Italian art
acknowledge the phenomenon of Mannerism, but disagree as to
its constituent parts. In an endeavor to understand the art created
following the High Renaissance, Mannerism has been divided
essentially into three phases: Early Maniera or Mannerism (c.
1520-30), Maniera (c. 1530-50), and Late Maniera (c. 1550--85).
However, such periodization remains controversial.
The word Mannerism itself is also problematic. It has been
defined variously, in terms ranging from style, comportment, and
manner to working method, all of which have been based on
interpretations of sixteenth-century texts. For the most part, the
discussion has focused on the painting, to the detriment of the
sculpture and architecture. Moreover, the majority of the studies
on Mannerism have been concerned with style rather than content,
owing to the basic training in connoisseurship given to art
historians until relatively recently, and to the initial necessity of
defining the period, and hence of differentiating the style of High
Renaissance art from that of Mannerist art. At times, it becomes
difficult to determine the focus of any given commentator on the
issue, as the distinctions among periodization, style, and
definition are often blurred. Readings in Italian Mannerism seeks to
present the issues, and to clarify the problems inherent in
twentieth-century treatments of Mannerism. The following
historiographical outline is intended to provide an introduction to
XXVI

some of the specific problems, and to indicate the method

adopted when critically examining the phenomenon.
Walter Friedlaender gave to the history of art a period
known as Mannerism. 1 Beginning in 1520 and ending around
mid-century, the art of this period was anticlassical and had a
latent Gothic strain. Its essential exponents were Pontormo and
Rosso, in Tuscany, and Parmigianino in Rome. Michelangelo,
though an anticlassicist by nature, transcended Mannerism,
without exerting any profound influence on the formation of
the style by 1520. Friedlaender's periodization was taken up
in a monumental way by Sydney Freedberg in 1961, who also
mapped out in detail the process by which the Mannerists
rebelled against the normative ideals of the High Renaissance. 2
In this same year, and in publication two years later, Craig
Smyth argued against Friedlaender's designation of the
anticlassical style with regard to the second phase of
Mannerism, by then known as the Maniera, and practiced by
such artists as Bronzino, Salviati, and Vasari.3 For Smyth,
once theoretical conventions are established in the late
sixteenth-century, the term maniera embodies many
"possibilities and virtues," as when Vasari uses the term to
comment on a painter's style, to speak of "invention, variation,
self-expression, and a diversity of modes" in understanding the
antique or "the antique-derived conventions." If the resulting
conventions of the figure were not always in evidence during the
first phase-indeed, if the aesthetics of the Mannerists were in
many ways distinct from those of their Maniera followers-at
least Pontormo, Rosso, and their group were working within
the bounds of classicism, however freely they chose to do so.
Malcolm Campbell's 1978 paper, published in 1980, refuted
Friedlaender's designation of Mannerism as an art historical
period and regarded it, instead, as a stylistic phenomenon. 4
As a courtly style, Campbell says, the art of Pontormo and
Rosso could not be properly regarded as Mannerist.
Reminiscent of John Shearman's 1961 and 1967
 xxvii

treatments of Mannerism, or rather the Maniera as the stylish

style,s the artists of the first phase became unwanted anomalies in
sixteenth-century art.
Useful though Friedlaender's ideas have been, both in a
positive sense (latent Gothic) and a negative one (periodization,
anticlassicism), the most influential thesis on present views of
Mannerism is unquestionably Max Dvorak's of 1920, published
posthumously in 1928.6 Recognizing a community of thought
between contemporary artists and their sixteenth-century
counterparts in Italy and abroad, Dvorak saw Mannerism as an
expressive, angst-ridden art that reflected the chaotic state of
society. It was not a "defined period", but a "continuing
movement." Although he did not actually treat the artists of
Friedlaender's Mannerism, he nevertheless considered
Michelangelo's late art to be a part of an era that also had much in
common with the Middle Ages. Not only had Michelangelo
rejected "the objective renaissance view of the world," but he had
also recognized that "emotions and experiences of the soul were
more important for art than faithfulness to sense perceptions."
For the most part, scholars have drawn on, and been
inexplicably drawn to, the angst component of Dvorak's thesis.
On the one hand, there have been voyages, like the one taken by
Gustav Hocke in 1957, into the surrealism of the Mannerists? On
the other hand, there have been more sober, though still somewhat
questionable, accounts provided by scholars like Frederick Hartt,
Kenneth Clark, and Henri Zerner. In 1952, again in a paper of
1961, and as recently as 1987, Hartt presented Mannerism as a
decadent art.B He explained what he viewed as a crisis in style in
terms of the chaotic socio-political conditions outlined by Dvorak,
and spoke of the disruption or severing of the individual's
connection with the sources of power. In 1967 Clark transformed
Dvorak's painful psychic states into the Mannerists' failure to live
up to the standards set by the High Renaissance masters-
xxviii

standards that even the Michelangelo of the late Sistine Chapel

ceiling frescoes was unable to meet.9 For Zemer in 1972, Dvofak's
general spiritual crisis became a communal subconscious[ness]
informed first and foremost by feelings of alienation.lO Such
alienation had had its beginnings with the Mannerists, and was
still felt by the angst-ridden artists of the Maniera, who
endeavored, but did not entirely manage, to mask their feelings in
their now not so stylish style. Friedlaender's general periodization
was accordingly reinforced and, although the first and second
phases were differentiated stylistically, Mannerism and the
Maniera became united in crisis.
In a less celebrated passage, Dvofak also addressed the
content of Mannerist art, and found that "subject matter
expanded on all sides as artists felt obliged to emphasize the
subjectivity and originality of their attitude towards the world."ll
In 1964 Jacques Bousquet, for one, took a cue from this passage,
as well as from the ever popular angst thesis. He found such
common themes in the art of the Mannerists as "mythology, the
strange, eccentric and fantastic, ambiguity, the mysterious and
macabre, erotic subjects, and enchanted dream worlds."12 The
following year, in a more careful, less calculating way, Sydney
Freedberg considered what he called the quoted image.13 Speaking
of the Maniera, Freedberg noted that painters consistently
borrowed images taken from High Renaissance and antique works
of art, but that, like a metaphor, the meaning of the chosen
exemplars was wrenched from its original context in the process
of translation. The resultant disjunction Freedberg saw as one of
the hallmarks of the Maniera. Mannerism, by implication, would
lie somewhere between the High Renaissance artist's use of models
and the quoted image of the Maniera artist.
In 1972, in an article prefatory to his 1984 book on Mannerism
and the Maniera, James Mirollo offered a variant of, and
complement to, Freedberg's idea of the quoted image, and called
 xxix

post-High Renaissance art "parasitic and parodic in nature."14

Whereas Freedberg had focused on the quotations taken from the
classical tradition, Mirollo focused on the Gothic, in the tradition
of Friedlaender, Dvorak, and later scholars, like Georg Weise.lS
For Mirollo, the quoting of Gothic art served a playful, parodic
function designed to tease humanist snobbery.
In 1978, finally, Paul Barolsky looked at a substantial corpus
of Mannerist paintings from Mirollo's refreshing vantage point of
parody.l6 Barolsky saw a continuum from the art created circa
1500 through Mannerism and beyond, to the art of the Maniera.
Drawing on Bakhtin's exposition on the sources of Rabelaisian
humour, Barolsky suggested that the so-called religious parody of
one such as Rosso might have a foundation in the Medieval age.
To substantiate his claim, Barolsky drew on general Medieval and
Renaissance courtly notions as to what constitutes parody,
especially in the sense of irony or wit. While the latent Gothic was
still found to be a central issue in Mannerist art of the first phase,
Pontormo, Rosso, and Parmigianino now quite inexplicably
became courtly artists. Gone is the angst, which for Zerner
characterized art after the High Renaissance. It is replaced by an
almost Shearmanian and Campbellian sophistication of content.
Considerations of Mannerist content, in other words, have
followed the course of considerations on Mannerist form. The
polarities are almost as striking and, dare one say, as inventive as
the art of the Mannerists itself.
Owing to the lack of agreement among scholars as to what
constitutes Mannerism (Barolsky, Blunt, Campbell, Dvorak,
Freedberg, Friedlaender, Gombrich, Hauser, Hartt, Miedema,
Shearman, Smyth, Stumpe!, and Zenri), I propose a renascere, a
rebirth, of Mannerism by reviewing and scrutinizing Giorgio
Vasari's definition of Maniera and the Mannerist movement in
view of contemporary approaches to art. Such approaches
include issues of gender representation noted in the recent studies
XXX

by Elizabeth Cropper on theories of women's beauty17 Fredrika

Jacobs on the decorum of Properzia de' Rossi18 and Mary Garrard
on feminine discourses19 cultural movements discussed in the
essays of Claudia Russo on political and astrological imagery of
Cosimo I, Duke of Tuscany20 and Janet Cox-Rearick's Medici
patronage and iconography21 new literary conventions elaborated
on Virginia Callahan and Mauda Russo's Cinquecento emblematic
tradition22 or a combination of methodologies such as
historiography and aesthetics indicated by Craig Smyth's
Mannerism and Maniera. 23 Although these new perspectives taken
by Marxist, feminist, deconstructionist, semiotic, and
psychoanalytic critics offer a challenging art historical approach
to our multicultural society, they show a tendency to debunk
previous critical theories. 24 In the revisionism of Mannerist's
historiography, periodization, iconography, connoisseurship, and
multicultural phenomena, therefore, I suggest a renascere and not a
decrescere.
The articles herewith presented fall into two categories. The
first group explains the definition of the terms Mannerism and
Maniera, their periodicity, and their sources as illustrated by
Giorgio Vasari, John Shearman, Craig Hugh Smyth, and Sydney
Freedberg. The second deals with the polemic associated with the
usage of the term and historiography and its application as voiced
by Walter Friedlaender, Max Dvorak, Ernst Gombrich, Henri
Zemer, David Summers, Malcolm Campbell, and Iris Cheney.
The aim of this book is to focus on the origin of the
historiography of the terms Mannerism and Maniera in paintings
and drawings of the sixteenth-century in Italy. The application of
both terms in sculpture is recognized and explained in David
Summer's article, "Maniera and Movement: The Figure
Serpentinata," herewith included. In regards to architecture,
Nikolaus Pevsner's article, "The Architecture of Mannerism,"
which first appeared in The Mint, I, in 1946-reprinted with some
 xxxi

additions in Harold Spencer's edition, Readings in Art History, II

in 1969-was the first study in architecture that clearly discussed
and explained the term Mannerism. Other studies related to this
subject are Wolfgang Lotz, "Architecture in the Later 16th
Century," College Art Journal XVII (1958) and Nikolaus Pevsner,
"The Counter-Reformation and Mannerism," in Studies in Art,
Architecture, and Design, I (1968), pp. 10-33. Although studies on
individual Mannerist sculptors, architects, and monuments have
been completed over the past thirty years, there nevertheless
remains the fundamental issue of defining the phenomenon of
Mannerism. The disproportionate number of articles on Mannerist
painting accordingly reflects the great amount of attention given to
painting as opposed to sculpture and architecture.
Readings in Italian Mannerism will assist the reader in the
understanding of these various polemics. In addition to the
included articles that focus on Mannerist drawings and paintings,
Giorgio Vasari's view of contemporary art and his theory of art is
discussed. With the exception of Iris Cheney's article on
"Mannerist Art: Survival and Collection," the bibliographies that
are available have been published at different times in different
formats, ranging from periodical literature and books now out of
print to papers presented at highly technical conferences. Many
of the sources are at present difficult to find in university libraries.
Readings in Italian Mannerism allows access to the history of the
discussion over the past sixty-five years. The articles chosen for
inclusion are published in English to facilitate the study of
Mannerism to undergraduate students. This book will be an asset
not only to students of Italian sixteenth-century art history, but
also to students in other disciplines outside of the history of art,
such as music, literature, and history. Reading in Italian Mannerism
will, therefore, contribute significantly to studies in the humanities,
and open up for discussion, once again, the fascinating
xxxii

phenomenon known as Mannerism, thus unveiling a musa

mascherata (a masquerade muse).

Liana De Girolami Cheney

University of Massachusetts Lowell 1996

1 Walter F. Friedlaender, "Die Entstehung des antiklassichen Stiles in der

italienischen Malerei urn 1520," Rer,ertorium for Kunstwissensclulft 46 (1925), 49-
86; trans. "The Anticlassicial Style,' in Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian
Painting, Introduction by Donald Posner, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken, 1965), 3-
43.
2sydney ]. Freedberg, Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome and Florence, 2
vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961).
3craig H. Smyth, "Mannerism and Maniera," in Studies in Western Art: Acts of the
Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1963), 174-99.
4Malcolm Campbell, "Mannerism, Italian Style," in Essays on Mannerism in Art
and Music, Papers Read at the West Chester State College Symposium on
Interdisciplinary Studies, November 18, 1978, eds. Sterling E. Murray, Ruth Irwin
Weidner (West Chester, PA: West Chester State College, 1980), 1-33.
5John Shearman, "Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal," in Studies in Western Art:
200-21; Idem, Mannerism, Style and Civilization (Harmondsworth, New York,
Ringwood, Markham, Aukland: Penguin Books Ltd., 1967).
6Max Dvo'tak, "Ober Greco und den Manierismus, "Kunstgeschichte als
Geistgeschichte, Munich: Piper, 1928; trans. and abridged by John Coolidge, "El
Greco and Mannerism," Magazine of Art 46 (1953), 14-23.
7Gustav R. Hocke, Die Welt als Labyrinth (Hamburg: Row holt, 1957).
8Frederick Hartt, "Review of Paola Barocchi's Rosso Fiorentino," Art Bulletin 34
(1952), 67--69; "Power and the Individual in Mannerist Art," in Studies in Western
Ar~, 222-~8; and The History of Italian Renaissance Art, 1st ed. (Englewood Cliff,
NJ. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970).
9Kenneth Clark, A Failure of Nerve: Italian Painting 1520-1535 (Bickley
Lectures, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).
lOHenri Zerner, "Observations on the Use of the Concept of Mannerism," in The
Meaning of Mannerism, eds. Franklin W. Robinson and Stephen G. Nichols, Jr.
~Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1972), 105-121.
lovo'tak, "El Greco," Magazine of Art, 19.
12Jacques Bousquet, Mannerism: The Painting and Style of the Late Renaissance,
trans. (New Yorl<: Braziller, 1964).
13sydney ]. Freedberg, "Observations on the Painting of the Maniera," Art
Bulletin 47 (1965), 187.:...97.
14James V. Mirollo, "The Mannered and the Mannerist in Late Renaissance
Literature," in The Meaning of Mannerism, 7-24, and Mannerism and Renaissance
Poetry: Concept, Mode, Inner Design (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).
15Georg Weise, II Manierismo: Bilancio critico del problema stilistico e culturale
(Florence: LeoS. Olschki, 1971).
 xxxiii

16Paul Barolsky, Infinite ]est, Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art
(Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1978).
17Elizabeth Cropper, "On Beautiful Women, Parmigianino, Petrarchismo and the
Vernacular Style," Art Bulletin, 43 (1976), 374-94. See also Konrad Eisenbichler
and Jacg_ueline Murray, trans. and ed. Agnolo Firenzuolla's On the Beauty of
Women (Fhiladelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).
18Fredrika Jacobs, "The Construction of a Life: Madonna Properzia de' Rossi
'Schultrice' Bolognese," Word and Image 9 (April-June 1993), 1-11, and "Woman's
Capacity to Create: The Unusual Case of Sofonisba Anguissola," Renaissance
Quarterly 47 (1994), 74-101.
f9Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, ed. The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and
Art History (New York: Icon Editions, 1992).
20claudia Russo, Cosimo I de' Medici and Astrology: The Symbolism of Praphecy.
Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1983.
21Janet Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X, and
The Two Cosimos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) and Bronzino's
Chapel of Eleaonora in the Palazzo Vecchio (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1994).
22virginia Callahan, "Andrea Alciato: Inventor of the Renaissance Emblem,"
Folger Lecture Series. Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC., 5 May 1975, and
Mauda Bregoli-Russo, L'Impresa come ritratto ael Rinascimento (Naples:
Loffredo, 1989).
23craig Hugh Smyth, Mannerism and Maniera (Vienna: IRSA, 1992). The
excellent Introduction by Elizabeth Cropper contains an updated bibliography on
the historiography of Mannerism.
24vemon Hyde Minor, Art History's History (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1994) and Peter Burke, ed. New Perspectives on Historical Writing
(University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991).
This page intentionally left blank
 INTRODUCTION

STYLISTIC PROBLEMS IN MANNERISM

ANDMANIERA

Liana De Girolami Cheney

In the twentieth century there has arisen an interest in re-

evaluating the history of the sixteenth century in terms of its
periodization, definition, and interpretation. The long-held view
that Italian Renaissance culture ended in 1530 has been challenged
and extension of the period until the end of the sixteenth century
is now being considered. The period between 1530 and 1600 has
been dubbed Anti-Renaissance, Late Renaissance, Counter-Renaissance,
Pre-Baroque and Mannerism-the last term being preferred now.
Parallel to these historical studies, art historians have been
concerned to extend their grasp of early twentieth century
movements such as Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism.
Studies on these styles indicate the radical changes that occur in
form and content in terms of the use of color for emotional moods,
abstraction and decomposition of the form for artificiality, and
esoteric subject matter for intellectualism. I In order to evaluate
these contemporary artistic changes, the twentieth century art
historian has undertaken the task of re-evaluating artistic periods
in which analogous stylistic changes have taken place, and found
that the art of the Cinquecento illustrates these similarities. These
two contemporary pursuits-the study of sixteenth century
history and the study of P10vements in twentieth century art-
have resulted in a new awareness of the so-called Late Renaissance
art, Anti-Classical style, or Mannerism.
Today, when studying the periodicity of Italian art history, the
movement that follows the High Renaissance and precedes the
Baroque period is labeled Mannerism. 2 The span of the Mannerist
2

style is approximately sixty-five years 1520-85. In analyzing this

period, art historians have been confronted with several problems,
namely, stylistic, thematic, etymological, and historiographic.
These problems were formulated in the attempt to define
Mannerism, describe its stylistic qualities, and establish its origin
and boundary. Today, some of these goals have been achieved,
the origin of the word Mannerism, and knowledge of its various
connotations and usages throughout the centuries (whether
pejorative or not) the reasons why this style originated in Florence
and Rome, and its stylistic span.
Another aspect of the discovery of Mannerism focuses on the
reasons for the disjunction between form and content hence,
establishing a new style of art in central Italy. In the High
Renaissance style of central Italy, categorized as classical, form
and content were in harmony. But during the second decade of
the Cinquecento, form and content were separated thus creating a
change in the classical style. The problem is complex and the
following concerns are still without adequate answer.
Did the artist establish this shift because of his own quest for
experimentation and artistic invention, or was he forced to do so
because he was not able to better or compete with the style of the
High Renaissance masters, Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo?
This question assumes that the new style, now called Mannerism,
was mainly a byproduct and continuation of the previous style, a
purely artistic trend. However, this assumption may be open to
challenge with the possibility that the cause of the shift derives
from a series of historical, social, and political events outside the
control of the artistic field that directly or indirectly affected the
artist and his environment. Resolution of this perplexity must
begin with a survey of the historical situation.
Several historical events during the second and third decades
of the Cinquecento affected the status quo of the artist. In 1522,
the plague in Rome caused the flight of many artists, Perino del
 3

Vaga went to Florence (1522-23), for example, and Giulio Romano

to Mantua (1524). In Florence the effects of the plague were felt,
at that time, again causing artists to move outside of the city for
instance, Pontormo went to Certosa. In 1524, whether driven by
fear of the Florentine plague or drawn by the promise of new
commissions by the recently elected Pope Clement VII, artists,
such as Rosso and Parmigianino, traveled to the Eternal City. In
1527, the sack of Rome by the Spaniards and the Germans caused
the dispersion of the artists from Rome. Polidoro da Caravaggio
went to Naples, Peruzzi to Siena, Rosso returned to Florence and
Parmigianino to the Emilia. In 1529, Charles V was crowned in
Bologna while seizing the Florentine Republic, which after heroic
flght collapsed in 1530. This event caused further flight of artists.
Rosso moved permanently to Fontainebleau to work under the
auspices of King Francis I.
Most art historians acknowledge that the constant invasions in
Italy by the foreign powers and the plagues in the early part of the
Cinquecento caused the debilitation of the temporal and religious
power of the Church, the disruption of the governmental unity in
the city-state, and eventually, economic collapse. These tragic
events affected the artistic environment, the artistic process, and
attitudes toward the work of art.
To link this general historical assessment with Mannerist art
generates at least three sources of conflict among scholars, the
differences arise in regard to classificatory, causal, and normative
judgments. Classificatory problems are of two sorts: designating
the span of years, art works, and artists to be called "Mannerist,"
and placing this designation within the scheme of art historical
categories-the latter being the primary classificatory issue. The
causal concern, already alluded to, involves ascertaining whether
Mannerist art is to be accounted for primarily in terms of artistic
experimentation and invention or as a result of political and
4

economical factors. The normative debate mainly concerns

whether Mannerism is to be judged as decadent art.
The controversy that arises about Mannerism from these
three interrelated areas of judgment is exemplified through an
inspection of the relevant work of Friedlaender/ Hartt,4 and
Freedberg. 5 Friedlaender viewed the Mannerist style as a
deliberate denial of classical High Renaissance forms. That is,
Mannerism is to be explained in terms of artistic rebellion
against the theory and principles of the preceding period.
Because of this, Mannerism is to be classified as anticlassical
and its value assessed as primarily negative. Hartt, concurring,
makes more emphatic the negative evaluation by approaching
Mannerism as a strictly decadent art. However, his
characterization and evaluation of Mannerism derive from his
explanation of the emergence of Mannerism which differs from
Friedlaender's. Hartt contends that Mannerism reflects a crisis
in style that resulted from socio-economic conditions in which
the individual's connection with the sources of power was
disturbed or severed. This yielded an art of inferior quality.
Freedberg agrees that political forces created conditions-
mainly the dispersion of artists from Rome and Florence-
conducive to a new art, but he attributes the primary impetus
behind Mannerism to strictly artistic factors. Unlike both Hartt
and Friedlaender, Freedberg judges Mannerism to be a
postclassical style that is of positive value.
The position of the artists is another debatable issue. Did
artists achieve greater freedom of expression because their role
was less defined by external circumstances, enabling them to
experiment and to internalize new artistic pursuits? Or were
they intimidated by the historical events so that their artistic
style was hampered by subjectivity, emotionality, and
spiritualism? 6
During the early Cinquecento the social position of the
Mannerist artists seemed secure-they were dependent on their
 5

patrons for the commissions received, and these commissions

were previously programmed by their patrons. But when
historical circumstances placed patronage in jeopardy, the
position of artists became tenuous. As artists found themselves
in this situation, they began to exert more freedom stylistically
and thematically in their art-Pontormo's Descent from the
Cross, 1525, in the Capponi Chapel of Santa Felicita in Florence,
Rosso's Moses and the Daughters of Jethro, 1523-24, and
Parmigianino's Madonna of the Long Neck, 1535, both at the
Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The emotionality, subjectivity, and
spiritualism found in Mannerist works mainly derives from the
artist's conscious desire to experiment and to establish an
individualistic style. Evidence of these pursuits is clear when
stylistically analyzing the Mannerist paintings.
The artist of the second decade of the Cinquecento (also
called Early Mannerist or First Maniera painter) saw and
studied the works of the High Renaissance masters-
Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo-the antique, and the
already established styles in Florence-the unclassical style of
Filippino Lippi and Piero di Cosima and the classical style of
Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto. These types of work
were the source of inspiration and encouragement toward
experimentation for the young Mannerist painter. While he
copied, explored, and challenged these styles and themes, the
Mannerist artist noticed that even the High Renaissance
masters, after having achieved classical balance and harmony
in their art, had begun to show a desire for further change and
innovation. Stimulated by this artistic quest, Mannerist artists
learned and appreciated the technique of quotation in art.
They quoted the novelty of the masters as well as the
quotations the masters had assimilated from the antique, and
they also independently quoted the antique. The artist's
knowledge of nature came, not from copying it, but from the
masters and the antique. The masters had observed nature and
6

had achieved a perfect representation and understanding of it; the

Mannerist artist felt that there was no need to repeat or to restate
what had already been represented so eloquently.
Mannerist artists learned to experiment on form as well as
content. Both became more elaborate and capricious. The
Mannerist artists specifically interpreted the narrative in an
intimate and personalized manner. Therefore, the emotionality,
subjectivity, and spiritualism encountered in the Mannerist
paintings developed out of a quest for artistic knowledge. As
Freedberg points out, this search originated not in an artistic
rebellion against previous styles or from the intimidation of
historical events, but rather from the pursuit of experimentation
and inventiveness on the part of the Mannerist artist.
The stylistic issue about Mannerist art becomes clearer when
we consider the disjunction between form and content. The
classical balance fails when the artificiality of the form and the
ambiguity of the content prevail. The expression of artificiality in
the treatment of the form derives from Mannerist artists' copying
or assimilating images from antique sources as well as from their
masters and mentors, who in tum had also copied or assimilated
antique sources. The visual result is a Mannerist conceit composed
of a series of quotation from past and present images. In
Mannerism and Maniera,7 Craig Smyth, with unparalleled elaborate
analysis, explains the relation and dependency on the antique of
Mannerism and how Mannerist paintings are based on the study
of antique reliefs, a source of stylistic inspiration for Mannerist
painters. In addition, Smyth convinces the reader that terms such
as anticlassical and postclassic confuse the understanding of the
sources and style of Italian paintings in the mid-sixteenth century
because painters of this generation were continuing to employ
and assimilate classical forms even more than their predecessors
of the High Renaissance. Although a better understanding is
found in the study of Mannerist style, ambiguity
 7

remains regarding the complexity of the subject matter. The

reason for this ambiguity has not been thoroughly investigated.
A general characterization of Mannerist style is as follows.8
Form is characterized by an emphasis on the exaggerated
expression of the human body-serpentine or twisted poses by a
concern to elongate the human body, thus distorting the figure and
limiting its spatial relation by using bright, acid, sharply
contrasting colors for the purpose of emotionality by abruptly
heightening or diminishing light effects, thus creating visual
disturbances by grouping the figures in a shallow or deep
illusionistic space, thus creating a disjointed relationship between
the space of the canvas and the painting and by depicting rich,
elaborate, and exotic textures and creating a highly polished and
decorative surface. The composition is a central, unbalanced,
over-rhythmical, and devoid of physical harmony. The organic
unity of the form is separated by the strong emphasis on creating
tension and paradoxical relationships through use of the elements
of design.
In a Mannerist painting, the content is emotional, subjective,
irrational, ambiguous. The narrative is represented with elaborate,
unclear, or abstruse allegorical conceits in order to tease or confuse
the viewer, and its meaning is intended for the enjoyment of a
selective and capricious audience.

1sydney Freedberg, Painting in Italy: 1500-1600 (Baltimore: Penguin Books,

1971), 285.
2/bid., 483.
3Walter F. Friedlaender, "Die Entstehung des antiklassichen Stiles in der
italienischen Malerei urn 1520," Repertorium for Kunstwissensch.aft 46 (1925), 49-
86; trans. "The Anticlassicial Style,' in Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italimz
Painting, Introduction by Donald Posner, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken, 1965), 3-
43.
4Frederick Hartt, "Review of Paola Barocchi's Rosso Fiorentino," Art Bulletin 34
(1952), 67-69; "Power and the Individual in Mannerist Art," in Studies in Western
Art, 222-38; and, The History of Italian Renaissance Art, 1st ed. (Englewood Cliff,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970).
5sydney J. Freedberg, "Observations on the Painting of the Maniera," Art Bulletin
47 (1965), 187-97.
8

6Recent investigations show the following: Historians of philosophy have

brought to focus the importance of philosophers such as Bruno, Campanella,
Telsio, and especially Francesco Patrizi, who continued the Neoplatonic
movement in the Cinquecento. Political historians have reinterpreted the works of
Vincenzo Borghini as the beginning of scientific historiography in the sixteenth
century. Further studies on the literary and artistic academies illustrate that these
centers were stimulators of intellectual pursuits. Other facts that have been
reinterpreted are the development of new monarchies and papal states as
originators of the concept of modern states and the church's position in the
Counter-Reformation as not being primarily religious but economical and
governmental. See Eric Cochrane, The Late Italian Renaissance: 1525-1630 (New
York: Harper & Row, 1970).
7craig Hugh Smyth, Mannerism and Maniera (Vienna: IRSA, 1992). The excellent
introduction by Elizabeth Cropper contains an updated bibliography on the
historiography of Mannersim.
8This characterization depends on Vasari's definition and construction of
maniera. A style created by five stylistic qualities: regola (unit of measurement),
ordine (order), misura (proportion), disegno (design) and maniera (style)-can be
defined as follows. Regola and ordine are stylistic qualities that refer only to
architecture: regola is the manner in which a building is measured; ordine is the
manner in which architectural orders are classified. Misura is the quality of
proportion which is shared by all works of art architecture, painting, and
sculpture. Disegno is found in sculpture as well as in painting. This stylistic
quality is obtained from imitating the most beautiful elements from nature and
works of art. Maniera relates to painting. (Vite, First Preface, 6-7)
 V ASARI'S POSITION AS AN EXPONENT OF THE
MANIERA STYLE

Liana De Girolami Cheney

From the time of the Renaissance, popes such as Nicholas V

(1477-55), Sixtus IV (1471-84), Alexander VI (1492-1503), Julius II
(1503-13) and Leo X (1513-21) were more concerned with
establishing the papacy as an Italian political power, patronizing
arts and learning, living in splendor, and enriching their relatives
and favorites than they were with improving their role as religious
leaders. Constantly at war with its neighbors, the Renaissance
papacy made ever increasing economic demands of its Christian
followers. The persistence of this attitude on the part of the
popes throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, along
with their worldliness and their immorality, aggravated
diplomatic relations and created resentment, doubts, and a sense
of alienation throughout the Christian world. By the third decade
of the Cinquecento, the papacy had lost prestige, power, and
authority in the spiritual world. Its decline paralleled the rise of
new monarchies across Europe (Spain, France, and Germany).
Concern over the immorality of the Church and envy of Rome's
ability to draw enormous sums of money through taxation
generated strong religious animosity among the Germans and
eventually led to revolt and war against the Church.
Artists reflected this turmoil in their works by individualizing
their style and representing highly personalized subject matter:
Pontormo's Descent from the Cross, 1525, in the Capponi Chapel in
Santa Felicita (Fig. 1), Rosso's Putto Playing the Lute, c.1525, in the
Uffizi (Fig. 2), Parmigianino's Madonna of the Rose, 1530-35, in the
Gemaeldegalerie, Dresden (Fig. 3), and Parmigianino's Amor,
1535-40, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Fig. 4.) But in
the Maniera period of art, stabilization and conformity prevailed
10

in European governments and in the Church. With Paul III (1534-

49), the Renaissance papacy as a world power was brought to an
end, and the Church assumed a new role as restorer and reformer
of the spiritual faith. The Church regained spiritual control
through the efficacy of the oratories, orders and societies
developed by clergymen and laymen, such as the Oratory of the
Divine Love, Capuchines, the Teatines, the Ursuline nuns, and the
Jesuits, and through the sessions of the Council of Trent (1545-47
1551-52 and 1562-63). Another important change within the
political structure of the Church was the shift of its temporal
power to the new monarchies, resolving their hegemony.
The art produced during the Maniera period under a new type
of patronage, monarchical and reformational, was courtly and
academic: Bronzino's Chapel for Eleonora of Toledo, 1540 (Fig.
5), and Francesco Salviati's Sala dell' Udienza, 1543-45 (Fig. 6),
both in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, and Giorgio Vasari's Sala
dei Cento Giorni, 1546, in the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome
(Fig. 7).
Henceforth, a change of style flourished, prompted by and
related to changes in the position of the artist in society. The
painter's new role was to be a court artist and his commissions
dealt mainly with elaborate decorative cycles. These changes
stimulated artistic virtuosity and collaborative enterprises in
Rome and Florence, as in Perino del Vaga's Sala Paolina of the
Castel Sant' Angelo, 1545 (Fig. 8), in Jacopino del Conte at the
Oratory of San Giovanni Decollato, 1538-40 (Fig. 9), Vasari's Sala
dei Cento Giorni, 1546, in the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome (Fig.
7), and Francesco Salviati in the Sala dell'Udienza, 1543-45, in the
Palazzo Vecchio (Fig. 6).
These changes, also, came about subsequent to the tragedies of
plague and war that occurred in central Italy between 1522 and
1530. In the fourth decade of the Cinquecento, two types of
artists came to Rome: those returning from their flight from the
 11

city in order to escape the sack and the plague, Peruzzi, Perino,
Sebastiana, and Michelangelo and newcomers to Rome eager to
partake of the opportunity to work under the auspices of the new
papal patronage, including Francesco Salviati, Giorgio Vasari,
Daniele da Volterra, Battista Franco, and Jacopino del Conte.
The new style developed by these artists is characterized by
classical form and rich ornamentation. This style has been
defined by Freedberg as "an ornamental attitude both in form and
feeling represented with a partial reconciliation with the High
Renaissance classicism. "1 And its hallmark "is the concession of a
major role to the quality of grazia and a stress upon the function
of the work of art as ornament."2 Freedberg gave the appellation
"Maniera" to this style, which extends from 1535 to 1570 in
central Italy.3
Vasari's literary and artistic works indicate that he was a
promoter of the Maniera style. His paintings exemplify a return to
the classical balance of the High Renaissance with an emphasis on
a quality of grazia, as in the Allegory of the Immaculate Conception,
1540, in the church of Santissimi Apostoli in Florence (Fig. 10) and
the Supper of St. Gregory, 1539, for the Refectory of San Michele in
Bosco in Bologna, now in the Pinacoteca at Bologna (Fig. 11).
The prefaces (proemi) to the Lives (Vite) provide a better
understanding on how and when Vasari uses the term Maniera.
Some preliminary remarks on the structure of the Vite explain
Vasari's terminology and his goals in writing these artistic
biographies, and expound on his theory of art.
In the introduction to Vite, Vasari states: "I have divided the
artists into three sections or, shall we say, periods, each with its
own recognizably distinct character, running from the time of the
rebirth of the arts to our own times." Each section is introduced
by a first preface containing a critical evaluation of the art created
during that period. Vasari then parallels the development of art
to the growth of a living creature. According to this model, art has
12

an infancy (the rebirth with Giotto, who rescued and restored

the art of painting) an adolescence (a growth and development
largely with the fifteenth century artists, such as Masaccio,
Brunelleschi, and Donatello), and maturity (beginning with
Leonardo and reaching a climax with Michelangelo). Vasari
expected that mature works improved upon early efforts.
In the three prefaces he establishes both the historical
scheme for the writing of the biographies and the criteria he
applied to the selection of the "most excellent" artists and the
ways in which their works were judged. The criteria consisted
of the study of nature, the capturing of nature through its
imitation, and the surpassing of nature, by improving on it or
perfecting it, through the canons of design. Vasari states: "For I
know that our art consists first in the imitation of nature but
then, since it cannot reach such heights unaided, in the
imitation of the most accomplished artists." 4
Vasari's purpose in writing the Vite is to provide for his
fellow artist historical perspective and artistic guidance. 5 These
two significant issues are evident in his explanation of the
concept of rebirth, which combines progress and moral
intention. Vasari's idea of progress is described by the pattern
of change from imperfection to perfection in the arts. And his
moral intention is related to the Cinquecento's spirit of history,
which fulfills its real purpose in makil,!g individuals prudent
and showing them how to live. 6
At the beginning of second preface, Vasari instructs the
reader on the aims of the Vite and explains the difference of
purposes between the prefaces and the biographies: "in my
biographies I have spent enough time discussing methods,
skills, particular styles (maniere), and the reasons for good,
superior, or pre-eminent workmanship so here I shall discuss
the matter in general terms, paying more attention to the
nature of the times than to the individual artists." 7
 13

In these prefaces, Vasari uses the word maniera in three

different quantitative ways: as a method or technique of
working as an individual, school, and period style, and as an
aesthetic element to characterize or judge good or bad art.
These three connotations for the meaning of the word maniera
also represent a qualitative level for a criterion of evaluation.
It is important to be aware that at times Vasari interchanges
the word of maniera with style and vice versa in the prefaces.
However, if one keeps in mind Vasari's three definitions, one is
less prone to confusion.
Interestingly, in the first preface Vasari does not mention
the word maniera. However, he does so many times in the
second and third prefaces. In the second preface, Vasari uses
the term to explain not only the method and technique of the
artists but also the style of an individual, school, period, or
generation. He also compares aesthetically the first generation
of artists with the second generation. Further, in this second
preface, Vasari elaborates on his aesthetic criteria for writing
the biographies: "I have endeavoured not only to record what
the artists have done but also to distinguish between the good,
the better, and the best, and to note with some care the
methods, manners, styles, behaviour, and ideas of the painters
and sculptors."B
In the second preface where Vasari uses the term maniera to
state an aesthetic judgment is in this recounting: "Then, in the
second period there was clearly a considerable improvement in
invention and execution, with more design, better style
[maniera], and a more careful finish and as a result artists
cleaned away the rust of the old style, along with the stiffness
and disproportion characteristic of the ineptitude of the first
period."9 Vasari continues: "Except for the fine workmanship of
some antique fragments, there are no signs of good style or
execution [before Cimabue and Giotto]."lO
14

Vasari employs the term maniera to refer to the method of

working of an artist in this fashion in the second preface: "The
superb Masaccio completely freed himself of Giotto's style and
adopted a new manner for his heads, his draperies, buildings, and
nudes, his colors and foreshortenings. "11
In commenting on the rebirth of the arts, Vasari employs the
word maniera to relate to individual, school, or period styles. He
states: "But now it is time to come to the life of Cimabue who,
since he originated the new way of drawing and painting, should
rightly and properly be the first to be described in my Vite, in
which I shall endeavour as far as possible to deal with artists
according to schools and styles rather than chronologically."12
Vasari continues: "Thus the old Byzantine style was completely
abandoned-the first steps being taken by Cimabue and followed
by Giotto and a new manner [rebirth) took its place: I like to call
this Giotto's own style, since it was discovered by him and his
pupils and was then generally admired and imitated by
everybody." In this style of painting the unbroken outline was
rejected, as well as staring eyes, feet on tiptoe, sharp hands,
absence of shadow. [Giotto] was the first to express the
emotions, so that in his pictures one can discern expressions of
fear, hate, anger, or love. He evolved a delicate style from one
which had been rough and harsh."13
The artistic biographer goes on: "if we compare the work of
Giotto, Andrea Pisano, Nino, and all the others whom I have
grouped in the first period (because of their similarities in style)
with what was done later, the former do not deserve even modest,
let alone unqualified, praise."14
Vasari then comments on the second generation of painters,
such as Fra Lippo, who assimilated Masaccio's style (the new
style): "Above all we shall see that even in works of no great
quality there is careful organization and purpose: the style is
lighter, colors are more charming, and the arts are approaching the
 15

state of complete perfection in which they exactly reproduce the

truth of nature. "15
In the third preface of the Vite Vasari defines maniera as one of
the five stylistic qualities that comprises a good art work of the
Cinquecento, found in architecture, painting, and sculpture.16
These five stylistic qualities-regola (unit of measurement), ordine
(order), misura (proportion), disegno (design), and maniera (style)-
-can be defined in the following manner. Regola and ordine refer
only to architecture: regola is the manner in which a building is
measured ordine is the manner in which architectural orders are
classified. Misura is the quality of proportion that is shared by all
works of art. Disegno, which occurs in sculpture as well as in
painting, is obtained from imitating the most beautiful elements
from nature and works of art. Maniera is a stylistic quality that
relates mostly to drawing and painting. Vasari defines the term
maniera and explains its meaning and application in three
references: as a method of working, as the style of an individual,
school, or period, and as an aesthetic judgment. According to the
biographer, these stylistic criteria were employed by artists before
the Cinquecento, but the Cinquecento masters perfected and
normalized their use. Thus, Vasari claims these five qualities
constituted an improvement in contemporary art as compared to
previous styles of art. Furthermore, Vasari states that "maniera is
more than an element of art, it is a technique (a method or style)
by which a perfect form is created the total configuration of a
beautiful figure or perfect form is the result of combining and
copying parts from other beautiful or perfect figures when this
method is used for all the figures in an art work it is called bella
maniera."17
In this third preface, Vasari profusely praises the third
generation of artists: "Indeed, it is not surprising that they never
achieved these elusive refinements, seeing that excessive study or
diligence tends to produce a dry style when it becomes an end in
16

itsel£."18 For instance, he writes: "It was Leonardo who originated

the third style or period, which we like to call the modem age for in
addition to the force and robustness of his draughtsmanship and
his subtle and exact reproduction of every detail in nature, he
showed in his works an understanding of rule, a better knowledge
of order, correct proportion, perfect design, and an inspired
grace."19 And "Raphael's style influenced Andrea del Sarto and
although Andrea's work was less robust and his colours softer, it
was remarkably free from error."20 In these instances, of course,
Vasari uses the word maniera as a method of working.
In the third preface, however, the word maniera is also used to
judge the stylistic contributions of artists such as Antonio Allegri
(Correggio): "Similarly, it is almost impossible to describe the
charming vivacity of the paintings executed by Antonio Correggio:
this artist painted hair, for example, in an altogether new way, for
whereas in the works of previous artists it was depicted in a
laboured, hard, and dry manner, in his it appears soft and downy,
with each golden strand finely distinguished and coloured, so that
the result is more beautiful than in reallife."21
Vasari continues: "Similar effects were achieved by Francesco
Mazzola of Parma (Parmigianino), who in several respects-as
regards grace and ornamentation, and fine style---€ven surpassed
Correggio, as is shown by many of his pictures, in which the
effortless facility of his brush enabled him to depict smiling faces
and eloquent eyes, and in which the very pulses seem to beat. "22
In this instance the word maniera denotes both method, individual
style, and the formation of a school of style.
Vasari culminates the third preface by praising his mentor,
Michelangelo: "If their work were put side by side, the heads,
hands, arms, and feet carved by Michelangelo being compared
with those made by the ancients, his would be seen to be
fashioned on sounder principles and executed with more grace
 17

and perfection: the effortless intensity of his graceful style defies

comparison. "23
This statement indicates how Vasari uses the term maniera to
refer to its three aspects: a method, a style, and a aesthetic
quality. Vasari does not differentiate or classify the technical and
stylistic development of his contemporaries. He sets up criteria
with the five visual elements to study an individual artist, a group
or school of artists, and an artistic period, and to evaluate the
artists and their artistic endeavors, and employs these criteria
throughout the biographies.
Vasari's artistic criteria should guide us to study the works of
the first generation of Mannerist artists (Beccafumi, Pontormo,
Rosso, and Parmigianino) when we compare them to Vasari's
mentor, Michelangelo. The Vasarian criteria should further govern
us to compare the works of the first generation of Mannerist
painters (Beccafumi, Pontormo, Rosso, and Parmigianino) with
the Maniera painters (Bronzino, Salviati, and Vasari).
Consequently, Vasari promotes the Maniera style in two ways: as
an artist in his paintings and as historian in his writings of the
Vite.
Vasari concludes the introduction to the second preface: "I do
not think that my fellow artists will have found it boring to hear
the story of their lives and study their styles [maniere] and
methods, and perhaps they will derive no little benefit from this.
This would certainly bring me great pleasure, and I would consider
it a wonderful reward for my work, in which my only aim has
been to serve and entertain them to the best of my ability."24

1Frederick Hartt, "Review of Paola Barocchi's Rosso Fiorentino," Art Bulletin 34

(1952), 67-69; "Power and the Individual in Mannerist Art," Studies in Western
Art, II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 222-38; and, The History of
Italian Renaissance Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970), 482-83,
574.
2For a complete bibliography on Mannerism consult the following sources: Craig
Hugh Smyth, Mannerism and Maniera (Vienna: IRSA, 1992). The excellent
18

Introduction by Elizabeth Cropper contains an updated bibliography on the

historiograph)_:' of Mannerism. See Fritz Baumgart, Renaissance und Kunst des
Manierismus (Verlag du Mont Schauberg, 1963); Sidney Freedberg, Painting in
Italy: 1500-1600 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971); and, Liana De Girolami
Cheney, The Paintings of the Casa Vasari (New York: Garlang Publishing
Company, 1985).
3sydney Freedberg, "Parmigianino in Rome: An Aspect of the Genesis of
Mannerism," Paper delivered at the CAA, January, 1948; Parmigianino, His Works
in Painting (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950); "Observations on the
Painting of the Maniera, "Art Bulletin 47, (1965) 187-97, and, Painting in Italy:
1500-1600, 114-117, 152, 165-66.
4Vite, Preface I, 7. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' piu eccellenti pittori, scultori ed
archittetori. (The Lives oj the Painters, Sculptors and Architects,) ed. William
Gaunt; trans. A.B. Hinds, [London: Dent, 1963. 4 vols herewith referred as the
Vite.]
5wolfram Prinz, "I Ragionamenti del Vasari sullo Sviluppo e Declino delle Arti,"
in Vasari storiografo e artista: Atti del Congresso Internazionale nel IV centenario
della sua morte, 8.5'7-66.
6Mirollo, Mannerism and Renaissance Poetry, 9, maintains that Vasari's Vite "do
not present a moral, social, or emotional justification for artistic activity."
7vite, Second Preface
8Ibid.
9Ibid.
10Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12Ibid.
13Ibid.
14Ibid.
15Ibid.
16Vite, First Preface, 6-7. Vasari continues to state in the third preface to the
Vite: "By rule in architecture we mean the method used of measuring antiques and
basing modem works on the plans of ancient buildings. Order is the distinction
made between one kind of architectural style and another, so that each has the
parts appropriate to it and there is no confusion between Doric, Ionic, Corinthian,
and Tuscan. Proportion is a universal law of architecture and sculpture (and also
of painting) which stipulates that all bodies must be correctly aligned, with their
parts properly arranged. Design is the imitation of the most beautiful things in
nature, used for the creation of all figures whether in sculpture or painting; and
this quality depends on the ability of the artist's hand and mind to reproduce
what he sees with his eyes accurately and correctly on to paper or a panel or
whatever flat surface he may be using. The same applies to works of relief in
sculpture. And then the artist achieves the highest perfection of style (maniera] by
copying the most beautiful things in nature and combining the most perfect
members, hands, head, torso, and legs, to produce the finest possible figure as a
model for use in all his works; this is how he achieves what we know as fine style
~bella maniera]."
7lbid., 7. "La maniera venne poi Ia Fiu bella dall'avere messo in uso il frequente
ritrarre le cose piu belle, e da que piu bello o mani o teste o corpi o gambe
aggiugnerle insieme, e fare una figure di tutte queUe belezze che piu si poteva, e
 19

rnetterla in uso in ogni opera per tutte le figure; che per questo si dice esser bella
rnaniera."
18Jbid.
19/bid.
20/bid·
21 Vite, Third Preface.
22Jbid.
23Jbid.
24vite, Second Preface.
Fig. 1 Jacopo Pontormo, Descent from the Cross, Fig. 2 Rosso Fiorentino, Putto Pl
1525. Florence, Santa Felicita, Capponi Chapel Lute, c.1525. florence, Uff
 '<1(_., .....,., -.

,,
-- .,. V• ,. •
,,,·,,, •

tft 71r?

Fig. 3 Parmigianino, Madonna of the Rose, Fig. 4 Parmigianino, Amor, 1535-40. V

1530-35. Dresden, Gernaeldegalerie Kunsthistorisches Museum
22

Fig. 5 Agnolo Bronzino, Eleonora of Toledo Chapel, 1540.

Florence, Palazzo Vecchio

Fig. 6 Francesco Salviati, Sala dell' Udienza, 1543--45, Florence,

Palazzo Vecchio.
 23

Fig. 7 Giorgio Vasari, Sala dei Cento Giorni, 1546. Rome,

Palazzo della Cancelleria

......:...

Fig. 8 Perino del Vaga, Sala Paolina, 1545. Rome, Castel

Sant' Angelo
Fig. 9 Jacopino del Conte (after a design by Fig. 10 Giorgio Vasari, Allegory of the Im
Perino del Vaga?) Preaching of the Conception, 1540. Florence, Chur
Baptist, 1538-40. Rome, Oratory of Santissimi Apostoli
San Giovanni Decollato
 25

Fig. 11 Giorgio Vasari, The Supper of St. Gregory, 1539. Bologna,

Pinaccoteca
This page intentionally left blank
 PREFACE TO THE THIRD PART

Giorgio Vasari

Truly great was the advancement conferred on the arts of

architecture, painting, and sculpture by those excellent masters of
whom we have written hitherto, in the Second Part of these Lives,
for to the achievements of the early masters they added rule,
order, proportion, draughtsmanship, and manner not, indeed, in
complete perfection, but with so near an approach to the truth
that the masters of the third age, of whom we are henceforward to
speak, were enabled, by means of their light, to aspire still higher
and attain to that supreme perfection which we see in the most
highly prized and most celebrated of our modem works. But to
the end that the nature of the improvement brought about by the
aforesaid craftsmen may be even more clearly understood, it will
certainly not be out of place to explain in a few words the five
additions that I have named, and to give a succinct account of the
origin of that true excellence which, having surpassed the age of
the ancients, makes the moderns so glorious.
Rule, then, in architecture, was the process of taking
measurements from antiquities and studying the ground-plans of
ancient edifices for the construction of modern buildings. Order
was the separating of one style from another, so that each body
should receive its proper members, with no more interchanging
between Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Tuscai'L Proportion was the
universal law applying both to architecture and to sculpture, that
all bodies should be made correct and true, with the members in
proper harmony and so, also, in painting. Draughtsmanship was
the imitation of the most beautiful parts of nature in all figures,
whether in sculpture or in painting and for this it is necessary to
have a hand and a brain able to reproduce with absolute accuracy
and precision, on a level surface-whether by drawing on paper,
or on panel, or on some other level surface---€verything that the
28

eye sees and the same is true of relief in sculpture. Manner then
attained to the greatest beauty from the practice which arose of
constantly copying the most beautiful objects, and joining together
these most beautiful things, hands, heads, bodies, and legs, so as
to make a future of the greatest possible beauty. This practice
was carried out in every work for all figures, and for that reason it
is called the beautiful manner.
These things had not been done by Giotto or by the other early
craftsmen, although they had discovered the rudiments of all these
difficulties, and had touched them on the surface as in their
drawing, which was sounder and more true to nature than it had
been before, and likewise in harmony of colouring and in the
grouping of figures in scenes, and in many other respects of which
enough has been said. Now although the masters of the second
age improved our arts greatly with regard to all the qualities
mentioned above, yet these were not made by them so perfect as
to succeed in attaining to complete perfection, for there was
wanting in their rule a certain freedom which, without being of the
rule, might be directed by the rule and might be able to exist
without causing confusion or spoiling the order which order had
need of an invention abundant in every respect, and of a certain
beauty maintained in every least detail, so as to reveal all that
order with more adornment. In proportion there was wanting a
certain correctness of judgment, by means of which their figures,
without having been measured, might have, in due relation to their
dimensions, a grace exceeding measurement. In their drawing
there was not the perfection of finish, because, although they
made an arm round and a leg straight, the muscles in these were
not revealed with that sweet and facile grace which hovers
midway between the seen and the unseen, as is the case with the
flesh of living figures nay, they were crude and excoriated, which
made them displeasing to the eye and gave hardness to the
manner. This last was wanting in the delicacy that comes from
 29

making all figures light and graceful, particularly those of women

and children, with the limbs true to nature, as in the case of men,
but veiled with a plumpness and fleshiness that should not be
awkward, as they are in nature, but refined by draughtsmanship
and judgment. They also lacked our abundance of beautiful
costumes, our great number and variety of bizarre fancies,
loveliness of colouring, wide knowledge of buildings, and distance
and variety in landscapes. And although many of them, such as
Andrea Verrocchio and Antonio del Polliauolo, and many others
more modem, began to seek to make their figures with more study,
so as to reveal in them better draughtsmanship, with a degree of
imitation more correct and truer to nature, nevertheless the whole
was not yet there, even though they had one very certain
assurance-namely, that they were advancing towards the good,
and their figures were thus approved according to the standard of
the works of the ancients, as was seen when Andrea Verrocchio
restored in marble the legs and arms of the Marsyas in the house
of the Medici in Florence. But they lacked a certain finish and
finality of perfection in the feet, hands, hair, and beards, although
the limbs as a whole are in accordance with the antique and have
a certain correct harmony in the proportions. Now if they had
had that minuteness of finish which is the perfection and bloom of
art, they would also have had a resolute boldness in their works
and from this there would have followed delicacy, refinement, and
supreme grace, which are the qualities produced by the perfection
of art in beautiful figures, whether in relief or in painting but these
qualities they did not have, although they give proof of diligent
striving. That finish, and that certain something that they lacked,
they could not achieve so readily, seeing that study, when it is
used in that way to obtain finish, gives dryness to the manner.
After them, indeed, their successors were enabled to attain to
it through seeing excavated out of the earth certain antiquities
cited by Pliny as amongst the most famous, such as the Laocoon,
30

the Hercules, the Great Torso of the Belvedere, and likewise the
Venus, the Cleopatra, the Apollo, and an endless number of
others, which, both with their sweetness and their severity, with
their fleshy roundness copied from the greatest beauties of nature,
and with certain attitudes which involve no distortion of the
whole figure but only a movement of certain parts, and are
revealed with a most perfect grace, brought about the
disappearance of a certain dryness, hardness, and sharpness of
manner, which had been left to our art by the excessive study of
Piero della Francesca, Lazzaro Vasari, Alesso Baldovinetti,
Andrea dal Castagno, Pesello, Ercole Ferrarese, Giovanni Bellini,
Cosimo Rosselli, the Abbot of S. Clemente, Domenico del
Ghirlandajo, Sandro Botticelli, Andrea Mantegna, Filippo, and
Luca Signorelli. These masters sought with great efforts to do the
impossible in art by means of labour, particularly in
foreshortenings and in things unpleasant to the eye, which were as
painful to see as they were difficult for them to execute. And
although their works were for the most part well drawn and free
from errors, yet there was wanting a certain resolute spirit which
was never seen in them, and that sweet harmony of colouring
which the Bolognese Francia and Pietro Perugino first began to
show in their works at the sight of which people ran like madmen
to this new and more lifelike beauty, for it seemed to them quite
certain that nothing better could ever be done. But their error was
afterwards clearly proved by the works of Leonardo da Vinci,
who, giving a beginning to that third manner which we propose to
call the modern-besides the force and boldness of his drawing,
and the extreme subtlety wherewith he counterfeited all the
minutenesses of nature exactly as they are-with good rule, better
order, right proportion, perfect drawing, and divine grace,
abounding in resources and having a most profound knowledge of
art, may be truly said to have endowed his figures with motion
and breath.
 31

There followed after him, although at some distance, Giorgione

da Castelfranco, who obtained a beautiful gradation of colour in
his pictures, and gave a sublime movement to his works by means
of a certain darkness of shadow, very well conceived and not
inferior to him in giving force, relief, sweetness, and grace to his
pictures, with his colouring, was Fra Bartolommeo di San Marco.
But more than all did the most gracious Raffaello da Urbino, who,
studying the labours of the old masters and those of the modern,
took the best from them, and, having gathered it together, enriched
the art of painting with that complete perfection which was
shown in ancient times by the figures of Apelles and Zeuxis nay,
even more, if we may make bold to say it, as might be proved if
we could compare their works with his. Wherefore nature was left
vanquished by his colours and his invention was facile and
peculiar to himself, as may be perceived by all who see his
painted stories, which are as vivid as writings, for in them he
showed us places and buildings true to reality, and the features
and costumes both of our own people and of strangers, according
to his pleasure not to mention his gift of imparting grace to the
heads of young men, old men, and women, reserving modesty for
the modest, wantonness for the wanton, and for children now
mischief in their eyes, now playfulness in their attitudes and the
folds of his draperies, also, are neither too simple nor too
intricate, but of such a kind that they appear real.
In the same manner, but sweeter in colouring and not so bold,
there followed Andrea del Sarto, who may be called a rare
painter, for his works are free from errors. Nor is it possible to
describe the charming vivacity seen in the works of Antonio da
Correggio, who painted hair in detail, not in the precise manner
used by the masters before him, which was constrained, sharp,
and dry, but soft and feathery, with each single hair visible, such
was his facility in making them and they seemed like gold and
32

more beautiful than real hair, which is surpassed by that which he

painted.
The same did Francesco Mazzuoli of Parma, who excelled him
in many respects in grace, adornment, and beauty of manner, as
may be seen in many of his pictures, which smile on whoever
beholds them and even as there is a perfect illusion of sight in the
eyes, so there is perceived the beating of the pulse, according as it
best pleased his brush. But whosoever shall consider the mural
painting of Polidoro and Maturino, will see figures in attitudes
that seem beyond the bounds of possibility, and he will wonder
with amazement how it can be possible, not to describe with the
tongue, which is easy, but to express with the brush the
tremendous conceptions which they put into execution with such
mastery and dexterity, in representing the deeds of the Romans
exactly as they were.
And how many there are who, having given life to their figures
with their colours, are now dead, such as Il Rosso, Fra Sebastiane,
Giulio Romano, and Perino del Vaga! For of the living, who are
known to all through their own efforts, there is no need to speak
here. But what most concerns the whole world of art is that they
have now brought it to such perfection, and made it so easy for
him who possesses draughtsmanship, invention, and colouring,
that, whereas those early masters took six years to paint one
panel, our modern masters can paint six in one year, as I can
testify with the greatest confidence both from seeing and from
doing and our pictures are clearly much more highly finished and
perfect than those executed in former times by masters of account.
But he who bears the palm from both the living and the dead,
transcending and eclipsing all others, is the divine Michelagnolo
Buonarroti, who holds the sovereignty not merely one of these
arts, but of all three together. This master surpasses and excels
not only all those moderns who have almost vanquished nature,
but even those most famous ancients who without a doubt did so
 33

gloriously surpass her and in his own self he triumphs over

moderns, ancients, and nature, who could scarcely conceive
anything so strange and so difficult that he would not be able, by
the force of his most divine intellect and by means of his industry,
draughtsmanship, art, judgment, and grace, to excel it by a great
measure and that not only in painting and in the use of colour,
under which title are comprised all forms, and all bodies upright
or not upright, palpable or impalpable, visible or invisible, but
also in the highest perfection of bodies in the round, with the point
of his chisel. And from a plant so beautiful and so fruitful,
through his labours, there have already spread branches so many
and so noble, that, besides having filled the world in such
unwonted profusion with the most luscious fruits, they have also
given the final form to these three most noble arts. And so great
and so marvelous is his perfection, that it may be safely and
surely said that his statues are in all their parts much more
beautiful than the ancient for if we compare the heads, hands,
arms, and feet shaped by the one with those of the others, we see
in his a greater depth and solidity, a grace more completely
graceful, and a much more absolute perfection, accomplished with
a manner so facile in the overcoming of difficulties, that it is not
possible ever to see anything better. And the same may be
believed of his pictures, which, if we chanced to have some by the
most famous Greeks, and Romans, so that we might compare
them face to face, would prove to be as much higher in value and
more noble as his sculptures are clearly superior to all those of the
ancients.
But if we admire so greatly those most famous masters who,
spurred by such extraordinary rewards and by such good-fortune,
gave life to their works, how much more should we not celebrate
and exalt to the heavens those rare intellects who, not only
without reward, but in miserable poverty, bring forth fruits so
precious? We must believe and declare, then, that if, in this our
34

age, there were a due need of remuneration, there would be

without a doubt works greater and much better than were ever
wrought by the ancients. But the fact that they have to grapple
more with famine than with fame, keeps our hapless intellects
submerged, and, to the shame and disgrace of those who could
raise them up but give no thought to it, prevents them from
becoming known.
And let this be enough to have said on this subject for it is
now time to return to the Lives, and to treat in detail of all those
who have executed famous works in this third manner, the creator
of which was Leonardo da Vinci, with whom we will now begin.
 MANIERA AS AN AESTHETIC IDEAL

John Shearman

If we survey, from a distance, recent concepts of mannerism,

we must admit that the situation is fluid and in certain areas
chaotic. I suppose that students of no other period that has a
name-Romanesque, baroque, postimpressionist-are so haunted
by, or so much in disagreement over, the meaning of that name.
There need be no hesitation in thinking again about the problem,
even on the grounds of convenience, since there is no unanimity in
the way the term mannerism is used-what qualities in a work it
exemplifies, to what groups of works it applies. I suggest that
there is a reason for this situation. In this century, definitions have
been fabricated by historians, rightly intent on dispelling earlier
prejudices against so much of sixteenth-century art, and each
historian has felt free to make his own definition and to choose
whatever works he would like to apply it to. No wonder that
definitions vary so widely, for most are, in my view, arbitrary.l
When quite recently historians looked again at the cinquecento,
they found in it vital currents of style to which prejudice had
taught them to be blind. By an accident-the clear sympathy
established by early-twentieth-century tastes-the current that
aroused most enthusiasm embraced the early work of Rosso,
Pontormo, Beccafumi, and Parmigianino, and since mannerism, a
term they inherited, applied to the cinquecento, many of them
freely applied it to this current. With infinitely varying emphasis,
detail, and choice of personalities, and with bewildering attempts
to account for this phenomenon by outside events, this technique
has in general been followed. What is its validity? If one can
imagine this technique let loose upon the nineteenth century, one
might begin impressionism with, say, Delacroix.2
36

The arbitrary approach accounts for the present fluidity, but

its disadvantages do not stop at the inconvenience and
contentiousness of chaos. If we allow definitions without controls,
they become unarguable and virtually useless, for in a situation
where each of us makes his own definition of mannerism, then,
once our position is stated, no further discussion is possible.
Secondly, the situation has in the last forty years had another
unfortunate result: it has erected a new set of prejudices to
replace the old ones. If the origin of mannerism is to be seen in
such works as Pontormo's Certosa frescoes, or Rosso's Volterra
Deposition, and since so many analyses, brilliant and entirely valid
in themselves, have underlined the aesthetic violence, the
expressiveness, and the spiritual intensity of these works, then it
follows that these are the qualities of pure mannerism.
Parenthetically, I never understand how this includes
Parmigianino, or conversely why Durer and the late Donatello are
not mannerists. But if this much is granted, then a work such as
Salviati's Pace, because it has none of these qualities, is a watered-
down, anemic example of mannerism. In general, the result has
been to throw the emphasis of interest, and so of research, upon
the second and third decades of central Italian art, to the
detriment of the rest of the century. This situation is at last
changing. I believe that Salviati was not only, quite possibly, a
greater artist than Pontormo, but that most of his work stands for
something utterly foreign to the early work of Rosso and
Pontormo. Thirdly, since it has become so common to identify
mannerism with shock, tension, and violent expression, such
analyses have too often been forced indiscriminately upon almost
any cinquecento object, frequently in cases where they seem to me
to be inappropriate. I have never found support for such
interpretations deduced from the relevant literary material.
 37

I should like to suggest that there is another way in which we

can arrive at a meaning and a set of values for mannerism it can
be drawn out of the material, and not imposed upon it; it need not
be arbitrary, but can be controlled and argued at every stage. Let
us take it as axiomatic, as history entitles us to do, that every
mannerist work must exemplify the quality maniera.
I must here make a semantic digression, because in the best-
known and very useful study of this word,3 it is denied that
maniera is commonly used as an absolute quality (thus
contradicting the Accademia della Crusca).4 In almost all cases
the word maniera can be rendered by the English word "style."
We use style in two different ways. First, and most usually, we
qualify it: we talk of good and bad style, Byzantine style,
Albertinelli imitating the style of Fra Bartolommeo, and so on
(corresponding to buona maniera, maniera greca, la maniera di Fra
Bartolommeo). But there is also what is known as the absolute
usage: we say that a person or a thing "has style," and this needs
no qualification by an article or an adjective similarly in Italian,
since at least the quattrocento: "It is right for the ladies to gossip,
rna con maniera. "5 I think we all mean the same thing when the
word style is used in this way. The positive qualities of style are
surely a certain poise, cultured elegance, refinement, and
perfection of performance the negative qualities are unnaturalness,
affectation, selfconsciousness, and ostentation. This corresponds
precisely enough to the original meaning of maniera. Georg Weise,
in a recent exemplary study of the entry of this word into the
Italian language,6 traced both its history and its meaning to the
French courtly literature of the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.
Here, maniere is a wholly desirable quality of people, and
corresponds roughly to savoir-Jaire, or sophistication it is a part of
an artificial code of behavior. So much is it an absolute quality
that it can be personified in allegories of the virtues of the perfect
38

courtier: Lil Dame Maniere. Weise then showed how the word and
its meaning came to be used by Italian authors of the first half of
the quattrocento, like Giusto dei Conti (d. 1449) who praises le
virtu, la beltii, la ttumiera of his lady. In a canzone a ballo Lorenzo de'
Medici writes: "Whether you are walking, standing, or sitting, do
it always with maniera." Because of the great vogue for the
literature of manners in the cinquecento, Weise naturally found
examples more frequently in the literature of that period.
One constant factor in the development of art criticism is the
borrowing of techniques of analysis and terms of reference from
other fields of criticism. For example Vasari, in formulating the
first definition of color harmony, took his formula and vocabulary
directly from musical theory7 this is a familiar process, which of
course also happens in reverse. The borrowing takes place when
one field of criticism is less mature or articulate than another one
of the most articulate studies in the Renaissance was that of
manners. It has been shown, for example, that Vasari's way of
using the term grazia is borrowed from Castiglione, a and that his
concept Jacilita is based upon the latter's sprezzatura,9 the
effortless resolution of all difficulties. Dolce actually retains
Castiglione's polarities sprezzatura and affettazione.lD l suspect that
Castiglione was a much more general source of inspiration than
this, and one reason was that the Cortegiano made its own bridge
to the arts. Not only was an artist present at the discussions, but
Castiglione often quotes an example from the history of art to
illustrate a general point of human behavior.ll
It was with these conditions that maniera, from being an
attribute of people, became applied to a similar quality desirable
in works of art. I think it is significant that the earliest examples I
have been able to find of maniera being used in this way occur in
the work of courtier writers. The first is a sonnet in praise of
 39

Pisanello by Agnolo Galli, 1442 (almost as soon as the word

appears anywhere):

Art, measure, air, design,

Maniera, perspective and naturalness
Heaven has given him .... 12

This may be compared with Lorenzo de' Medici's list of the

virtues of women: "great intelligence, polished and modest ways
and habits, elegant maniera and gestures.13 The second example
is from the 1519letter to Leo X on the architecture of Rome, where
the matter is Raphael's but the syntax is Castiglione's after
praising the antique architects, they say that the buildings of the
Goths were "wanting in every grace, without any maniera
whatever."14 The construction is a favorite of Castiglione's, and
there is no question that maniera is a quality equated
grammatically with gratia15 the term is therefore used absolutely,
as in Galli's poem. Let us notice in passing that it is clear from the
context that grace and style are qualities of modern and antique
architecture.
The letters of Aretina forge this link between the two fields of
criticism in a slightly different way. I know of no case where he
uses maniera absolutely as an attribute of a work of art, though he
does so, for example, when making an evocative appreciation of
Tasso's poetry, linking maniera as Castiglione does with grace.l6
But there are cases where he talks of the manners of, say, a piece
of decoration, exactly as if he were talking of a person he
describes the rooms in Duke Cosima's palace, "having such
artfully made maniere," and praises a relief by Raffaello da
Montelupo, 1536, "having such delicate maniere. "17
Vasari, of course, uses maniera in a multitude of different ways
the absolute one is common, and again it is as a desirable quality.
The crucial text occurs in the Proemio to the third part of the Vite,
40

where the familiar list of five qualities, of which the artists of the
second section were still deficient, ends with maniera.lB There are
two points about this. The first four qualities, rule, order, measure,
design, are all to some extent technical terms that need to be
defined for the ordinary reader, and he defines them. But he does
not define maniera.19 This is because the term comes from
everyday use and from the literature that his readers would know:
there was no need to define it. Secondly, almost immediately
afterward he repeats the list, applying these qualities to
Leonardo, but he replaces maniera with grazia2° again, maniera is
not the same as grazia, but it must be analogous grammatically,
and must also be a positive quality. Then he says that Ghiberti, in
his bronze doors, showed invention, order, maniera, and design,
and Maso da San Friano invention, design, maniera, grace, and
harmony in coloring.21 There are other cases of maniera used in
this way in the Vite, and at least one in the letters, describing a
wax head .by Michelangelo.22 Using it in different contexts, he
naturally gives it subtly varied shades of meaning, but in general
the original concept, of accomplishment and cultured refinement,
makes perfect sense. In one well-known passage on sculpture, for
example, he stresses its antinaturalism, or rather its conscious
abstraction from and idealization of nature.23 Similarly, Giorgione
followed the "ensign of living things, and no imitation of maniera
whatever."24
Vasari and his generation were not conscious of periods in the
history of art with contrary stylistic characteristics, but only of a
greater or lesser approximation to an absolute standard of
perfection. Therefore, he does not use the term maniera with
historical discrimination, restricting it to his own century, but
wherever he, in his own subjective vision, feels it appropriate. It
seems to me to make perfect sense that he sees the quality in
Ghiberti's reliefs, just as Galli recognized it in Pisanello a century
 41

before. With the same logic, Cellini found maniera in an antique

torso. 25 In fact, the expression is used critically before it is
associated with a limited stylistic phase. Two authors of the
eighties, Borghini and Armenini, weighed it in the balance and at
times found it wanting. The former suggests that it is not
necessary to hold to maniera,"26 and the latter, using it often as an
ordinary term of praise, like Vasari, is worried about its
artificiality.27 It is out of this critical usage that the historical one
grows, first in the familiar letter of Vincenzo Giustiniani,28 where
it is applied to a group of painters, and then fully formulated in
Bellori's famous purple passage in the Vita of Annibale Carracci,
1672.29 There is no difference in meaning between Bellori's and
Vasari's use of the word, but by a mutation in prejudices it
becomes a term of abuse rather than of praise now, however, it is
seen as something that distinguishes a period, and he conceives
virtually a movement, begun by Raphael, among others, "who
were the beginners of maniera" the first praiseworthy reaction
came with the work of Rubens and Barocci. Although, in general,
later writers followed Bellori, this is not always so there are those
who continue to use the expression without historical intent, as a
general term of praise or abuse.
It is at this point that derivative words become important.
They existed from the beginning. The French enmaniere and the
Italian manieroso, meant stylish, polished, refinect.30 Vasari and
Firenzuola31 use the Italian form for elegant people, and later
writers apply it, without change of meaning, to works of art.
Ottonelli and Pietro da Cortona (1652)32 contrast the naturalist
Caravaggio with the Cavaliere d'Arpino, with his stile manieroso e
gratioso, and it is a very popular expression with Malvasia (1673)
who, associating it with adjectives like affected, dashing, willful,
shows not only his prejudice but also his retention of the original
concept.33 He restricts it to the art of a certain period, roughly to
42

the contemporaries of Salviati. Baldinucci's alternative is

manierato, 34 used with the viciousness of Bellori, but it is still used
objectively by others a few years later Richardson, in the Uffizi,
made this revealing note on an antique bust of Plautilla: "very
young, and a natural pretty air: this is not common in the Antique,
which is generally Manierato. "35
The term mannerist appears first, as is well known, in French
Freart de Chambray coins manieriste for a group, including the
Cavaliere d'Arpino and Lanfranco, whom he wishes to abuse: he
uses it critically, not historically.36 The earliest Italian example I
know of-1785-is already historical in sense.37 Lanzi's frequent
use of the term from 1792 onward is well known, but I must
underline two points: first, he states that his manieristi are
precisely those, in the epoch succeeding Leo X, whom Bellori
described as painting di maniera, 38 and second, their mannerism is
opposed, as it should be if the meaning is indeed continuous, to
the early work of Rosso as well as to the High Renaissance. 39 The
word manierista reaches the general currency of guide book usage
by 1807. 40
Lanzi also seems to have invented the term manierismo in
1792,41 and his critical analysis, of excessive virtuosity and
capriciousness, links his meaning directly with that of Burckhardt,
or even of an early article by Gamba.42 These would have been
intelligible to the cinquecento-except that they, naturally, would
have pleaded a positive interpretation against the negative legacy
of the intervening centuries. It is only in this century that an abrupt
change of direction occurs in the development of the term.
I have traced briefly this course of events to suggest two
things. The first is that the expression mannerism has a continuous
history, and this history shows that the word already has a
meaning this seems to me a good enough reason for not inventing
new ones. The second is that if we are willing to revert to the
 43

tradition of this concept, we have a term that is not only

historically justified and not arbitrary, but also one that can be
controlled and argued: research can sharpen the weapon. Taking
again the axiom that mannerism must embrace, among other
things, maniera, I want now to suggest how we, as historians, can
make use of the term on these conditions.
No historical concept of mannerism exists in the cinquecento,
but it is then that maniera was most appreciated in works of art.
Manierismo was never a movement, in the post-Romantic sense,
and I think we must fix its limits by asking ourselves at what
points maniera begins and ceases to characterize a style. The
nature of stylistic changes in the pre-Romantic period is never
violent or reactionary, but is a complex, gradual process: at a
certain point one feels that the ingredients and objectives have
changed in their relative proportion, so that a new set of values
predominates. Maniera, in small proportion, is present in many
periods, especially in some parts of the quattrocento when was it
present in greatest proportion?
When in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a term was
fashioned to characterize the Romano-Tuscan period from
(roughly) Raphael's school to the Zuccari and the Cavaliere
d'Arpino, I think the derivatives of maniera were chosen because
this was its most typical, communicable feature. I feel it is
legitimate to associate in our definition those qualities which are
constantly bracketed with it, are sympathetic to it, and in the
appropriate cultural ambiente were as highly valued: I mean
sprezzatura, the effortless resolution of all difficulties-difficulty is
a hypnotic concept in Renaissance theory,4 3 hence the positive
value attached to facility. 44 The conquest of difficulty naturally
places a premium on complexity of form, fantasy, invention, and
caprice. Grace is an ideal that is frequently exchanged for maniera,
though it is more restricted in meaning.
44

In the French courts passion was inimical to maniere, as it was

also to Castiglione's sprezzatura. 45 So, mannerism should speak a
language that is articulate, intricate, and sophisticated, it should
speak a silver-tongued language of beauty and caprice, not one of
violence, incoherence, and despair.
I feel very strongly that this argument cannot lead us to the art of
the second decade in Tuscany, but that it leads us to Rome; I believe
we can even say at what later point the new language was brought to
Florence. Mannerism was not a reaction against the High
Renaissance, but was latent in it, like the baroque. It became
something different and individual by taking a part of the High
Renaissance and subjecting that part to special development;
characteristically, it came to birth easily, not in a crisis.
The Sistine ceiling is a work as vast in scale stylistically as
physically. There are parts that were not understood until Rubens,
others have rightly been compared to Pontormo, and yet others
inspired Correggio; but there are some parts, especially some of the
Ignudi (Fig. 1), that contain such a high proportion of elegance and
grace, both of form and posture-at the expense, as always, of
physical and emotional energy-that in them lies the germ of
mannerism. I do not suggest that it necessarily starts here; it is
arguable that maniera is conspicuously present in the Doni tondo,
or even in Leonardo. But it was in developing in the following
decade this cultured and refined style that Michelangelo gave the
essential impulse; it is important that this new style first became
known in Rome. The opposing concepts, of Energy and Grace, of
Passion and maniera, can be seen quite evidently in the sculpture
of the second decade, between the Slaves and the Christ of the
Minerva. Perhaps even more striking, because more highly
developed, is the Flagellation design of 1516 made for Sebastiana;
only a copy of the final design survives, so I show one of the
preparatory studies (Fig. 2). 46 This is a subject which earlier
 45

would have drawn out all that was most expressive in

Michelangelo, for it lends itself to violence, yet it is interpreted
now with an unreal, ballet-like beauty, and reserve. The form is as
graceful, and as idealized, as the action.
Simultaneously a similar development took place in Raphael's
style. Between the second Stanza and the Cartoons, and the late
works, a new direction is indicated the situation is very complex,
and it is more accurate to speak of one of a number of new
directions. The St. Michael (Fig. 3) has again a subject that a few
years earlier would have led Raphael to a dynamic, explosive
interpretation now, in 1517, he expresses not so much the subject
as an ideal of beauty, and a harmony of color and formal
composition. The exquisite poise is as remarkable as the grace of
form and the intense idealism of the head here one sees perhaps
the most surprising development in Raphael, the stillness of the
emotion, almost to the point of abstraction. Raphael's style a few
years before had been (in direction, not in intention) proto-
baroque it was the portraits of Julius II and Castiglione that meant
most to Rubens and Rembrandt, the Chigi Chapel in Sta. Maria
del Popolo takes a blind step toward Bernini, the Cartoons were a
springboard for Poussin.47 Some of the late works, the St. Cecilia
(Fig. 4), the St. Michael, the portraits of Joanna of Aragon and La
Fornarina,48 prepare the way for Roman art of the immediately
succeeding decade.
Neither in Michelangelo's case nor in Raphael's is this
idealization a development toward empty superficiality. In the
poetry of the former, and in the literary circle of the latter, beauty
and grace have their own expressive and spiritual value. Even in
extreme cases the emotional stillness in their works is not lack of
feeling but a change in the means of its communication.
Raphael perhaps preceded Michelangelo in the subconscious
search for the ideal of maniera in architecture. In the letter to Leo
46

X we have his criticism of Bramante, whose too-austere style still

fell short of the antique standard in richness of motifs and
costliness of materials.49 There is no sign that Raphael used the
inventive license toward the antique which Vasari so acutely
appreciated in MichelangeloSO_-llis contribution is
complementary: grace of detail, lightness, and surface complexity.
His facade of the Palazzo Branconio dell'Aquila repeats the
criticism of Bramante, replacing the latter's structurally expressive
system with an intricate mask of stucco, so lavishly distributed
that it draws window tabernacles and niches into its decorative
purpose (Fig. 5.) It is a little capricious, and its wit, variety, and
beauty ask to be admired the way to the Casino of Pius IV is
opened here. 51
If the germ of mannerism exists in the High Renaissance, and
the seeds were sown in the second decade, the vital place of its
growth is in Rome between the death of Raphael and the Sack.
There was then in Rome, by chance, a brilliant group of young
men, headed by Perino, Polidoro, Rosso, and Parmigianino, and it
was in their hands that mannerism was shaped into a style of
universal significance.52 Of these, the most difficult to study is
Polidoro, yet it is clear that in these few years his productivity
was enormous and his style very influential. The maturity of the
quality maniera in his work is astonishing. He was a master of
fantastic ornament (for example, of vases and trophies) and he
evolved from Raphael a figure style of svelte and extravagant
plasticity (Fig. 6). His enormous output depended upon a true
genius, composed of an unlimited imagination (in a restricted
field) and a genuine cerebral facility.
Perino's early Roman period is still almost as difficult to
study. Paradoxically one of his most advanced compositions was
produced in Florence in 1522/23, and this was an artistic event of
the first importance: it was here that the new Roman style was
 47

introduced to Florence. Vasari arrived shortly afterward and he

recorded the enthusiasm with which it was received both by
artists and connoisseurs. 53 The cartoon Perino made for a fresco
in the church of the Camaldoli was so novel that it became a
second school for young painters,54 after Michelangelo's Battle of
Cascina, by which, incidentally, it was influenced. The subject was
the Massacre of the 10,000, and a number of drawings record its
design (Fig. 7).55 The figure groups are complex developments of
Raphael's themes, but their movements are antidynamic: not really
movements at all, but torsions, poses, and ritualistic gestures,
each silently obeying a rarefied code, abstracted from natural,
passionate human behavior. Similarly, every form is shaped by an
ideal, and fundamentally by the same set of values. To the
evidence of these drawings we must add a feature of the cartoon
mentioned by Vasari: a wealth of bizarre and fantastic detail on
things like helmets and shields. 56
The Camaldoli cartoon also gives us a unique opportunity to
contrast a representative young Roman with a Florentine of his
own generation, for it seems that Pontormo produced a design for
the same commission (Fig. 8).57 His drawing comes, therefore, at
the beginning of his work in the Certosa, and it is evident how,
from a position basically similar around 1510, Florentine and
Roman art had pursued divergent paths in the intervening decade.
This may partly be due to the very different characters of the two
dominating personalities, Raphael in Rome and Andrea del Sarto
in Florence. Pontormo's Massacre is full of passion, dynamic
sequences of form, and explosive movements. The contrasting
treatments of the same iconography at the top of each design are
characteristic: Pontormo's is an energetic, ecstatic symbol,
ignoring rational relationships of space and form, Perino's belongs
to some Olympian ballet. There seems to have been a competition,
48

and it is significant that Perino won it58 I think the whole incident
was a turning point in Florentine art.
Rosso's latest works in Florence seem to take this new
direction,59 but there is no doubt that in Rome he did so
wholeheartedly. The newly discovered Dead Christ in Boston (Fig.
9) allows us now to appreciate his stature in Rome.60 In some
ways this work makes a parallel with Polidoro's style, but above
all it reinterprets, and is profoundly inspired by, the Sistine
ceiling. It shows us most clearly that even rampant mannerism is
not a reaction against the High Renaissance. Rosso's rediscovery
of Michelangelo took place in general and in detail the figure of
Christ is based on the prophet Isaiah and one of the Ignudi, and
the angel heads are derived from Michelangelo's (Figs. 10, 11) and
through Michelangelo from classicism, in a particular sense. 61 He
modifies the expressive linear, chiseled, style that he had
individually developed in Florence from the late works of
Donatello,62 and being led by Michelangelo back to a continuous
plasticity, this becomes, like that of his contemporaries,
mellifluous and soigne. This picture should also remind us of the
intensity possible within the admitted inhibitions of mannerism.
The impact of Roman maniera on Rosso can clearly be seen if we
compare the head of Christ with that from the masterpiece of his
Florentine period, the Volterra Deposition (Figs. 12, 13). The new
intensity lies more in the expression of a set of aesthetic values
than of emotion.
Parmigianino came to Rome with a predisposition toward the
grace of Raphael, and the direct experience of the latter's work
had upon him an effect similar to Michelangelo's upon Rosso. On
his arrival it was said that in this young man was reborn the spirit
of Raphaei.63 This is a remark that makes a lot of sense if we
think of those works which the Romans would have remembered
as Raphael's last, most authoritative statement. It is also
 49

significant in that it underlines the point that Parmigianino's work

was not seen by his contemporaries as either anticlassical or a
reaction against Raphael, but rather as a continuation (Figs. 14,
15). It is indeed a continuation of a part of RaphaeL64 Two
decades later, Aretino complimented Salviati on a composition of
the Conversion of Saul by remarking that it had the venusta of
Raphael and the plasticity of Michelangelo.65
In the twenties, Michelangelo made further contributions to
this new language, most obviously in architecture. But at the same
time he gave it, so to speak, some of its most popular figures of
speech. First, the Teste divine (Fig. 16), which are dimostrazioni of
hyperclassical idealism and of imaginative fantasy 66 these
instantly passed into the syntax of Rosso, and later of Salviati
and Bronzino.67 It is significant that Michelangelo also invented
an entirely new technique, itself manieroso, for these drawings.
Second, he invented the figura serpentinata, a characteristic exercise
of mannerist artists, since it poses the purely aesthetic problem of
incorporating the maximum of torsion and variety in the human
figure within a limited space Gianbologna's Rape of the Sabines
answers this problem, among others: the figura serpentinata in
triplicate.
The Roman developments of the twenties, and Michelangelo's
work in the same period, began to affect Florentine art generally
by the end of the decade, and the work of the artists I have
mentioned was the foundation of the mature style of Cellini,
Salviati, and Bronzino in the forties, the great decade of Florentine
mannerism (Figs. 17, 18). I have tried to show that there exists a-
so to speak-documentary basis for the application of the word
to these works and this current. I feel that its use on these lines
would make sense to a cinquecento connoisseur, who would be
astonished if we called Pontormo's Certosa frescoes manierosi.
Unless I am wrong, mannerism is a label that came down to us
50

firmly attached to something, and the label loses all meaning if we

attach it to something else.68 Moreover, I believe that the
approach I have suggested could be useful to the modern
historian: maniera and its associated qualities and ideals isolate
an important current in cinquecento art, and one that begins in the
right place, is vigorous and productive, inventive and intensely
beautiful (if we miss that point we miss its raison d'etre). I think
we should return to the old meaning for mannerism, keeping,
however, the gain in historical imagination in this century, which
allows once more an unprejudiced, positive interpretation of the
style on its own terms.
Mannerism is perhaps the most vulnerable, of all stylistic
phenomena, to changes of taste it asks to be admired, and it rests
upon many reversible convictions, for example, that there is an
ideal beauty, that facility is something positive to express, that
prolixity of form and ornament gives pleasure to the eye and
stimulates the mind. Naturally, it was meaningless: to the
seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, and could only
be seen as a perversion and a decadence. Early twentieth-century
prejudices not only led, in my view, to the misapplication of the
term, but delayed still further the appreciation of true mannerism.
Perhaps today we are in a more fortunate position. The
functionalist heresy, for instance, has been exhausted, and our
present prejudices may enable us to admit that the premises of
mannerism are as legitimate as any others and that, with all its
inhibitions and while the current was vital, it produced works of
the greatest beauty.

lThe best survey of the historiography of mannerism, which gives a good idea of
current differences in interpretatiOn, is Eugenio Battisti's "Sfortune del
Manierismo," in Rinascimento e Barocco (Milan, 1960), 216 ff., which supersedes
G. N. Fasola's less complete and less impartial "Storiografia del Maniensmo," in
Scritti ... in onore di Lionello Venturi (Rome, 1956), I, 429 ff.
 51

2Many style labels can be defined only according to common usage.

Impressionism, and mannerism even more, are unusual in that they may be traced
back to ideas written down in the period in question.
3M. Treves, "Maniera, the History of a Word," Marsyas, 1, 1941, 69.
4vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, IX, 1905, 819-20, nos. vii, viii, xix,
and especially xx, which includes some of the texts from Vasari and Borghini
quoted here. Treves, op. cit., 81 (but contrast 74), dismisses this usage as an
occasional trope.
5"Tuttavia d'eccezion soffre la regola: Dee la donna ciarlar, rna con maniera-
Guadagni, Poes. I, 95, quoted in Accademia della Crusca.
6Georg Weise, "La doppia origine del concetto di Manierismo," in Studi Vasariani
[Atti del Convegno intemazionale peril IV Centenario della prima Edizione delle
"Vite" del Vasari, Firenze-Palazzo Strozzi, 16-19 Settembre 1950] (Florence,
1952), 181 ff. On only one point do I believe that Weise, if I understand him
correctly, is in error. Because Castiglione counseled the avoidance of affettazione
at all costs, Weise concludes (184) that he is, so to speak, against maniera. But
affettazione in this case is not to be translated as "affectation" with its modem
meaning. Castiglione defines the term (Cortegiano I, 28 and 40) as the vice opposite
to sprezzatura: it is the application of too much effort, and corresponds to
Vasari's fatica di stento. See below nn. 10 and 11.
7In the chapter How Colors Should Be Harmonized from Vasari's Treatise on
Paintin~, unione is defined thus: "a discord of different colors brought into
accord' and "a discord made most concordant," which may be compared with
"Harmony is discord concordant" (for example, on the title page of Franchino
Gafori's De harmonia musicorum instrumentorum, Venice, 1508). Vasari also uses
the analogy musica unita when talking about color.
8A. F. Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600, 2nd ed., 1956,97.
9R. J. Clements, "Michelangelo on Effort and Rapidity in Art," Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XVII, 1954, 308-310. For the origins of
Casti~lione's sprezzatura (especially Cortegiano I, 27) in antique theory (Cicero,
Plinr, s venustas, the Greek charis), seeS. H. Monk, "A Grace Beyond the Reach of
Art,' Journal of the History of Ideas, V, 1944, 131.
10" ... a certain appropriate carelessness is wanted .... For where labor can be
detected, there must needs be hardness and fussiness .... " [L. Dolce, Dial ago della
~ittura (Venice, 1557).]
1 E.g., illustrating the virtue sprezzatura against affettazione (Cortegiano I, 28):
"Apelles found th1s fault with Protogenes, that he did not know how to take his
hand away from the panel." Protogenes' fault was "being fussy in his works."
Later in the same passage sprezzatura is illustrated in terms of a painter's
technique.
12G. Vasari, Le vite ... , 1: Gentile da Fabriano e il Pisanello, ed. A. Venturi,
(Florence, 1896), 49. I have followed Venturi's attribution of the poem. J.
Dennistoun [Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbina (London, 1851), I, 416], who first
published the poem, gave it to the courtier Ottaviano Ubaldini, and Mrs. Marilyn
Lavin tells me there are reasons why this attribution is to be preferred. In any
case, it is not in doubt that the poem was written in 1442 at the court of Urbino. I
believe this text has not been quoted in this connection; however, the greater part
of those which follow have been noted many times in these discussions.
52

13Weise, op. cit., 183.

14v. Golzio, Raffaello nei documenti (Vatican City, 1936), 85.
15See, from the same letter, "entirely without art or design" (of the reliefs on the
Arch of Constantine) and "entirely without art, measure, or grace." The whole
sketch of the history of architecture in Rome has a remarkable similarity to
Castiglione's brief history of the Latin tongue in the Cortegiano I, 32. The
description of the period of barbarian architecture has this analogy: "Since Italy
had not only been preyed upon and devastated, but long inhabited by barbarians,
the Latin language was corrupted and spoilt by contact with those nations ....
Hence it has long been unregufated and various among us, having had none who
cared for it or wrote in it or tried to give it any splendor or grace at all .... "
16" ... with angelic grace in style and heavenly maniera in harmony ... " [Pietro
Aretine, Lettere sun'arte, ed. F. Pertile e E. Camesasca (Milan, 1957), II no. 77,
October, 1549].
17Jbid., II no. D (February, 1549) and I, no. XI (June 7, 1536); cf., "philosophers,
lordly and full of noble maniere," I, no. 57 (November 26, 1537).
18G. Vasari, Le vite ... , ed. G. Milanesi, Florence, 1879, IV, 7.
19He only says (8) what makes it perfect: Maniera then became most beautiful of
all by the practice of frequently copying the most beautiful things, and using the
most beautiful element of each, hands or heads or bodies or legs, in combination,
and making one figure of all those beauties as well as one could, and using it for
all one's figures, which therefore is called beautiful maniera." He then discusses
(9) the shortcomings of the artists of the second age: "... as to rule, a freedom ....
As to gratefulness in making all the figures slim and charming ... by the design and
~dgment used in executing them."
Ovasari-Milanesi, IV, 11.
21 Vasari-Milanesi, II, 106, and VII, 612.
22vasari-Milanesi, VII, 421: (of Barbara de' Longhi) "she has begun to paint a
few things with quite good grace and maniera"; and II, 288, (Life of Masaccio): "the
figures that stood on tiptoe were not good at all and had no maniera in essential
parts." In the letter to Aretina, September 7, 1536, sent with the wax head, Vasari
praises its "liveliness ... mixed with profound design, topped off by such an
abstracted and wonderful maniera" (VIII, 266). Problems of interpretation of
Vasari's usage frequently arise. Paradoxically, maniera can still be meant
absolutely, as a umversal quality and not a particular style, even when it is
9ualified. There is an example in the Vita of Polidoro and Maturino (V, 144)
' ... because of the fine maniera and fine facility they had ... ," which does not seem
ambiguous, since maniera is the syntactical analog of facility. Other cases are
more questionable; for example, talking of the soldiers in Francesco Salviati's
Anima ~esurrection, "... in vanous attitudes, shown in foreshortening forcefully
and with a fine maniera," and again, after discussing the Udienza frescoes:
" ... everything he did always had great judgment, with copious and varied
invention; and what is more, he had a command of drawing, and had finer numiera
than anyone else in Florence" (VII, 27). In the last, the omission of the article a
before Jmer maniera makes the sense most probably absolute. In a similar way,
Vasari expands design to good design (e.g., I, 49). Cf. Giovanni della Casa's
definition of the content ofhis 11 Galatheo (Venice, 1562, 3): "what I consider it
 53

proper to do, so as to be well bred and pleasant and of fine maniera in

communicating and dealing with people."
23vasari-Milanesi, I, 149
240f the Fondaco dei Tedeschi frescoes: ''he made it a point in all he did to hold to
the ensign of living things, and no imitation of maniera whatever; and this work is
celebrated and famous in Venice." (Vasari-Milanesi, IV, 97). This text is usually
interpreted differently: Giorgione followed nature rather than the style of other
artists. He seems rather to talk of a seneral contrast of methods of work,
following a naturalistic and not an idealistic process (the latter would certainly
be related to the Neo-Platonic theory of imitation of an ideal form in the artists
mind). If this is so, the passage is interesting for the surprisingly objective
distinction between Venetian art and his own ideas; nevertheless, in the last
sentence a sly bias is implied-Vasari held that the best painting in Venice was
b~ Francesco Salviati.
2 Talking of the newly discovered antique torso which he later turned into the
Ganymeae: "Then I showed His lllustnous Excellency, with the best means I
knew, that I would make it absorb such beauty and gifts of intelligence and rare
maniera ... " (Vita di Benvenuto Cellini ... scritta di sua mano ... , Milan, 1821, II, 311.
26of Jacopo Sansovino's St. James in the Duomo: "Although the head is
unanimously considered beautiful, and is, it seems that the professionals wish it
had more maniera ... to me it seems one could not ask for it to be more beautiful, and
a good master is not always obligated to hold to maniera, and sometimes rna}' show
his knowledge of how to make things finished and delicate." (Borghini, II Riposo,
Florence, 1584, 159; for Borghini, and some others, di maniera must be very dose
in meaning to sprezzante). This text is doubly valuable for the expressed wish of
the contemporary sculptors for more maniera. Thus, an ideal that had surely
begun as something more or less subconscious had, by the end of the century and at
the moment of its demise, become a subject for discussion.
27G. B. Armenini, De' veri precetti della pittura, Ravenna, 1587. Positively in I.
50: "... with maniera and with judgment, they, the good painters) have robbed the
best of all colors ... "; for the association of maniera with giuditio, see the Vasari
text quoted above, n. 19. Another rassage (II, 89) also correSJ?Onds closely with
Vasari's expansion of maniera: "I Zeuxis had not had mamera remarkable in
itself, besides his great diligence, he would never have harmonized the beautiful
separate limbs that he took from many girls, nor would that perfection he had
imagined beforehand have come to be." A passage expressing reservations (Ill,
223) seems already to tum toward Bellori's point of view (on the dangers of too
much facility): "therefore be assured that maniera alone cannot replace everything,
or ever suff1ce for all aspects.... Countless youths can be seen today growing set
in their errors by relying too much on their own idea and procedure, since without
setting up any example to imitate or at least to make things dear to oneself ... "
28sottari and Ticozzi, Raccolta di lettere ... , Milan, 1822 ff, VI, 125 (the letter
was first published in Rome in 1675).
29Talking of the decline in the sixteenth century: "Craftsmen, abandoning the
study of nature, spoiled art with maniera or in other words a fanciful idea based
on day to day procedure and not on imitation. This vice destructive of painting
first sprouted up in masters of honored reputation, and took root in the schools
that followed after, whence it is unbelievable in the telling how much they
degenerated, not only from Raphael, but from the others who gave maniera its
54

start": (G. P. Bellori, Le vite ... , Rome, 1672, 20). It is likely that maniera is to be
interpreted in this sense, and absolutely, in the following comment of Bellori's on
Annibale's praiseworthy reaction to Michelangelo: "Turning from maniera and
from the anatomies of the Last Judgment, he transformed himself, and looked again
at the wonderful nudes in the units of the ceiling above.... " He seems in fact to be
contradicting Vasari, who stated that in the Last Judgment Michelangelo had
demonstrated "the way to the grand maniera and nudes and how much he knows of
the difficulties of design."
30weise, op, cit., 182.
31vasari-Milanesi, V, 173, of Rosso: "... good at everything, and manieroso and
courteous in all his actions." Agnolo Firenzuola (d. 1543): "She was beautiful
and manieroso ... " (quoted, with several other examples, inN. Tommaseo and B.
Bellini, Nuovo dizionario della lingua italiana, Turin, 1929, III, I, 82).
32p. Ottonelli and Pietro da Cortona, Trattato di pittura, Florence, 1652, 26: "the
former, Michelangelo, kept to nature.... The latter, the Cavaliere, follows his own
genius in painting and worked up to the excellence of a manieroso and graceful
style ... " Quoted after Nicola Ivanoff, "Stile e maniera," Saggi e Memorie di Storia
dell'Arte, I, 1957, 115-16; this very comprehensive study deals with a different
meaning of the word which is not the root of mannerism: maniera as personal
s~le, liKe handwriting. Vasari and others frequently use the word in this way.
3 Felsina pittrice, I, 253, 276, 358. In I, 276, he compares Camillo Procaccini with
his father; Camillo is "bolder, larger, more willful, more of an inventor, though at
times too manieroso and not too correct. .. "; comparing Camillo to Giulio (1, 288}:
"the one moderately manieroso and resolute, the other very natural and studied."
The text of I, 358, is the famous one on the Bolognese contemporaries of Salviati
quoted by W. Ft:.iedlaender in "Der antimanieristische Stil urn 1590 und sein
Verhaltnis zum Ubersinnlichen," Vortiige de Bibliothek Warburg, 1928-29, 216, n.
2
34p. Baldinucci, Vocabolario toscano dell'arte del disegno ... , Florence, 1681, 88,
and Lezione di F.B., nell'Accademia della Crusca Illustrato, Florence, 1692 (" ... that
defect that is called maniera or manierato, which means weakness of the mind and
still more of the hand in following the truth"). In his Vita of Giambologna (II, 122)
Baldinucci characterizes the Samson then in the Giardino de' Semplici and now in
London: "In this statue of Samson Giambologna seemed to surpass himself, in that
he succeeded in keeping it somewhat further away from a certain manierato that
some of his works have, and as a result closer to nature and truth." Lanzi quoted
Bottari's remark on Michelangelo: "there is a little of the manierato, coverea with
such art that you don't see it."
35]. Richardson, An Account of the Statues ... and Pictures in Italy, France, etc.,
with Remarks, London, 1722, 52.
36R. Fn?art de Chambray, Idee de Ia perfection de Ia peinture, Le Mans, 1662, 120,
see Treves, op. cit., 80. In John Evelyn's translation (London, 1668, 122) the term
is Manierist.
37The anonymous panegyric on David's Oath of the Horatii, written 1785, in
Memorie per /e belle arti, Rome, 1787-88 I, cxxxv1ii: the colorito is contrasted
favorably with "quell'affettata vaghezza di tinte, che forma la delizia dei
manieristi." Treves (op. cit., 80), overlooking this and Lanzi's first edition, gives
the first appearance in Italian as Salvini's translation of Freart, 1809.
 55

38L. Lanzi, La storia pit to rica della ltalia inferiore ... compendiata e ridotta a
metodo ... , Florence, 1792 [I vol.] 246 (in the expanded Sassano edition, La storia
pittorica dell'ltalia, 1809, I, 186): "painting ... became a labor of day-to-day
application, almost a mechanism, an imitation not of nature, which was not looked
at, but of the willful ideas that arose in artists' minds. (1) ... These are the
mannerists." The footnote (1) refers to the Bellori passage quoted here n. 29. Cf.
also, in the 1809 edition, the new introduction to Vol. II, 3. Further, his remarks
on Federigo Zuccaro, "more manierato than Taddeo, more willful in decorating,
more crowded in composing ... ," seem to be based on Malvasia's distinction
between the two Procaccini (see above, n. 33).
39Lanzi's longest passage on mannerism concerns the contemporaries of Vasari
(1792 ed., 94-96; 1809 ed., I, 186--89, expanded); in this passage he describes a
decadence (following Baldinucci) relative to the "strength of Michelangelo,
gracefulness of Andrea, wittiness of Rosso, trying to make colors and folds like
Fra Bartolommeo and shadow like Leonardo" (1792 ed., 92). Lanzi was familiar
with less of Rosso's work than we know today, and formed his impressions
mainly on the Pitti Pala Dei of 1522, which is well defined as spiritoso. On the
other hand, he also knew the Citta di Castello Ascension (so-called) which to him
had alquanto di stravagante (1792 ed., 91) which, in his terms means manierismo.
Was he not right?
40E.g., Moschini, Guida per l'lsola di Murano [1st ed., 1807]: 2nd ed., 1808, 3: "a
bold and felicitous Venetian mannerist, Andrea Vicentino ... "; and 4: "Antonio
Foler, who lived at the time of the mannerists ... " The lack of prejudice here is rare.
41" ... manierismo; o sia alterazione dal vero" (1792 ed., 96)
42E.g., Conte Gamba, "Un disegno e un chiaroscuro di Pierin del Vaga," Rivista
d'Arte, v. 1907, 89 ff, especially 93.
43In the Renaissance argument, the Paragone, the relative difficulty of the two arts
is given a erominence that now seems irrelevant and even absurd; cf. already
Manetti on Brunelleschi's relief for the bronze doors: "Everyone was startled and
amazed at the difficulties he had set before himself ... how difficult those figures
are, and how well they perform their functions ... " (A. Manetti, Vzta di
Brunellesco, ed. E. Toesca, Rome, 1927, 16).
44Again, without a mental readjustment, this often seems absurd: "... in this art
perfection consisted in nothing other than in t~ing to become rich in invention
early, studying nudes much, and reducing the difficulties of execution to facility".
(Life of Lappoli, Vasari-Milanesi, VI, 15; "facility is the chief touchstone of the
excellence of any art, and the most difficult to achieve" (L. Dolce, Dialogo della
pittura [Venice, 1557], ed. P. Barocchi, Bari, 1960, 149). It is in these terms that
Vasari expresses the advance made by his own generation. In the Proemio to the
third part in the 1550 edition, he reviews only those artists up to the generation of
Rosso, Sebastiana del Piombo, Giulio Romano, and Perino del Vaga ( 560). In the
edition of 1568 he interpolates a passage in which he sums up the progress since
then (IV, 13): "But what matters to the exclusion of all else in this art is that they
(the living) have made it so perfect and easy today for all who have a command of
drawing, invention, and color, that whereas prev10usly our teachers made a panel
in six years, now these make six in one year, and I can vouch for it unquestionably
by what I have seen and done: and many more tum out finished and perfect than
those made previously by the other reputable masters."
56

45Weise, op. cit., and Cortegiano, ed. Florence, 1889, 34. Passion was also inimical
to Giovanni della Casa's bella maniera: II Galatheo, Venice, 1562, 47.
46For the copy of the modello, see A. E. Popham and J. Wilde, Italian Drawings at
Windsor Castle, London, 1949, no. 451, fig. 100; for the preparatory study, see J.
Wilde, Italian Drawings in the British Museum, Michelangelo and His Studio,
London, 1953, no. 15.
47These points are argued at greater length in my article "The Chigi Chapel inS.
Maria del Popolo," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1961, 129.
48The St. Cecilia is normally dated around 1514, which seems to me too early. I
know of no direct documentation for the painting, and there are conflicting
statements that it was ordered in 1513 and 1514; the evidence about the chapel in
S. Giovanni in Monte is also confusing: it is variously stated that it was begun in
1510 and finished August, 1515, or begun in 1514-the act of endowment is dated
September 9, 1516, and it seems not to have been consecrated before August 24,
1520 (to the evidence and sources quoted in Golzio, op. cit., 28, should be added:
Orazio Pucci (a descendent of the Antonio Pucci who consecrated the chapel and
ordered the picture], "La Santa Cecilia di Raffaello," Rivista Fiorentina, June, 1908,
5 ff). If any use is to be made of Vasari's anecdote that Francia set up the
altarpiece, it must also be concluded that it arrived in Bologna shortly before the
latter's death in 1517. My own feeling is that Marcantonio's engraving (Bartsch
XIV, 116) follows, like others, a rejected preliminary design, in the style of the
Cartoons and therefore datable about 1515, and that the completed altarpiece is in
a different, later style, and should be dated a year or two later. Those figures
which were most modified (e.g., the Magdalen) show the stylistic changes most
clearly. The unity of the emotion in the first design, stemming from the essential
subject, is absent in the painting, which has in compensation a higher saturation in
the quality of beauty.
The St. Michae( I accept, with Frederick Hartt, as an autograph work of
Raphael's. The Joanna of Aragon is known to be largely pupils' work, but there is
evidence that the design, and I?erhaps the execution of the head, are Raphael's. LA
Fornarina (Palazzo Barberini) 1s bound to be a controversial work; I cannot agree
with those estimates of its quality which make it into a follower's work-it has a
grasp of form beyond any of them, and I think it represents one facet of Raphael's
latest, personal style.
49Golzio, op. cit., 85.
50vasari-Milanesi, I, 135, VII, 233.
51 Most of these points were first made by W. Friedlaender, Das Kasino Pius des
Vierten (Leipzig, 1912), 17 ff.
52In this discussion I am forced to be selective; there are certainly others in Rome
whose contribution to the new current must be remembered, especially Sebastiano
del Piombo (e.g., the Louvre Visitation of 1521). Giulio Romano (the Madonna and
Saints in Sta. Maria dell' Anima, rather than the Genoa Stoning of St. Stephen),
Bandinelli, and perhaps Cellini. Beccafumi is also clearly moving, around 1520,
in a parallel direction though as yet down a private path.
53vasari-Milanesi, V, 606 ff.
54"When artists and other well-versed wits saw this cartcxm, they judged that
they had not seen equal beauty or good design since the one Michelangelo
Buonarotti had made for the hall of the Council" (Vasari-Milanesi, V, 606).
 57

SSThese drawings were first connected with Vasari's text by Conte Gamba; for
one version (perhaps none of those now known is the original) see Agnes Mongan
and Paul J. Sachs, Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art, Cambricfge,
Massachusetts, 1946, I, 101; II, fig. 101.
56" ... cuirasses in the antique manner and many decorative and bizarre
habiliments, and hose, shoes, helmets, shields and other arms made with the
greatest wealth of beautiful decoration possible to use and imitate and add to
antiguity, drawn with that love and skill and finish that the last touches of art
can mduce" (Vasari-Milanesi, V, 607).
57This has been hinted out only by Mr. Popham. and seems to have gone
unnoticed: A. E. Popham, "On Some Works by Perino del Vaga," Burlington
Magazine, 86 (1945), 59, n. 3, and idem, "Drawings in the Fogg Museum,"
Burlington Magazine, 90 (1948), 179 (review of the book by Agnes Mongan and
Paul Sachs). Pontormo's design also recalls Michelangelo's cartoon, but in a
totally different way, not following the bellezza e bonta di disegno.
58The hypothesis that seems most plausible, that the desi~ns were produced in
competition, was also produced by Popham, "Drawings ... ; 179.
59Especially the two Moses compositions of 1523.
60Painted about 1526, in Rome, for Bishop Tomabuoni; in 1568 in the collection
of Giovanni della Casa (Vasari-Milanesi, v, 162).
61 As Johannes Wilde has pointed out to me, the whole plastic composition, with
the highest relief in the central figure, is derived from the pendentive system in the
Sistine Chapel. It is only with Rosso's move to Rome that the Antique becomes a
significant source for his style; in this case the right hand angel must be related,
however distantly, to the figure of Persephone holding a torch in the Triptolemos
relief in the National Museum, Athens (Alinari 24236). This may be more than a
formal connection.
62"0ne of the important consequences of Leo X's visit to Florence in 1515 was
that then, for the first time, Donatello's late pulpit reliefs were set up and became
visible to other artists, and certainly Rosso and Bandinelli were among those who
admired them and whose style was influenced by them. In Rosso's work
quotations from them may be found in the Skeletons drawing of 1517, and several
early drawings by Bandinelli copy them exactly. The more general stylistic
response in the two artists was very similar; in Rosso's case this response may be
seen most sharply in the Madonna and Saints of 1517-18 now m the Uffizi.
Pontormo's fresco Christ Before Pilate, from the Certosa cycle, is also closely
based on one of those reliefs (this was pointed out independently by Irving Lavin,
"An Observation on 'Mediaevalism' in Early Sixteenth Century Style," Gazette
des Beaux Arts, VI/L, 1957, 113, and by myself in a thesis presented earlier in the
same year: we were both preceded by Antal). It seems that what these artists found
in this new source was an alternative, in some ways more acceptable and more
readily assimilated, to the urgent expressiveness of Di.irer.
63Raphael's spirit was said to have passed afterwards into the body of
Francesco, since that youth was noticed to be as rare in art and as courteous and
graceful in his ways as Raphael was, and, what is more, because it was felt how
much he made a point of imitating him in every way, but especially in painting"
(Vasari-Milanesi, V, 223-24).
58

64The sources of the figure of the Madonna in the altarpiece from the Roman
period now in London i1Justrate this point. The prototype for the whole figure is
Raphael's Madonna del Cardellino, ana the ideaf of the head is equally certainly
Raphaelesque. In tum, Raphael's Madonna was derived directly from the St.
Anne, in reverse, from Leonardo's cartoon exhibited in Florence in 1501: this
design, an earlier version of the Louvre St. Anne, is recorded in several copies
(one reproduced in H. Bodmer, Leonardo, Klassiker der Kunst, 37, Stuttgart, 1931,
fig. 62). Parmigianino's response to Raphael is not more of a "reaction" than is
Raphael's to Leonardo. Parmigianino's Christ Child, while in His position
following Michelangelo's Bruges, Madonna, is actually derived, as is clear from
the drawmgs, from antique figures of Ganymede.
65Aretino, op. cit., II, no. 147 (August, 1545). Aretino pays a similar compliment to
Vasari (1, no. 107 December, 1540).
665ee Popham and Wilde, op. cit., no. 453.
67Most immediately in Rosso's Moses compositions of 1523: cf. also Salviati's
Visitation of 1538 in S. Giovanni Decollato, Rome, or the Charity in the Uffizi, and
Bronzino's frescoes in the Chapel of Eleonora of Toledo, now known, through the
researches of Craig Smyth and Edward Sanchez, to have been painted in the
1540's.
68rhis crux has been the subject of an acute comment by Coletti ("lntorno alia
storia del concetto di manierismo," Convivium, 1948, 801) who, discussing at one
point seventeenth- and eighteenth-century definitions, queried more modem
usages: " for Vasari. .. Pontormo's fault (in the Certosa frescoes) is that he did not
use enough maniera, that he was not enough of a mannerist. Whereas on the
contrary precisely Pontormo is the type of mannerism for modem criticism, basing
itself on his anticlassicism. Thus words lose their meaning or even reverse them
[itafics mine)." The author did not commit himself further on this dilemma.
M. Rosci ("Manierismo e accademismo nel pensiero critico del Cinquecento,"
Acme, IX, 1956, 66) also acknowledges this conflict between the maniensmo of the
literary tradition and what he calls the primo, vero manierismo, but then insists
that the traditional manierismo is il puro e semplice accademismo del secondo
Cinquecento, and that the vero manierismo lasts from early Pontormo, Rosso, and
Beccafumi, to Bronzino and Ammanati: a conclusion that seems to me entirely
arbitrary.
 59

Fig. 1 Michelangelo, Nude, 1508-12. Rome, Vatican, Sistine

Chapel

Fig. 2 Michelangelo, Flagellation, c. 1515. London, British

Museum
 "t~tt.-

Fig. 3 Raphael, St. Michael, 1517. Fig. 4 Raphael, St. Cecilia,

Paris, Musee du Louvre Bologna, Pinacotec
 61
_.., .
li l/IIDfHHHlll lHiflHiftlJ.fl f lif,,' , ~.Jj 1,," ·• 17,ji.

-...._ '\.,

Fig. 5 Parrnigianino, Drawing after Raphael's Palazzo

Branconio dell' Aquila, c. 1522. Florence, Uffizi

Fig. 6 After Polidoro da Caravaggio , Facade Decoration ,

c. 1525. Rome, Palazzo Milesi
Fig. 7 After Perino del Vaga, Massacre of Fig. 8 Jacopo Pontormo, Massac
the Ten Thousand, c. 1535. Cambridge, Ten Thousand, c. 1529. H
Harvard University, Fogg Art Museum Kunsthalle
Fig. 9 Rosso Fiorentino, Dead Christ, 1525. Fig. 10 Rosso Fiorentino, Angel (detail of Dead
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Christ), 1525. Boston, Museum of Fine
64

Fig. 11 Michelangelo, Nude (detail), 1508-12. Rome, Vatican,

Sistine Chapel

Fig. 12 Rosso Fiorentino, Head of Christ (detail of Dead Christ),

1525. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts
 65

Fig. 13 Rosso Fiorentino, Head of Christ (detail of Deposition),

1521. Volterra, Pinacoteca Comunale

Fig. 14 Raphael, Head of Saint Michael (detail), 1517.

Paris Musee du Louvre
 ....

Fig. 16 Michelangelo, Teste

Fig. 15 Parmigianino, Head of Madonna 1524-26. Florence
(detail of Vision of St. Jerome), 1526.
London, National Gallery
 67

Fig. 17 Benvenuto Cellini, Base of the Perseus, 1545-54. Florence,

Piazza della Signoria

Fig. 18 Francesco Salviati, Peace (detail), 1543-45. Florence,

Palazzo Vecchio, Sala dell'Udienza
This page intentionally left blank
 MANNERISM AND MANIERA"'

Craig Hugh Smyth

We speak of mannerism in many arts. Yet our concepts of it in

each descend from the use of the word maniera was used and
what development it referred to, so that we may compare our
modern concepts of mannerism. This is one way of testing them,
as Ernst Gombrich proposes. But let me add, I do so only in
relation to painting.
Our concepts of mannerism owe a lot to contributions made
thirty-five or forty years ago. Of all these, I want to mention the
classic work on the anticlassical style by Walter Friedlaender.
Given first as a lecture in 1914, it showed the singular originality
of pictures like Pontormo's Christ before Pilate (Fig. 1) and taught
us their strange beauty. Walter Friedlaender and others disclosed
for the first time a great deal about painting at the time of
Raphael's death that will still meet our tests.
Now being questioned anew, however, are some of their
explanations and definitions, and even the assumption that
paintings like the Christ before Pilate are mannerism. Although not
widely shared, this doubt, expressed by Mario Salmi and a few
others, keeps nagging. You may remember that Friedlaender was
not satisfied with the term mannerism for such painting. He used
it, but preferred the name "anticlassical style," because, as he
explained, it ran counter to the High Renaissance, which to us is
classic, or classical. Hermann Vos hung back, preferring to let
,.
This paper is printed in a longer form than that in which it was given at the
Congress, but without its footnotes, since the full text and notes together are too
extensive for the Acts. Only references to the sources of quotations are retained.
The paper is being published with the footnotes as a book by J. J. Augustin,
Locust Valley, New York, 1963.
70

his general heading Late Renaissance cover it. In 1916, Frederick

Clapp wrote about Pontormo without using the word mannerism,
as I remember. But this is not surprising, for at that moment the
concept of mannerism that had prevailed in the nineteenth century
had scarcely begun to change. The nineteenth century's concept
was based, as we know, on the seventeenth century's view of "la
maniera" as a vice that had caused the decline of Cinquecento
painting, the view that we find in Bellori, supported by Malvasia
and others.
To the nineteenth century, mannerism in Italian painting had
meant simply a decline that had begun in Florence and Rome after
1530 or 1540 (Figs. 2 and 3), with some anticipations earlier. From
Lanzi and Fiorillo through Muntz and Riegl this decline involved
chiefly one thing: excessive adherence to a manner or manners full
of unjustified habitual peculiarities, far from nature, and due
above all to three causes. The first cause was uncomprehending,
and mostly exclusive, imitation of some previous style-that of
Michelangelo principally, but in some cases of Raphael or
Correggio, or of antique sculpture. (The main antecedent for this
view was a concern about exclusive imitation expressed in the
sixteenth, not the seventeenth century.) Second was routine
dexterity gained through practice, but only superficial and
mechanical dexterity because of haste and lack of knowledge.
And the third was an admixture of extravagance and caprice.
The decline was inevitable and involuntary. It was inevitable
that artists should imitate an overpowering style like
Michelangelo's and inevitable that decline should follow the early
Cinquecento, when the problems of technique and composition
had been solved-like a biological law, as Miintz thought. Special
conditions in Italy only encouraged it. The change in the status of
artists from journeymen to courtiers led them to pretentious
display and an avoidance of serious study. The demand for
extensive, hasty decorations led them to be quick and superficial.
 71

The tendency in Italian art to generalize and idealize led them to

neglect nature. Only Riegl, to my knowledge, explicitly tried to find
a positive artistic purpose he decided it might be to achieve a
decorative effect of lines and colors.
This bare statement is enough to remind us how new were the
concepts that developed in the twentieth century after Riegl. Under
the influence of modern expressionism and abstraction (and the
idea that their revolt against nature stemmed from a new
spirituality), mannerism was transformed. Another aspect of
Seicento opinion was taken up: the view that "la maniera"
depended on imagination working without regard for truth to
nature or for the example of previous masters and antiquity. And
in the process the date of mannerism's full emergence was moved
back to 1520 and earlier. Introduced as the focal point of the
problem were works of the twenties by Pontormo (Fig. 1), Rosso,
and Beccafumi that had scarcely been connected with mannerism
before, and also works by Parmigianino, El Greco, and, with less
agreement, the later paintings of Michelangelo. With these as a
basis, mannerism became a laudable style, and the familiar chain of
conclusions developed: that it aimed at a new aesthetic and a
disquieting expressiveness, was in rebellion against the High
Renaissance and ideal naturalness, hence "anticlassical," a
deviation from the classic norm, hence abnormal (recently it has
even been compared to surrealism)-and that it was rooted in the
spiritual unrest of its age. This is the principal trend of opinion,
although some have disagreed-Weisbach for one-and there are
other less dominant concepts, which we shall consider briefly later.
While mannerism acquired its new implications, it retained the
old nineteenth-century meaning partly intact. What had been
mannerism before-Vasari's Immaculate Conception or Bronzino's
Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (Figs. 3 and 2)-now became mature,
academic, or later mannerism; and the principal style it
72

uncomprehendingly imitated became mannerism of the 1520's. The

notion of decline toward mid-century remained, though it grew
fainter.
The double meaning has not been easy. Objections have been
raised to the term mannerism for Pontormo and also for Rosso. To
classify works like Vasari's and Bronzino's, the droll name
"mannered mannerism" has been used.
But the difficulties go deeper than terminology. Both the
nineteenth- and twentieth-century components of the prevailing
view make it difficult to look clearly at the Cinquecento, for both
were based on statements about "Ia maniera" made in the
seventeenth century, when taste had already changed. In each case
a new slant was given: in the first instance by the nineteenth
century's heavy stress on uncomprehending imitation (a concern of
the sixteenth century, but not one voiced apropos of the
fundamentals of maniera as we shall see it) in the second instance
by interpretations depending on modem experience.
Dolce says, in the mid-sixteenth century, that painters of his
day-quite likely Venetians, since Dolce tells it-were using the
word maniera derogatively in connection with painting in which
one saw forms, faces, and (by implication) movements that were
"almost always alike." In the passage in question Dolce praises
Raphael's painting because "one figure does not resemble another
either in look or movement hence, there is not a shadow in it of
what is derogatively called by painters today maniera, namely,
bad practice where forms and faces almost always look alike"
(" ... in do non appare ombra di quello che da' pittori oggi in mala
parte e chiamata maniera, doe cattiva pratica, ove si veggono
forme e volti quasi sempre simili"). 1 In short, in the opinion of
certain contemporary painters, maniera was monotonously
uniform as to figures.
We classify Vasari's painting as typical of mature mannerism.
To judge from what he wrote in both the first and second editions
 73

of his Lives, he believed in a uniform ideal for figures, in painting in

general it would seem, and thought this the basis of bella maniera.
In the introduction of Part III of the Lives, Vasari wrote that
maniera had been added to painting on its way to sixteenth
century perfection. "La maniera," he continued, "became In piu bella
from the method of copying frequently the most beautiful things,
combining them to make from what was most beautiful (whether
hands, heads, bodies, or legs) the best figure possible, and putting
it into use in every work for all the figures-from this it is said comes
bella maniera" ("e metterla in usa in ogni opera per tutte le figure
che per questa si dice esser bella maniera"). 2 The idea of imitare, as
against ritrarre, is pushed here to a logical, if tiresome, conclusion.
What Dolce connected with maniera and did not like and
Vasari connected with maniera, particularly bella maniera, and
praised, is pertinent to the problem of mannerism. The use of the
term maniera reported by Dolce ought to interest us particularly. It
has a good claim to be the direct antecedent of the Siecento use,
from which subsequent concepts of mannerism stemmed. For it is
derogatory like Bellori's and in all probability refers to the same
type of Cinquecento painting.
Malvasia names as painters who worked in an entirely
manieroso way: Vasari, Salviati, the Zuccari, Andrea Vicentino,
Tomaso Laureti, "and, of our Bolognese painters, Samacchini,
Sabbatini, Calvaert, the Procaccini and the like." To judge from
the context of Bellori's use of the word maniera , he, too, can only
have meant such painters as these when he told how the vice of
maniera became rooted. In the work of Vasari and the others, and
of painters like them, uniformity of forms, faces, and movements
is more striking than in any other kind of Cinquecento painting, as
nineteenth-century criticism emphasized. Dolce's maniera must
have had reference above all to their sort of work. On his
testimony the word maniera was connected derogatively with
74

such painting almost from the outset, by artists who were critical
of it.
Dolce's maniera promises us help: its meaning is not yet subject
to Seicento taste, and Vasari's maniera and bella maniera elucidate
it as having a slighting reference to the meaning Vasari gives.
Moreover, neither Dolce's meaning nor Vasari's appears to be
canceled by other implications of the word current in the
Cinquecento. On the contrary, Dolce's maniera probably carries
some of these implications.
There is no reason to suppose that Dolce gave all the
overtones of the derogatory use of numiera in his brief reference to
it. Since it alluded to monotonous reliance on the same forms,
faces, and movements, doubtless it already implied a tendency
not to refer back to nature, or reality, sufficiently. For the same
reason, it must already have been closely related to the notion of
reliance on pratica, which implied routine usage as well as the
practiced hand. Dolce himself links the two words. Weise has
said that, in reference to polite society, maniera had long referred
to purposeful artificiality in deportment. Possibly Dolce's maniera
implied artificiality in paintings like Vasari's. But for that matter,
Dolce's maniera could hardly have failed to call to mind, in some
degree, the striking features of style that prevailed throughout the
painting it had reference to, even if disapproval did not extend to
all these features. (To the extent that it did call them to mind, the
use of maniera reported by Dolce could have served, practically,
as a designation for a trend in style-a disparaging designation.)
But there is no suggestion that Dolce thought of maniera as
based mainly on fancy. Nor does Vasari suggest that he himself
thought so either. This appears to be a later view, first explicitly
stated in the seventeenth century.
In the seventeenth century, opinion solidified against
Cinquecento maniera, not just against its uniformity and routine,
but against the whole ideal of beauty that painters had purveyed
 75

so uniformly and routinely. To Bellori, Malvasia, and Agucchi,

Cinquecento maniera was simply fantastic. Taste had changed
completely.
You will remember that in the introduction to Part III of the
Lives Vasari listed the qualities missing in painting before the
sixteenth century, and then enumerated the successive
contributions to painting in the modern sixteenth century style,
from its inauguration by Leonardo down to its perfection in
Vasari's day. This is Vasari's summary of the development of
Cinquecento painting. It is helpful to keep it in mind, because it
gives the development from a mid-century vantage point and it
suggests something of what Vasari himself aimed for in painting. It
suggests, too, something of what he asked of an ideal figure that
could be used "for all the figures."
Among the qualities wanting before the sixteenth century,
Vasari put first licenzia: "nella regola una licenzia," "within the
rule, license, which, while not being according to rule, might be
ordered within the rule ... without making confusion or spoiling the
order." 3 There follow: "abundant invention in everything," "a
certain beauty continued in every smallest thing," and grace in the
figures that depends on judgment and transcends mere
measurement. Grace, which is much stressed, has overtones of
sweetness, lightness, and refinement. So in the next items: "a
graceful, sweet facility" in doing muscles " ... all the figures svelte
and graceful. .. " the fleshy members not "rude as in nature but
refined by draftsmanship and judgment." Other lacks of the
Quattrocento were: "abundance in beautiful garments" "variety of
bizarre fancies" "loveliness of colors" and "finish and utmost
perfection in feet, hands, hair, and beards" -"minuzie dei fini."
Because of too much study, painting had been dry and harsh
attempting the impossible, it had lacked liveliness, "uno spirito di
prontezza."
76

Newly-found antiquities influenced the improvement of

painting at the end of the Quattrocento. It was these "in their
sweetness and in their severities," as Vasari says, "with their
termini carnosi, with certain actions that do not involve twisting
contortions throughout but movement in certain parts" and have
the greatest grace that brought finish and the elimination of
dryness and crudeness.
Among the successive contributions to the modem manner,
from the end of the Quattrocento to Vasari's day and leading to
perfection in his time, were: the new unified sweetness in colors
("dolcezza ne' colori unita") begun by Francia and Perugino
Leonardo's vigor and boldness in disegno ("gagliardezza e
bravezza del disegno"), his "subtle simulation of all nature's
minutiae," and the movement and breath in his figures then,
Raphael's harvest of the best from all sources to achieve the
"perfection of Apelles' and Zeuxis' figures ... and more" Raphael's
contribution of easy invention that made his history pictures "like
writings" with their circumstantial detail the grace of Raphael's
heads Correggio's contribution of soft, feathery hair Parmigianino's
improvements on Correggio in grace, ornaments, and bella maniera
(one ideal figure for all the figures, by Vasari's definition)
Polidoro's and Maturino's gestures and inventions in facade
pictures, their truth to Roman antiquity, the pratica and dexterity
of their execution and the life that Rosso, Sebastiana del Piombo,
Giulio Romano, and Perino del Vaga gave to their figures in color.
Thanks to these and other painters, the art of painting at mid-
century was at last, Vasari says, "so perfect and easy for anyone
having disegno, invention, and coloring" that Vasari and his
contemporaries, he was glad to tell, could paint six panels in one
year where their own masters did one in six.
But transcending and enveloping all was the contribution of
Michelangelo, which Vasari defined elsewhere as opening "the
road to painting's facility in its principal object, the human
 77

body."4 He far surpassed the ancients in both sculpture and

painting: compared with them in respect to heads, hands, arms,
and feet he had a "sounder foundation, a grace more completely
graceful, and a much more absolute perfection, carried through
with a certain difficulty that is so easy ... one cannot see better." At
the same time, Michelangelo had set the "ultimate limit" for all
three arts.
To judge from this account, Vasari thought painting at its peak
in his time. Even if his concepts of "the ultimate limit" and of the
biological growth and decay of art, as he expressed it elsewhere,
made him think of the possibility of future decline, he viewed
painting at mid-century with satisfaction.
The monotony of figures that Dolce's painters referred to
scornfully with the word maniera was not, in the work of Vasari
and others like him, simply a matter of using the same forms,
faces, and movements. Behind it was something more
fundamental: the more or less consistent application of principles
that governed form and movement-principles of posing figures at
rest or in motion and of delineating, lighting, and grouping them. It
is striking how consistently they were applied and how
inescapable is their effect on the eye. "Habits," "formulae,"
"conventions" are words they always bring to mind and, equally,
the word "peculiarities." Ever since the seventeenth century, at
least, they have seemed odd.
The mid-Cinquecento conventions of the figure, as I shall call
them, have drawn the attention of a number of critics. Weisbach,
Voss, Dvofak, Pinder, Pevsner, Antal, and others have brought
out various aspects of them. In the painting of the artists on
Malvasia's list and of many of their contemporaries the
conventions of the figure dominate, more or less. The more they
do, the more in order the term maniera appears to be, for they are
the very basis of the monotony criticized in Dolce's use of maniera.
One ideal figure for all figures was not literally attainable in the
78

Cinquecento, and in any case, we know that a nearly uniform

ideal has not necessarily meant monotony in other periods.
Monotony here came especially from the context of conventions in
which the ideal was presented. The impression not only of routine,
but also of inattention to reality and of artificiality goes back
principally to them. But, as I shall stress, none of these
conventions was wholly new.
If we want a clear view of them, we must look at extreme
examples, from the work of Vasari and those like him. Most
conspicuous is the tendency to flatten figures parallel to the
picture plane (Figs. 2, 3 and 4), especially the more noticeable
figures, whether in the foreground or distance. At the same time,
poses are often abruptly twisted in two and three directions. The
figure that seems flat, and yet turns, moves in depth, or is
foreshortened, is characteristic. As Pinder saw, the impression is
of forced flatness.
Indispensable support for this effect is given by flat light. This
light is a hallmark of maniera and adds to its uniformity. For it
tends, habitually, to belong to planes that parallel the picture
plane. Shadow, on the other hand, is reserved chiefly for surfaces
that recede or project. Armenini describes the method. Moreover
whatever surface the flat light of maniera touches, this surface, flat
or not, tends to look flat, until one pauses to analyze it. So great is
the importance of limbs in maniera that if only one arm or leg is
flat, or flatly lighted, this is enough to suggest flatness far beyond
it. Painters like Bronzino (Fig. 5), who experimented with three-
dimensional poses, made use of this. Quite evidently they liked to
exploit the strain between two and three dimensions, between
restricting flatness and poses suggesting the need of freedom and
flexibility. From this strain comes, I think, some of the sense of
difficulty they valued in twisting and foreshortened figures.
Only a little less insistent is the inclination to juxtapose figures
side-by-side, or tangent to each other. Again the light helps,
 79

emphasizing separation (Figs. 7 and 8). Where forms do overlap,

confluence is avoided. The effect is achieved with draped figures
as well as nude. Once more there is strain, between juxtaposition
and the need for flow and fusion which the earlier Cinquecento
had felt strongly and supplied.
More pervasive are the principles of angularity and of spotting
angular elements in composition (Figs. 6 and 8). Elongation is not
central to maniera, but these two conventions are. On occasion
bodies are bent in an angle at the waist to the point of dislocation
(Fig. 2). Legs and arms are habitually bent (Figs. 3 and 6), and they
are placed where their pattern will show, in short stiff shapes,
generally diagonal. An arm held angularly across the chest (Fig.
5), or in the air, is typical-almost a signature of maniera. Figures
persistently take characteristic forms, which can be caught in a
diagrammatic shorthand of straight lines (Fig. 29), and carry in
themselves the agitated, broken, and unstable rhythms of maniera
composition. No wonder that to the quick, unsympathetic eye, the
compositions of out-and-out maniera pictures tend to look alike,
despite the premium painters put upon inventiveness. In
extremes, the compositional units are the body's members.
And as for composition, let us remind ourselves in passing
that paintings with more than a few figures tend to lack focus, that
secondary figures are apt to be abundant and more or less equally
stressed in the uniform light, dispersing attention and obscuring
the subject. Sometimes (Figs. 2 and 6) it is as if painters sought
obscurity with their vaunted copiousness and made an odd virtue
out of the cross-purposes of composition and subject matter, just
as they did out of unmotivated pose and movement (Fig. 5).
There are also the conventions of delineating the figure, which
are familiar and quickly listed. Boschini said Florentine
draftsmanship transformed live figures into statues, and this
applies generally to maniera. Also, in refining nature's rudeness (as
80

Vasari would say), maniera draftsmanship does not much want to

record irregularities, plumb the inner structure, or show variety by
making differentiations. In drawings, whether contours glide
slowly and evenly (Fig. 10), or vibrate and are broken into
segments (Fig. 11), they are habitually what van Mander found
convenient but cursory, and Baldinucci insufficiently searching.
The same can be said of the smooth modeling of surfaces (Figs. 5
and 8) sometimes the effect in painting is like that of some lifeless,
uniform substance, not flesh and blood. What Malvasia called
"washed-out" coloring also avoids the differentiation of nature,
and this was not inadvertent. Vasari and Armenini made clear
that the purpose in coloring was precisely to avoid the contrasts
of differentiation as lacking beauty and unity, as lacking
"dolcezza ne' colori unita." Line, modeling, and color were all
better suited to serve a uniform ideal than nature's variety. And
they were better suited, by the same token, to the accelerated
production prized by Vasari than to laborious research. Indeed,
this is true of all the conventions of the figure.
But finish and details, especially in the human figure, were
important to Vasari and his contemporaries. Finish in "feet,
hands, hair, and beards" (Figs. 2-6 and 8)----evidently these
extremities deserved special care as a locus of grace. Abundant
garments and knowledgeable accouterments (Figs. 6 and 8)-to
Vasari these were among the significant contributions to painting.
To us, both seem rather strange in the stylized context of maniera.
Of all the results of the Renaissance conquest of nature, the one
painters chose to cling to most was the "simulation of ... minutiae,"
owed, Vasari said, to Leonardo above all. Not that they sought
special insight into detail. They were concerned with making the
detail, clear, polished, and refined, with imparting to foot, hand,
hair, or beard something of maniera form and rhythm, with "a
certain beauty continued into every smallest thing." Thingness and
uniqueness or structure and function were not primary. In
 81

drawings, of course, there was less place for finish and minutiae.
There the rapid creative sketch prevailed, with its own strong
tradition going back to Leonardo (as Vasari's words seem to
recognize).
Maniera painting is an art of figures, as most Central Italians
thought painting should be. Space has not yet been mentioned. It
can be deep (Fig. 2), or it can be shallow and almost eliminated
(Fig. 8), as in early Pontormo. More important, the ground is
habitually tipped, making the rear figures higher. (Figs. 2, 4, 6 and
12). Often one can describe the space as divided, or broken, into
parts not easily grasped together (Figs. 2, 6 and 12). More can be
said but these are the prime conventions of space, and in any case,
as Dolce and Vasari indicated and we may repeat, maniera's chief
locus is the figure.
The conventions of maniera were sometimes employed with
exaggerated refinement and elegance (Fig. 8), sometimes with
exaggerated robustness and muscularity (Fig. 2). They were much
played upon for extravagant and novel effects. Within their context
was often inserted a "variety of bizarre fancies" and poses. The
subjects for which they were used were apt to be perplexingly
complicated. But it must have been the conventions themselves that
the seventeenth century objected to most of all as fantastic. We can
surmise this because they were eliminated by seventeenth century
painters, beginning with the Carracci and Caravaggio.
Where did the conventions of maniera come from? We can trace
their beginning earlier in painting, and I shall mention where. But
one influence was surely antique relief. It had to do with both the
peculiarities of maniera and the preference for a uniform ideal-
monotony, as Dolce's painters considered it.
Roman sarcophagi of the second to fourth centuries (Figs. 13-
17)-as described by Riegl, for example-anticipate maniera in a
number of ways: the flattening of figures (especially keeping both
82

shoulders en face) their action in two dimensions the isolation of

principal figures and groups of figures the role of light and shade
in emphasizing the separation the way the forms catch the light
and its flatness on their forward planes the simplified contours
the frequent emphasis on arms and legs and the system of linear
composition, as Riegl saw it, with its stress on diagonals in the
pattern of figures and members agitated movement the lack of
compositional focus the surface patterns that have little to do
with the action the "copiousness" in figures and by no means
least, the impression that faces, forms, and movements are more
or less alike. The message of sarcophagi was reinforced by Rome's
two columns, classicistic relief, coins, and sardonyx cameos, with
their flat bright figures. The characteristics of the most available
antique art prefigured the conventions of maniera. In maniera, their
more extreme manifestations were followed, modernized, and
exaggerated.
Critics of Cinquecento maniera in the Seicento, who so
influenced later views, did not say that behind it lay antique relief.
They spoke of its neglect of ancient art and associated maniera and
ammanierato with mere caprice. Perhaps the Seicento view of
ancient art kept them from recognizing its role in maniera. But the
Cinquecento was the time par excellence for feverish study of
antiquities. Study of them was essential, Armenini explains, for
gaining maniera. The beginner, he says, learns more from copying
"statues, (reliefs on) arches, and sarcophagi" than from anything
else, because they impress themselves on the mind by being more
certain and true."5 Painters draw sarcophagi so often because of
"the copiousness and variety of beautiful things to be seen on
them." And the modern works to copy are the ones nearest
ancient sculpture, starting with Polidoro's monochromes. In
Vasari's opinion, the only way to achieve disegno was to study
nature, the best modern works, and antique relief. Like Aretino,
 83

Vasari praised the modernizing of the Antique, and he himself

was praised for it.
It is not surprising that the result in maniera went beyond the
borrowing of antique poses to the principles of style. But in
contrast to strictly all'antica painting, maniera painting;
elaborated and, exactly as it was said, modernized them. The
Antique even affected what was done with space. David Coffin
connects Ligorio's neglect of depth and perspective with his
special interest in antiquities. Ligorio's, I think, is only a more
archaeologically oriented case of a general phenomenon in maniera
pictures and earlier ones.
To document the antique-maniera relationship I have suggested
here, Rosalind Grippi has studied the use of specific antique poses
and gestures in maniera with good results, which she is preparing
to publish. They show that, besides general principles, maniera
took antique poses and motifs on an extensive scale. Two of her
examples will stand for many. The Naples Trapezophor, then in
Rome, and figures like those on the lid of a Niobid sarcophagus in
the Vatican evidently lie behind the fallen soldiers of Bronzino's
Resurrection. They inspire both poses and pattern. The
characteristic twisting maniera figures in Salviati's David Refrains
from Killing Saul and the almost exactly similar figure at the right
of Bronzino's tapestry, The Coming of Jacob into Egypt, instead of
going back, as recently suggested, to late Gothic examples like
Multscher, must come, she points out, from a Bacchic nymph like
those on the Bacchic sarcophagi in the Walters Gallery and at
Naples. Typically, Bronzino exaggerates the model. Such
repetition of the same pose by both Bronzino and Salviati is
characteristic of maniera. There are precedents for it in the
Quattrocento. Mrs. Grippi's perceptive study will shed further
light on this phenomenon.
Much in maniera, then, is like Roman relief, as if in response to
Michelangelo's dictum that painting should be like relief sculpture.
84

Yet in viewing a Battle by Vasari (Fig. 18), one may recall that he
wrote to Varchi that painting makes a contribution of its own
which an antique sculpture of fleeing soldiers, for instance, could
not show: the sweat and foam the glint of horses' coats the hair of
their tails and manes the brilliance of weapons the reflections of
figures in them and so on. To Vasari, the painting's special
province is pictorial detail.
But why the emphasis on detail and on its finish? The concern
for pictorial detail expressed by Vasari has a background in
antique opinion about the advantages of painting compared to
sculpture. At the same time, both the detail and finish in maniera
also suggest the influence again of antique example in sculpture
with high finish and circumstantial minutiae (Fig. 16). Even behind
the wish for perfection in extremities one senses rivalry with
ancient sculpture: it was in respect specifically to these that
Vasari compared Michelangelo and the Antique.
An inkling of the antique-maniera relationship appears in
eighteenth-and nineteenth-century comment, but the twentieth
century has seldom returned to the theme. Dvorak and others
have seen that the Raphael School had a new familiarity with the
Antique. Antal was interested in an archaeological trend from
Peruzzi to Ligorio and noted in passing that "the late antique
style was congenial to mannerism."6 Weisbach pointed to Roman
sarcophagi for the thin figures and graceful poses of mannerism.
Adolf Goldschmidt, the medievalist, went nearer the heart of the
matter in his article on Lambert Lombard, who with other
northerners, he said, retained the sculptural character of ancient
statues and relief in their work. In this style "the art-loving
public ... believed it saw," as he put it, "the reflowering of the
antique spirit."7 Recently Phyllis Bober has asserted that with the
genesis of mannerism (in which she includes and thinks
particularly of early anticlassicism, as is customary) artists sought
out eccentric aspects of ancient art in Hellenistic sculpture and
 85

archaistic Neo-Attic works, and rediscovered Roman relief from

the later second century through the third, as confirmation and
reinforcement of their own tendencies. I shall return to this.
Maniera was anticipated long before Vasari's generation, but
did not get under way in earnest until the 1530's. Except for one
picture, Vasari himself apparently did not embark on it fully
until about 1540. Then, suddenly, he did, in the Camaldoli
Deposition (Fig. 25) and the Immaculate Conception for SS. Apostoli
in Florence (Fig. 3). Thereafter he never turned back. Although a
prime exponent, he was, it seems, a slightly late comer. Two
years before, for example, maniera was in full evidence in the
Preaching of John the Baptist by Jacopino del Conte. It had been
forming definitively from about 1530, largely in the hands of
Florentines-in Florence, Rome, Fontainebleau, and lesser
centers. Bronzino was one of those principally involved in this, at
the outset of the thirties yet, when he painted the ceiling of the
Eleanora Chapel about 1540, he still did not see it as the only true
way. In The Stigmatization of St. Francis (Fig. 19), Saint Francis and
Brother Leo move freely in depth. Although the scene evidently
reflects a Quattrocento model, it seems almost proto-Baroque,
spatial and illusionistic, and light from above creates a lighted
atmosphere. Exactly next to it on the ceiling is the Saint Michael
(Fig. 20) flattened, angular, with marble-like limbs, flat maniera
light, and tipped-up space. In this pair is proof, if any were
needed, that maniera is deliberate and not unwitting. Hereafter,
Bronzino did not turn back either. From the later thirties on, in
fact, maniera spread with the greatest speed through most of Italy
and far beyond, and the long period of its sway, in various
phases and guises, and at greatly varying intensities, began.
But maniera had plenty of precedents, and this was the
second major factor in its development. Its conventions had
begun to "germinate," to use Bellori's word, in less tremeforms,
dispersed sporadically in works of all sorts. They
86

appeared with increasing frequency from the beginning of the

second decade. One could call this, perhaps, the gathering of mid-
Cinquecento maniera.
It would take a long time to trace the gathering of maniera
painting properly. There are precedents in so-called "Neo-Gothic"
of the Quattrocento, as exemplified, for instance, by Botticelli and
Pollaiuolo, and the reasons for them include antiquizing that is
related to the antiquizing behind maniera. Maniera certainly has
roots here. There are Quattrocento instances of archaeological
faithfulness to (even some exaggeration of) antique flatness, like
the medallions of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. There is the
sarcophagus-like movement of Bertoldo's relief. Precedents occur
in the work of High Renaissance artists. Despite Leonardo's
fundamental contribution to classic painting, one sees them in the
way he sometimes used his new vocabulary of posture and
gesture, and his light. Berenson's curious essay on the ravages of
his influence has some bearing here. And there are precedents in
those who used Leonardo's light schematically, like Albertinelli.
The anticipations of maniera conventions in Michelangelo are
inescapable, from the Doni Madonna and the sarcophagus-like
Battle of Cascina on. One example among the early ones is of
special interest: the Lazarus that he contributed to Sebastiane's
Raising of Lazarus. The figure is flat in the maniera sense of flat,
difficult contrapposto. It is especially gratifying that Mrs. Grippi
has found it to have a specific antique prototype on the Phaeton
sarcophagus in the Uffizi. Seen from the maniera standpoint, the
Lazarus was a ground-breaking figure and a perfect model to other
painters for modernizing the Antique into maniera. Considering
also the crowding and angularity of the painting as a whole, the
Raising of Lazarus is a landmark-if we look, that is, with the eyes
of a maniera artist from the vantage point of mid-century.
Elsewhere, too, Sebastiane was one who led toward the flattened
 87

contrapposto of maniera, as in his Death of Adonis, and toward

simplified contours and surfaces, beginning with his early work.
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics were sensitive to any
signs of the coming "decline" in Raphael and his School. In
Wolfflin's view, Raphael had temporarily lost his way in the
Parnassus. Yet we can see in its flat figures, crowding, and
movement, an effort to grasp another aspect of antique style,
prefiguring, in a mild way, the maniera's interest-maniera in a vein
of dolcezza, such as Vasari usually liked. There are forerunners of
other aspects in many familiar works of Raphael and his School:
the Battle of Ostia, for instance-a clear case of the antique style of
Roman relief upsetting High Renaissance "classic norms"-and
especially in the work of Giulio Romano in his own independent
career. But in these forerunners the conventions are not all in
evidence, nor concerted in their influence, nor played upon in the
bizarre modern ways of maniera.
Prints helped to spread antiquizing vocabulary and a taste for
undifferentiating line. Drawings of ancient relief, from the fifteenth
century on, are a very precondition of maniera. In her book on
Aspertini's drawings after the Antique, Phyllis Bober suggests that
with the onset of so-called early mannerism there begins a veiled
reinforcing influence from the kinds of antiquities that "express
eccentric invention and a subjective, mannered deviation from
rational naturalism" including Antonine and Late Antonine
relief-" a secret world of antique influences" that go underground
and become "progressively difficult to distinguish."B
Pontormo's characteristic Deposition in Santa Felicita, with its
restless movement and piled-up composition in a restricted space,
bears out her view of the "veiled absorption" of Roman relief in
early anticlassicism. But the influence of relief sculpture is not as
distinguishable as it will be later. The forced flatness of maniera is
not here. It is not yet a concerted application of the maniera
conventions that defines the style. Similarly with portraits:
88

Pontormo's young Duke Alessandro has none of maniera 's

stylization, so clear in Bronzino's Capponi. Nevertheless, in a few
cases, as with his contemporaries, anticipations of maniera
conventions appear very strongly, particularly in his Visdomini
altarpiece. (Meanwhile Pontormo, along with other early Tuscan
anticlassicists, set precedents in painting, not only for the
eccentric inventiveness but for the sophisticated grace that would
continue in the more stylized context of maniera both contributions
were partly inspired in turn by Michelangelo.)
There is no time to follow the gathering of maniera in many
others: Sodoma, Peruzzi, Beccafumi, Bandinelli, Polidoro, Perino,
or Parmigianino, not to mention painters of less consequence.
Sodoma's work at the Farnesina, for instance, is apt to be
considered provincial or even medieval, but from the standpoint
of a maniera artist it must have seemed a step toward a modem
antiquizing style. Peruzzi is of prime importance for maniera
interest in antique vocabulary and, especially, eccentric antique
poses, as in his Presentation of the Virgin. Several figures there start
from one like that at the right on the Rospigliosi sarcophagus. But
as with early works of Pontormo, the essence of the style cannot
be defined in terms of the set of maniera conventions. These were
somewhat more in evidence in his print of Heracles. They were
still more so in Beccafumi's decorations at the Palazzo Bindi-
Sergardi or Bandinelli's Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence in the
twenties. Bandinelli's influence for the development must have
been important. In Polidoro's all'antica painting the chief
conventions of pose and grouping were less marked, but his
contribution to the repertoire of rnaniera was enormous, as Vasari
recognized. It was somewhat the same with the early Perino-
although on returning to Rome in the thirties he was a confirmed
maniera painter. Perino anticipated aspects chiefly of the sweeter
vein of maniera-grace, types, handling, and sometimes schemes.
So did Parmigianino, building partly on Correggio and Raphael,
 89

and his ideal facial types undoubtedly were continued by Salviati,

Vasari, and others. But also, in his work of the later twenties and
around 1530, the chief conventions of maniera began to coalesce.
Indeed, it was around 1530 that the gathering of maniera was
stepped up, even though, as Hartt has pointed out, a certain
restraint can be discerned at this moment, compared to the 1520's.
There were strong precedents for maniera in Rosso before 1530,
especially in his Moses and the Daughters of Jethro but now, in the
upper corners of the Transfiguration, he introduced the new flat
figures with two twists of direction. In 1531, inspired partly by
Rosso's picture, Bronzino at Pesaro transformed a reclining pose
of Sebastiana del Piombo's into something like maniera (Fig. 22)
and designed a female allegorical figure, on the basis particularly
of the Antique and Durer, that really embodies maniera ideals of
pose and contour as well as elegance (Fig. 21). On his return to
Florence shortly afterward, his influence for the development of
maniera was no doubt very considerable.
The chief impetus, however, must have come at this moment
from Michelangelo. As a recent study by Wilde indicates, he
achieved about 1530 a special clarity and purity in surface
arrangement under the guidance of antique relief. And he now
employed what were to be some of the dominant maniera
conventions in a more concerted way than before. The drawings of
the Fall of Phaeton and Dream represent this. The main figure of the
Dream goes back to the Lazarus, and the prototypes for both it and
the Phaeton are found on the same sarcophagus. From various
instances, we know how this style of Michelangelo's interested
some of the masters who now embarked on maniera .
In the course of the 1530's the conventions became "rooted"
and intensified, to work in concert and dominate the main stream
of painting. The more they were intensified, the more old
fundamentals of posing figures were transformed into something
different. Poses were derived from earlier painting and the
90

Antique. Doubtless not without some influence from more general

developments in taste and from growing sophistication, they were
given more elegance, more refinement, more brawn, more
directions, more dislocation, more flatness-plus-foreshortening-
that is, more grace, difficulty, novelty, and curiousness in the
framework of the conventions. It is as if painters, raised in
familiarity with the Antique, conversant with all Cinquecento
painting in central Italy, and conditioned by the experimentation
of the twenties, had said: "The Antique and inventiveness interest
all of us. Let our painting stress both. Let us work with the
Antique and precedents in Cinquecento painting, Michelangelo
above all, but also Raphael and the others, and go as much farther
as we possibly can." And they now set out with a certain
optimism, I think, to judge from the freshness of their work in the
thirties and early forties.
For one must be aware of maniera's possibilities and virtues.
Vasari says with respect specifically to painting that within the
regola there must be licenzia: within the rule, there must be license.
Regola in architecture, Vasari had just said, means observing the
measures and plans of antique buildings in modem ones. He does
not redefine it for painting. With this in mind, I am tempted to
think regola in painting and drawing may be read as "the antique-
derived rules," or conventions of maniera. True or not, if we
choose, temporarily, to read it this way, Vasari's formula conveys
a maniera fundamental: within its set of antique-derived
conventions, promoting ideal uniformity, there must be license-
license, variation, surprise, within the maniera rule. The style can
be appreciated only if the observer sees both the set of
conventions and the license within them. The conventions
constituted a scale on which to play. But since, after the
Cinquecento, the ear for this scale was largely lost, it is not always
easy to appreciate what is played on it.
 91

It is in drawings especially that modern eyes, attuned to the

creative sketch more than to finish, can see how the sensitive artist
found in maniera possibilities for invention, variation, self-
expression, and a diversity of modes. Vasari speaks of such
diversity, and his own drawings reflect it. In Lorenzo the
Magnificent and the Ambassadors (Fig. 26), a finished study, Vasari
is hard, clear, detailed in the drawing of The Immaculate Conception
(Fig. 23), his line is fluent and free in the second version of The
Immaculate Conception (Fig 24), working in wash alone, he is
interested in relief and indentation, light and dark. As a
draftsman he brings forth endless configurations, chiefly obeying
maniera rule, but nonetheless various, as a sympathetic, veteran
eye immediately sees. His is not the variety that depends
primarily on nature's variety, asked by Dolce. It is more a matter
of diverse forms of writing and of fresh inventions and
combinations tumbling from the pen. So also with Naldini,
Vasari's follower, in two drawings surprisingly different from each
other, yet both made for documented works (Figs. 27 and 28).
Maniera had found an emancipating power in its helpmate pratica,
in the readiness of the practiced hand, freed of the need to consult
nature and properly prepared to enjoy its own facility. In
drawings, the result is a little like "action painting," supported,
however, by the rigor of the style's principles.
There can be comparable diversity in maniera painting, despite
its finish. But in black and white reproductions it is partly
suppressed, because color so often plays an important role. Color
in maniera still needs to be properly valued and explored.
Standing, for example, in the Cappella Salviati of San Marco
before the altarpieces of Pappi, Naldini, and Allori (Fig. 4), one
sees something of the variety of treatment possible in even the
purest of maniera paintings. And here also one can imagine how
sparse and how bare of invention works like that by Fra
92

Bartolommeo, across the church, must have seemed to mid-

Cinquecento taste.
Maniera, with its flattened figures, is in its element as
decorative enrichment, encrusting walls, tapestries, and minor
objects. At the same time we are learning not to ignore even the
small parts of a large decoration when a master of maniera is
involved. Salviati's Birth of the Virgin in San Marcello shows the
charm that inventiveness with figures, divisions of space for
surprise, and sensitive light can have in good hands. It is among
the pleasures to be had from maniera to see the perceptive,
adventuresome artist like Salviati introduce novelty within the
framework of the conventions, and also breathe back some of the
sensuous feeling of organic life into the conventionalized forms
without spoiling the artificial world.
Some could use the idiom with high seriousness and emotion-
Pontormo, for example, who adopted it like everyone else for his
later work, but with haunting effect, or El Greco, who took
advantage of its conventions, above all the flat light, for his own
extraordinary purposes.
And in general it can be said of maniera that, however prone to
extravagance, it achieved, with its rigorous conventions, with, its
reluctance to concede to flesh-and-blood reality, a formality and
distance. These were weakened in the anti-mannerist reform. One
can well argue that this meant a loss as well as gain.
The maniera painters themselves were clearly as concerned
with the vocabulary of pose and gesture as with any other aspect
of their art-often more so. It is itself a study. To appreciate fully
what an individual painter was doing, one must be well
acquainted with the vocabulary. And finally it is worth recalling
that, once released from the conventions, maniera 's copiousness of
twisting figures was fundamental for future developments in the
Baroque.
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But there were pitfalls in maniera, and their effects are known
to all. First, the close relation to antique relief. For the stone has
left its stamp, as Rubens wrote in his warning on the use of
sculptural models by painters. He was writing for those who think
to form their style from sculpture, much of it bad. Among the
results he cited crudeness, stony modeling and color, abrupt
shadows, and bright, even light on the surfaces. One can add:
dehumanization, loss of vitality and sensuous plastic power, the
acceptance of slack structure, bland surfaces, de-
individualization, monotony, and the relief-inspired disruption of
painterly coherence. The hazard was not primarily helpless
academic decay, but preference for the qualities of antique
sculpture. Also, in maniera 5 desire for a uniform ideal lay the
1

possibility of monotony and routine in the desire for license,

difficulty, and abundant invention lay the likelihood of straining
and over-elaboration. The ideal of speed risked shallowness.
Maniera conventions, nearly irresistible and easily assimilated,
could submerge individuality and bring a degree of success within
reach of the mediocre- maniera Is leveling power comes from them.
Ever since the Cinquecento, the resulting loss of quality in
maniera painting; has been decried. But loss of quality is not what
defines maniera. It went with much of it because of maniera Is
nature.
Malvasia judged maniera a departure, not imitation. At the
least it is something quite distinct. Imitation of one painter's style
or one school does not describe it. One could have the conventions
with or without Michelangelo's types, with or without Raphael's
dolcezza. But maniera did involve a general acceptance of
conventions growing in various stylistic contexts, largely deriving,
ultimately, from antique relief and reinforced by it again and again
through continual study. Once accepted, these conventions
constituted scheme connected with the idealizing and "modernly"
antiquizing aims of painting, a schema in the minds, eyes, and
94

hands of all, or nearly all-to the neglect of the new Renaissance

approach to nature. As the maniera artist looked back the classic
solution probably seemed a short-lived interlude in the evolution
of the modern style (which Vasari traced for us)-and the
precedents for this style among High Renaissance painters seemed
sufficient to keep him feeling at one with them, not in opposition.
If this view of what was historically called maniera is justified,
the question remains: what relation do modern concepts of
mannerism bear to it that have developed from it since?
Apart from the principal modern concept, there is an
assortment of others in which mannerism is seen as a more or less
general, recurring phenomenon: mannerism as the domination of
formulae, mannerism as dependence on earlier achievements,
mannerism as elaboration (often for unexpected effects) in which
form is not naturally suited to the subject, mannerism as
intensification and stiffening leading, nevertheless, to baroque
movement, mannerism as artificiality and affectation, and
mannerism as refinement-all these fit more or less. But each
concerns only as an aspect, and none by itself does it justice.
Moreover, maniera emerges as a special instance of each, one that
cannot be separated from the circumstances of art and art theory
at its own moment.
Of concepts concerned specifically with Cinquecento painting,
the nineteenth century's mannerism as adherence to a manner full
of unjustified, habitual peculiarities may fit maniera judged in
relation to reality, but fits much less well judged in relation to
maniera 's antiquizing and idealizing purposes. More recent
concepts of sixteenth century mannerism in which the emphasis is
on grace, elegance, or refinement pertain to important aspects of
the ideal for the human figure. The maniera artist himself was
outspoken about them and we know from Weise that the word
maniera had an old association with style in deportment-
deportment aiming at elegance. But the focus is shifted, in
 95

definitions of this kind, away from the phenomenon of antiquizing

idealizing uniformity to which Dolce and Vasari point, to
attributes of it.
The concept of mannerism as primarily a deliberate deviation
from nature and the classic norm of the High Renaissance moves
farther away. It shifts the focus to license, and not to license
within the conventions ("nella regola una licenzia," as I would
read it), but to license in relation to nature and to the High
Renaissance, following the Seicento's lead. This view is not
primarily directed at painting showing maniera in Dolce's sense,
but at an earlier stage in painting.
Yet on it is built the salient concept of the present time:
mannerism as a subjective art expressing a spiritual situation
through anticlassic forms, deformation, and abstraction. Not only
is mannerism in this sense now considered valid for the
Cinquecento, but it begins to be applied as the name for a
subjective, surrealistic, anticlassic phenomenon that critics see
recurring in European art. It is becoming the name for the
manifestation of a rebellious, expressionistic "constant of the
European spirit."9 This is a concept that has still less to do with
the fundamentals of maniera-even though, put less drastically, it
bears a relation to what was done with the maniera idiom by
artists like Pontormo, in his late work, or El Greco.
These last concepts of deviation and expressionism are tied to
modem ideas about the so-called anticlassical developments of
the 1520's and somewhat before, particularly in Tuscan painting-
developments represented by the early Pontormo, for one. The
relation of these developments to maniera is difficult to define
because of the lack of agreement about what they were in
themselves.
I subscribe very much to views that the anticlassic style of the
twenties was born chiefly of the desire to experiment and
contribute something new, rather than from spiritual crisis. It was
96

experiment amid many experiments at that moment in the history

of painting more than out-and-out revolt. The sources of impetus
and inspiration were Michelangelo, antique, "Neo-Gothic,"
German, whatever could help, the first two especially and neither
of these was an unorthodox model. The influence of Roman relief
was much in evidence. I should say that it not merely reinforced
the anticlassic developments of the early Cinquecento, but that it
was probably, in the last analysis, their fountainhead. Even
behind "expressionism" such as Rosso's may well be antique faces
like one on a sarcophagus in the Villa Borghese (Fig. 9). But if the
early post-classic experiments and maniera have Michelangelo and
Roman relief as sources in common, the results are not for the
most part the same. We cannot define both well by what defines
maniera.
I assume we shall persist in calling the post-classic innovations
of the second and third decades mannerism because we have done
so for forty years. But, strictly speaking, l think we should
consider as proper early mannerism only those productions of the
earlier painting that clearly anticipate the fundamentals of
maniera. By this criterion Pontormo's Visdomini altarpiece would
qualify rather well, his Christ before Pilate (Fig. 1) much less, his
lunette at Poggio a Caiano scarcely at all-however sensitive,
refined, abstract, private, irrational, or eccentrically expressive.
Even after the 1530's this criterion applies. Maniera is not equally
in evidence in all works, even by the same master. The less so, the
less appropriate the term mannerism seems to be.
But what about the need of a term for the whole span from the
beginning of post-classic painting to the Carracci and Caravaggio?
Does not the early development, from classic painting to post-
classic innovation, stand out as a more crucial departure than the
development from the latter to maniera? Should not this entire
span, therefore, be under one name? I should say the more non-
committal the name the better at this juncture, so that we can
 97

grasp the range and intricacies of Cinquecento painting as clearly

as possible, unswayed by a term. Our view of the period 1515-20
to 1585-90 ought not to be subject to any distortion by the potent
implications attached to mannerism after the Cinquecento. Voss
and a few others have thought that "Late Renaissance" served the
purpose for painting in this period. Judged by the extent of the
rebirth of antiquity in painting, this does not seem a misnomer.
If we do continue to include all the earlier experimental
painting under mannerism and if we do keep the name as a
synonym for anticlassic (or unclassic) expressionism, which is
now found to be such an important general phenomenon in art, the
main thing is to understand what we are doing, and what are the
liberties that we agree to take with the old use of maniera. This
may help diminish the danger of viewing Cinquecento painting, as
a whole and in detail, in a way that is partial in any sense. And
the same would apply, I should think, to transferring the term
mannerism to other arts-to architecture, for example, if we
should continue to find it useful.

1 Ludovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura, intitolato 1'Aretino, Venice, 1557,

republished in Paola Barocchi, Trattati d'arte del cinquecento fra manierismo e
controriforma, Sari, 1960-61, I, 196.
2G. Vasari, Le vite .. ., ed. G. Milanesi, Florence, IV, 8, and Le vite del Vasari
nell'edizione del1550, ed. Corrado Ricci, Milan, n.d., III, 4.
3vasari-Milanesi, IV, 8-15.
4vasari-Milanesi, VII, 210.
SG. B. Armenini, De' veri precetti della pittura, Ravenna, 1587, 58.
6F. Antal, "Observations on Girolamo da Carpi," Art Bulletin, XXX, 1948, 98.
7 Adolf Goldschmidt, "Lambert Lombard," fahrbuclt der preussischen
Kunstsammlungen, XL, 1919, 206ff.
8p. Bober, Drawings after the Antique by Amico Aspertini, Sketchbooks in tlte
British Museum. London, 1957, 24ff.
9See G. R. Hacke, Die Welt als Labyrinth. Hamburg, 1957, 225-26.
 \
~
Fig. 1 Jacopo Pontormo, Christ Before Pilate, Fig. 2 Agnolo Bronzino, Martyrdom of St.
1523. Florence, Certosa del Galluzzo Lawrence, 1565-69. Florence, San L
 ~~

Fig. 3 Giorgio Vasari, Immaculate Conception, Fig. 4 Alexandra Allori, Descent of Christ
1540. Florence, Santissimi Apostoli into Limbo. c. 1595. Florence, San M
100

Fig 5. Agnolo Bronzino, John the Baptist, c. 1540-45.

Rome, Galleria Borghese

Fig. 6 Giorgio Vasari, Pope Paul III Receives the Homage of the
Nations, 1546. Rome, Palazzo della Cancelleria, Sala dei
CentoGiomi
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Fig. 7 Federigo Zuccaro, Flagellation of Christ, Fig. 8 Francesco Salviati, Deposition, c. 1

1573. Rome, Santa Lucia del Gonfalone Florence, Museo di Santa Croce
 ',¥'""

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Fig. 10 Vasari School, Study for figures of t
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Fig. 9 Battle Sarcophag us (detail), Three Graces, c. 1585-89, in preparat
Roman, 2nd to 4th century. Rome, the Marriage of Francesco de' Medi
Galleria Borghese Florence, Uffizi
Fig. 11 Battista Naldini, Miracle of the Manna, Fig. 12 Alessandro Allori, Birth of the Vi
c. 1575-80. Florence, Uffizi, no. 2785F c. 1602. Florence, Santissima
Annunziata
104

Fig. 13 Amazonomachy with Achilles and Penthesilia

Sarcophagus, Roman, 2nd to 4th century. Rome.
Villa Pamfili

Fig. 14 Battle Sarcophagus, Roman, 2nd to 4th century.

Rome, Capitoline Museum
 105

Fig. 15 Gigantomachy Sarcophagus, Roman, 2nd to 4th century.

Rome, Vatican Museum

Fig. 16 Season Sarcophagus (right side), Roman, 2nd to 4th

century. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
106

Fig. 17 Prometheus with the Gods Sarcophagus, Roman,

2nd to 4th century. Naples, National Museum

Fig. 18 Giorgio Vasari, Siege of Pisa, 1565. Florence,

Palazzo Vecchio, Sala dei Cinquecento
 107

Fig. 19 Agnolo Bronzino, Stigmatization of St. Francis, 1540.

Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Eleanora of Toledo Chapel

Fig. 20 Agnolo Bronzino, St. Michael, 1540. Florence, Palazzo

Vecchio, Eleanora of Toledo Chapel
Fig. 21 Agnolo Bronzino, Allegorical Figure, Fig. 22 Agnolo Bronzino, Allegor
1530-32. Pesaro, Villa Imperiale 1530-32. Pesaro, Villa I
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Fig. 23 Giorgio Vasari, Immaculnte Conception, Fig. 24 Giorgio Vasari, Immaculate Conce
1540. Florence, Uffizi, no. 1181E 1540. Florence, Uffizi, no. 1183
 -

Fig. 25 Giorgio Vasari, Deposition, 1540. Fig. 26 Giorgio Vasari, Lorenzo the
Camaldoli, Arcicenobio and the Ambassadors, 1555-6
Florence, Uffizi, no. 1185E
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Fig. 27 Battista Naldini, Adoration of the Child, Fig. 28 Battista Naldini, Presentation of th
c. 1575-80. Florence, Uffizi, no. 705F 1577. Florence, Uffizi, no. 9011
112

Fig. 29 Smyth's sampling of poses and gestures characteristic of

maniera.
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE PAINTING OF THE MANIERA

Sydney J. Freedberg

The observations this essay makes on the states of mind and

the methods of Maniera painting may seem difficult and artificial,
but this is what the subject asks. 1 Maniera is the product of a
culture of the most extreme sophistication, and simple truths are
not in its line. In Maniera we confront a moment of the history of
art for which the single most pregnant symbol may be the mask: it
is inevitable that we be frustrated in some measure in our attempt
to penetrate it.
Even to define the subject on which our observations should be
made brings us on shifting ground. It is generally but by no means
universally taken that the Maniera is the style practiced by most
of the painters of the Florentine and Roman schools between
roughly 1540 and 1580 and by extension, the term may be applied
to the style of many painters in other schools, in the Emilia
especially, whose works resemble the contemporary central Italian
product. The unequivocally Maniera painters belong to the
generation born about 1510 or later, and include many of the
younger painters whom these masters carne in time to teach.
However, there are instances where older painters, born in the first
decade of the century or earlier, are recognizably assimilated to
the Maniera style and in Florence a prime master of the Maniera,
Agnolo Bronzino, is a member of this slightly older generation,
born in 1503.
In almost all the variants of the Maniera style there is a
common denominator, recognizable despite the many different
ways in which it may be given: an effect of conscious artifice, or
indeed of artificiality, perceptible particularly in the form, and
114

usually in the content also. It is this quality that invites the

comment, usually critically intended, that these works are
"mannered." The adjective describes an obvious and omnipresent
property of Maniera paintings, and seems to intersect with the
name the style bears. The name thus seems to offer us a clue for
our examination of the style but if it is to be a valid clue the word
must be understood in the sense in which the practitioners seem to
have understood it. Maniera, for the sixteenth century Italian, is his
equivalent for our English word "style." Like our word "style,"
the word Maniera has two main uses. In its first use, maniera may
describe the style of an artist or a school, or may be used to
indicate what we have come to call the style of a period. In its
second sense, Maniera describes "style" absolutely, as in that case
where we speak of a person-artist or other-as having "style."
By sixteenth century usage, as for ours, having "style" in this
sense implies sophistication and some quality like that of grace.
For the historian of the mid-sixteenth century, a "modern" style of
art had begun in his own century with the accomplishment of the
masters of the High Renaissance and it was these masters of the
maniera moderna, who, also, had first truly achieved maniera,
"style" in the absolute meaning of the word. Once achieved by
these great masters, maniera was regarded as a permanent
conquest for all subsequent art. By studying the maniera of the
High Renaissance, and the ways in which it seemed to have been
made, later artists could remake maniera-a bella maniera, as it
came to be called-as if at will. In the definitions of the bella
maniera there is much stress on a principle of ideal selection, more
from the examples of maniera already won in art than from
experience of nature and there is counsel to reuse ideal formulae
once they have been evolved. It is also stressed that bella maniera
aims at qualities of refinement and of grace.
 115

The adjective derived from maniera, manieroso, is only

exceptionally applied in the sixteenth century to a style of an
artist it is more used then to describe a social personality. But it is
important to notice that the adjective does not have, for the
sixteenth century, the pejorative meaning it contains for us.
Manieroso-"mannered" -is defined in the first edition of the
Italian Vocabolario della Crusca, compiled in the later sixteenth
century, as "chi ha maniera, cioe bel modo di procedere" ("one
who has maniera, that is, a beautiful [or handsome, or fine] way of
doing"). What strikes us as mannered and artificial in the mode
of Maniera pictures evidently was taken as a matter for good
marks by their contemporaries. But we may conjecture that the
classical masters of the High Renaissance, whose aesthetic the
Maniera artists willed to imitate, would have considered their
productions "mannered" in the sense, approximately, that we do.
Even the most extreme instances we possess of bella maniera in
Raphael or Michelangelo do not give the effect of instantly
apparent artifice that emerges from a Salviati, a Jacopino del
Conte, or a Bronzino. Between the time of the High Renaissance
and that of the Maniera the conception of what makes maniera
bella evidently changed.
Reverence, study, and even imitation of the classical style do
not make the same product in the self-professed disciples as in
their avowed models. Indeed these very motives in the Maniera
artist are the cause of an essential difference. Referring to his
models within the classical style, far more than to nature, the
Maniera painter is fabricating one art out of the material of
another. He is not concerned with that basic principle of a true
classicism which makes a synthetic adjustment between aesthetic
preference and actuality. No matter what the surface resemblance
of the Maniera painter's product may be to the precedents of
classical style, his own result cannot be more than classicistic.
116

And to be concerned, as the Maniera painter is, with the classical

model chiefly as a treasury of ideal forms is to become, exactly,
formalistic purely aesthetic values, and intellectualizing ones, will
dominate a picture of which the vocabulary has been studied in
this way. Then, to base one's forms on idealizations already made
by others is to take them one step farther from experience of
nature, and nearer to a realm of aesthetic abstraction. The very
principles by which the Maniera artist professed his allegiance to
the classical standards compelled him to betray them.
The conviction the Maniera painter entertained, of belonging to
the same gender of art as the first great masters of the "modern
manner," was true in part, but it was also a profound and not
always perfectly successful self-deception, which the criticism of
the next century uncharitably revealed. Indeed, the seventeenth
century critics over-characterized the distinct temper of the
Maniera it was they who first formed the deprecating and
persistent historical image of a style afflicted by a "plague of
affectation."
So far, we have indicated some things about the basic
character of the Maniera that we may regard, from the evidence
of contemporary writing, as self-confessed. But the confession is
not explicit we have arrived at it by deduction rather than by
direct reading of what had been openly professed: we have read
the evidence of the texts in the light of the information offered by
the actual art of the Maniera. But there is much more that only the
pictures say, and which is not given to us verbally. Then, as now,
contemporary criticism of art was not more than a gloss upon the
accomplishments of art itself. However, let us first try to confirm,
from the evidence of the works themselves, the way in which we
read the written evidence for the Maniera. We have said that a
system of forms evolved less from consultation of nature than
from the study of already idealized precedents of art cannot but
 117

tend to more abstraction. That this is so is amply apparent in

almost any contrast we may make of a Maniera painting with a
similar subject from the time of the High Renaissance (Figs. 1, 2).
In one, the data given the artist by the world of nature have been
remade, but discreetly, to affect a compromise with his aesthetic
preferences in the other, the reforming process is measurably more
extreme. A few facts only have been taken fresh from nature for
the most part the Maniera forms, even the small ones, are a
commentary on appearance more than a description of it. Large
shapes of anatomy become the vehicles of a calculated order,
arbitrarily eliminating nature's imperfections and her accidents.
Small form-those of drapery, of hair, of anatomical detail-are
transmuted into fine-wrought ornament, like jewelers' filigree.
There is hardly a descriptive factor that has not been
painstakingly reworked. This fine, pervasive, aesthetic
deliberation is communicated in a perfectly controlled technique,
as if to make it explicit that there is no place, in this mode, for
accidents. In this technique the surfaces of things, as well as their
shapes, are worked to smooth and arbitrary perfection. The
muted sensuousness of the figures in a classical picture is no
longer evident instead, the surfaces have been translated into a
limbo between flesh and tinted stone, or porcelain whose glazes
evoke, but only faintly, a quality like that of life. The forms are
illuminated by a chaste, cool light, transmitted by an air so
rarefied as to seem unbreathable by ordinary beings. In this
atmosphere the color is distilled, made pale and unnaturally lucid.
What such a picture records are appearances shaped in the
mind, not determined by outward experience. The look of people
has been-almost in the slang sense of the word-aestheticized
and so, correspondingly, has the artist's conception of their
behavior. Posture and gesture have an extreme deliberation,
intending, even to the finest detail, the effect of controlled,
118

suspended grace expressions of countenance are no less fine-

precise and subtly rendered, and extremely civilized. The behavior
of the actor is as consummately calculated and as rarefied as his
appearance. The image given us in a High Renaissance picture has
been qualified by impositions of aesthetic will, but it conveys the
instant sense that what it represents is truly plausible. This is not
true of the Maniera work, which inhabits, by comparison, a
climate of refined abstraction.
The great accomplishments of the classical style stood
between the Maniera painter and the world of nature like a
screen, and what the Maniera painter saw, particularly in the
pictures of the High Renaissance, was not the nature in them, but
that which was explicitly their art: their substance of aesthetic
form. Working from this aesthetic datum, the Maniera painter
developed and elaborated it. What had been only a part, though
a very important part, of the classical system, its aesthetic
formalism, became a dominant preoccupation of the Maniera. We
recall that maniera in the absolute sense of "style" had been first
achieved by artists of the classical generation but in their works
the sense of style- of "being stylish" -is a far lesser component
of the whole than in Maniera pictures. The quotient of maniera in
a picture by a Maniera painter is, simply, much higher than in the
precedents of the classical period in which maniera had first been
found. What the Maniera painter saw as maniera in the classical
works were those effects produced by processes and intentions
we should define as those of stylization, of form chiefly, but also
of expression of a picture's content. Strictly speaking, what
maniera meant to its mid-sixteenth century practitioner, in his own
work and in that of his antecedents within the High Renaissance,
can be defined by a seeming tautology-" stylized style."
The Maniera image is stylized and purposely artificial, and the
conviction it creates of a natural implausibility is as certain as the
 119

opposite effect of plausibility in classical example. Yet Maniera

painting conveys its own kind of intense convincingness. In part,
the fine and insistent technique of the Maniera picture, and the
care taken with often seemingly indifferent detail, tenaciously
affirm all but the substance of reality. Fragments of an unreal
whole are given with the sharpness and the plastic emphasis of
trompe-l'oeil, far more illusionistically than in the techniques of the
classical style (Fig. 3). The existence of the whole image,
essentially abstracting as it may be, is asserted by the extreme
truth of disparate fragments of it. By a device since familiar to the
later literature of fantasy, and to modern surrealism, we are
baited with the small verity to swallow the whole poetic lie. But
this device is no simple route to our belief. The contrast between
truth of nature and aestheticized distortion creates disquiet-a
tension in the state of mind with which we view the image. But
this tension serves to make us more receptive to the means, more
essential than the realist fragments, by which the Maniera picture
can impose conviction on us. Again, technique plays a major role.
A wiry strength of delineation, a hard clarity of surface, and lucid
color bound to plastic emphases of form can carry a great force of
aesthetic impact. And because this aesthetic force is bound to the
simulacrum of a human presence, no matter how arbitrarily
remade, the simulacrum partakes by association of this force. The
validity of sheer aesthetic device affirms a power of existence in
the figures, whether that existence has been truthfully described or
not.
The hard-surfaced, plastically emphatic shaping of the form in
so many Maniera pictures, which gives an effect such as we have
just described, may come from the deliberate imitation of effects
of sculpture. The artist is led to the point of such imitation, of
course, by the fact that his own ambitions as a painter partake of
those which the sculptor, by the nature of his medium, can more
120

readily achieve. But the actual passage from similar intention into
imitation requires more explicit explanation. The Maniera artist
enjoyed the inspiration, and suffered the oppression, of the
continued existence deep into the Maniera period of the aged
Michelangelo. The greatest exemplar of the classical style, and
then more recently the inventor of some specific ideas of the
Maniera, Michelangelo represented contemporary and past
authority in one. It is not true, as older writers were accustomed to
assert, that the Maniera was no more than the style of
Michelangelo's epigoni-though these exist but the example of his
sculpture, and of his sculpturesque painting, were ever present to
the minds of his mid-sixteenth century contemporaries (Fig. 4).
They might take quotations from his art, or paraphrase it and
almost invariably, the quotations or paraphrases might contain
the accent of sculptural style that had been in the original.
Raphael, the other principal deity of what the mid-sixteenth
century would have thought of as the first true maniera, had
himself taken on in his last (and most influential) years a cast of
sculpturesque Michelangelism. From his side, too, example tended
to dictate a highly stressed plasticity.
But beyond these examples of sixteenth century classical style
lay the still more venerable authority of antique classicism,
surviving to the time of which we speak chiefly in the guise of
sculpture Professor Smyth has already pointed out the important
role of ancient sculpture in forming the mentality of Maniera
painters.2 Frequently, the Maniera painter may reproduce antique
models not only for their types and motifs, but as guides for
stylization-as exemplars, that is, of maniera. This he does with
an intention of archaeological exactness rare in the artists of the
High Renaissance and Maniera paintings may thereby take on an
aspect of classicizing appearance more pronounced than in the
works of the early sixteenth century, more truly classical in their
 121

essential style (Fig. 6). It is partly from an accident of survival,

and partly from sympathy between like states of mind, that the
chief models of sculptural paraphrase by the Maniera are not
antique works that are classical in essence, but the later antique
pieces or the copies that are merely classicistic. Both the quoter
and the quotation belong in the category of postclassical
phenomena. The Maniera's classicistic attitudes are, for the first
time in so identifiable a way, like those of the later style we call
Neoclassic.
This had rarely been the case in the High Renaissance style.
There, not only the experience of antiquity, but all the data that
went into the making of a work of art were elements to be fused
in a synthetic whole. There had been no contrast between data
observed from nature and aesthetic revision made of form, but a
reconciliation of them within a range to which we give the
arbitrary name of "ideality." In Maniera work, in the first step
required in the making of the image, there is a disjunction from the
experience of nature in the strong imposition on appearance of
maniera-of stylization-in itself. Dominantly of an abstracting
temper, this stylization is not internally consistent: we have seen
how the artist may will to make, within the stylization,
contrasting episodes of illusionistic realism and there are many
stages-almost always disconnective, however-that he may
make between abstraction and illusion. The Maniera painting
presents us in the first moment with a multiplicity of levels
between the experience of nature and its polar antithesis in the
world of art. Then, within the realm of art the Maniera picture
asserts its kinship with exemplars of the High Renaissance, and
indicates by acts of derivation that it depends from it yet each
gesture of relation is, in the same act, a betrayal, making a duality
of professed kinship and its negation. Again, when the Maniera
painting appropriates the look and the devices of sculpture there
122

is another duality of aesthetic purpose and of reference, since the

painting speaks in a language imitative of the other medium's
peculiar effects. And when it is an antique sculpture that has
served as model there may be poignant contrast, so intended,
between the known visage of a distant past and the present guise
to which it is converted.
Within the culture of the Renaissance, the Maniera is a
phenomenon that exhibits all the characteristics, admirable and
morbid both, of a fin de race. Surpassingly sophisticated, Maniera
painters are all too aware that there is no longer any virtue in a
simple statement indeed there are no longer any simple certitudes
to state. Each facet of experience may contain not just an
ambiguity but, more positively, an ambivalence, or multivalance
and when the variety and range of experience that is needed to
create a work of art is compounded inside one Maniera frame, the
multiplicity of meaning can be beyond all precedent. Oppressed
with its own genealogy, antiquarian, and even pedantically
learned, the Maniera was prone, in its retrospective disposition, to
the habit of quotation. The quotations are from the sanctioned
sources in the High Renaissance and in antiquity, and we have
observed before, particularly in the case of sources in sculpture,
how the Maniera painter is intent to keep as much as possible of
the aesthetic character of the original. However, the quotation is
rarely-as with most literary quotations-an apt insertion into the
surrounding text. Usually it consists in borrowing a form to be the
vehicle of a meaning very different from that which it carried in
the original (Figs. 7, 8). The association of the original meaning
with the quoted form persists in it especially where it is
intended-as most often it is-to be recognizable and even
admired as a quotation the quoted form, with its residue of
another meaning, is required to transmit a quite divergent idea. In
its effect of meaning this frequent case within the Maniera is like
 123

the use, in writing, of a metaphor of which the sense has been

deliberately perverted, or has slipped. There comes to be an
indirection at the least, and a disjunction at the most, between the
quoted image and its purpose within the Maniera painting, and
this is another agency for ambivalent or multivalent sense. But still
more often, as is the nature of a perverse metaphor, it mostly calls
attention to itself, becoming notable not for the light it casts on
either term of its comparison, but for its own extraordinary,
salient effect of sheer art. The quotation is, in this sense, not only
internally disjunctive in meaning, but disjunctive from its context:
deliberately isolated from it by unseen, but felt, quotation marks.
Quotation of this kind in the Maniera requires the exercise only
of a greater degree of the same set of mind that determines the
Maniera painter's more general relation to his precedents of style.
Whether he quotes literally, or derives only generally, he looks at
his source as in the main something to be regarded for its forms he
sees the content of the original as some separable, or at least
diminishable factor. He performs upon the vocabulary of his
model an operation that results in a kind of petrifaction, and he
may then use the cold, pure substance of the vacated form as an
element to build with into any context. This suits the aesthetic
disposition of the Maniera style in any case, but it also suits the
disposition of the Maniera artist to evade emotion that itself may
be unstylized. For the Maniera personality, feeling, too, whether it
is the property of a quoted or imitated model, or an invention he
has made to suit a present context, requires to be aestheticized.
We have described the Maniera habit of quotation as having a
value like that of metaphor, in which an image is transposed so
that its accustomed sense and association are required to bear
another meaning. There is another, no less frequent, device of
transposition in Maniera rhetoric, this one its virtual invention.
What we have observed of the incursion of the properties of
124

sculpture into painting belongs in part to this, where flesh takes on

the look of semiprecious, polished stone, or hair is carved as if it
might be goldsmith's metal. This device may be extended so that a
living shape refers to that of an artifact or to a shape of
landscape, and an inanimate object may take on an uneasy air of
life. It is only in extreme instances that the Maniera painter
permits a thing so obvious as an explicit double image (as in
surrealism) he prefers more subtle and allusive ground. Here,
maybe, we can best begin to see the sense in which the Maniera
painter takes the mask (Fig. 5). It may be an incident of ironic
witticism, serving to animate a thing which is not alive, making a
disturbing witness of existence where it is least expected. It may
serve as an explicit iconographic symbol, peculiarly poignant
because it may be given the effect of some sightless living face. In
the Maniera repertory, the mask may well confess more life than a
portrayed countenance. The human visage the Maniera portraitist
conveys to us is, more often than not, mask--evasive, impassive,
or reticent of real communication.
This style, concerned in the terms of its explicitly aesthetic
resources with masking meanings and transposing them, and with
making meaning work, where possible, on a multiplicity of levels,
receives encouragement, and matter to exploit in this same
direction, from contemporary literature. The learned, intellectual
disposition of the Maniera artist inevitably made for sympathy
with the literary world of words, and this was the sympathy in
that time also of the artist's patrons. It was a sympathy of the
artist's professional associates as well-it is significant that there
had never before been so much writing about art. Not only from
sympathy, but by the patron's and the critic's injunction, the
development in contemporary literature of symbol, metaphor, and
allegory was incorporated into the already complex visual matter
of Maniera art. Compounded with this visual matter, the masking
 125

and the multiplicity of meaning given in a literary program have

produced, in some Maniera pictures, the most difficult rebuses in
the history of art.
This result may be quite apparent even in a small compass,
but the quotient of abstruse complication tends, obviously, to
increase in proportion to the size of the Maniera work. Narrative
fresco cycles in the High Renaissance had, like Maniera cycles, a
literary program, often sufficiently complex, but their sense as
narrative is always at once clear. But in Maniera narratives the
meaning of the story is so indirectly given, so much accompanied
by indirect allusion, and so complicated by the multiple senses of
an allegory that it may defeat our comprehension even at what
should be the apparent level. The meanings that are literary in
kind-i. e., those that require verbal explanation, or at least a
verbal tag to understand them-encrust the aesthetic substance of
the painting, but in their distinct possession of a verbal sense
remain detached from it (Fig. 9). The High Renaissance had fused
the literary meanings of its programs-or better had subsumed
them-into the visual texture of the work of art in a Maniera
painting the verbal, literary factors remain resistant to synthesis.
But it should not be imagined that this is an unwanted result of
the different nature of the literary ideas of the Maniera time. On
the contrary, it would seem the Maniera painter may intend to
keep the verbal meaning out of joint with the aesthetic sense of his
picture he thus acquires an opportunity to add another level, and
another kind of meaning, to his work.
It is the Maniera decorative scheme that best demonstrates
this sort of relation between verb and visual ideas. It also
demonstrates some other principles of Maniera aesthetic in a
development more obvious than they may receive on a less
extensive scale. One of the cardinal conquests of the climactic
phase of High Renaissance classical style, and of the immediate
126

predecessors of the Maniera, had been an acute sense of the

identity, as an aesthetic factor, of the picture plane--the
acquisition, or better the reacquisition, of a sense of the
preeminent importance of what was projected on the pictorial
surface. Despite the excavations into space the Maniera painter
may on occasion make, the design produced on the picture plane,
and its accompanying elaborations, are almost invariably the
prime stuff of his work of art. It is on this plane that he arranges
the complex pattern of his forms, pointed and precious or
mellifluously ornamental it is in respect to it that he makes his
manipulations of statuary relief and when he penetrates it to
create a space, that space is bound into a continuity of pattern
with the design made on the surface (Fig. 11). But this is no
simple conception of a planarity: the pictorial surface is in fact
more often a plane of reference in respect to which subdivisions
and complications have been contrived so that it becomes a set of
strata, formed of levels close-knit and multiplied like the other
factors in the work of art.
In combination with the M~niera painter's sense of formal
beauties, and his subtle resources of technique, this acute sense of
the picture surface invites its working like a precious substance, as
if it were not a panel but some improbable expanse of jewel. This
is more true of the easel picture, but it often happens even on a
monumental scale. In Maniera decoration a whole wall or ceiling
may become an outsize precious ornament. Elaborating precedents
of the last moments of the High Renaissance, the Maniera
decorator works the whole extent of a given surface, encrusting the
largest room in much the same spirit, and with much the same
devices, as a goldsmith uses to encrust a box (Figs. 9, 10). Unlike
the decorators of the classical period, the Maniera decorator has
small regard for such logic or such order as may be offered by the
preexistent architecture he takes the wall as surface for projection
 127

of his ornamental wit. In a formal process of vast multiplication,

or inversely of vast subdivision, he creates one great plane-or
stratum-of ornamental form, within which each compartment
has, in tum, its own stratified planarity.
One genre in Maniera style requires special comment, because
it presents a problem that would seem to be, on the face of it,
antithetic to Maniera's basic principles. The requirements of a
religious art would seem insoluble to the Maniera, and they were
indeed not solved if we assume either our own conventional
requirements for a religious art, or those of periods earlier than the
Maniera itself. We have seen that the Maniera personality had no
sympathy with passion. Unsocial emotions required to be evaded
or controlled but this was not just a negative principle of
response. The ungracious emotions could, instead, be substituted
by ones more chastened and indicative of finer susceptibilities.
But at a deeper level emotion could, on occasion, really be
transmuted into aesthetic sensation of equivalent intensity, though
of different kind. The high-pitched exquisite vibrance created by
Maniera forms, and the tensions generated by multivalent
meaning, could produce a sense of exaltation. This, felt in the
presence of an overt religious subject, could tell as a state of mind
equivalent to devotion (Fig. 12). But even when this seems to have
been intended by the artist it may not always have been
recognized. For the bigots of the time it would conspicuously not
do, as for Gilio da Fabriano, whose dictum it was that "Ia teologia
e la poesia sono di diretto contrarie" 3 (theology and poetry-that
is the inventive imagination of pictorial art also-are directly
contrary) and Raffaello Borghini, in his Riposo, repeatedly gave
praise to an altar for its aesthetic merit but condemned its lack of
"onesta" and divozione."
However, the literary, verbal intelligence that was led to write
contemporary criticism was not always accompanied by an entire
128

sensibility of visual response and the painters could not always

verbalize their own aesthetic. The texts, therefore, give no
complete index of the sort of meaning that the artist put into his
religious work, or of what the elect spectator saw. Yet the text on
one hand, and the pictures on the other, give some mutually
supporting, and some reciprocally correcting evidence. It is clear
that the religious subject matter was in most cases taken by the
artist with small intention to illustrate its human meaning of
emotional experience. He preferred to crystallize this meaning-
as he crystallized form-into something that should tend towards
symbol rather than narration. He then worked the forms required
by his subject into an aesthetic construct of a complicated,
precious kind, and the expression of the picture became,
primarily, that of this construction. The aesthetic form and the
main content, which emerges from the form, are effectively
consistent, but both form and content are disjunctive from the
subject matter. In this there is not only a duality of levels of
meaning but a kind of dislocation between one and the other.
I suggest that to understand the virtue specifically as religious
art of such Maniera pictures we must realize that their effect and
their intention also are like those of the religious image we
conventionally call an icon. In both, the subject matter is rigidified,
translated from history toward symbol and the form in which it is
presented is made crystalline and tends toward the abstract the
formal construct, highly stylized, is the main agent of
communication with the viewer's mind and this form is the object
of a precious working and elaboration. In front of a Maniera altar,
as before an icon, the spectator sees an effulgence of abstracting
beauty. But the viewer of the Maniera altarpiece does not see its
subject matter as one with this effulgence. The precious and
exalting emanation is suspended as if in a separable plane before
the matter that identifies overt religious meaning. The spectator
 129

may associate his state of exaltation, produced by the aesthetic

means, with the subject matter, but the artist has not made the
identification for him.
There is a systematic scheme by which we can connect the
multi valences, and the multiplicities of levels of meaning, we have
found in Maniera images with Maniera's immediate antecedents in
the history of art. The classical style of the High Renaissance
worked with meanings of form and content in such a way as to
fuse them in a synthetic unity. The immediate successors of the
classical generation, who were also the immediate predecessors of
the Maniera, fractured this synthetic unity, in some cases
dedicating themselves to the development of separate strands
deduced from it, in others seeking, deliberately, the effects
antithesis could achieve. The Maniera pushed this process
farther, to make an artistic principle of multiplicity and
multivalence. In the same schematic vein, we may say that in its
most sophisticated examples the Maniera work consists of
accumulated strata of form and meaning, which sometimes
intersect but are more often kept disjunctive, weaving among
themselves a web of tensions. The quality of tension is, most
often, precious or even exquisite it emanates a strained, finespun,
unquiet grace. The multiple, disjunctive strands of meaning are
presented to the spectator simultaneously, and it is for his swift
and sophisticated response to make a single tissue of his
experience of the whole. I suggest that the kind of matter in these
pictures and the kind of apprehension they require are very like
those of contemporary polyphonic music. In Maniera, the
spectator, not the artist, may be regarded as the agent who effects
a synthesis. But like contemporary personalities in their portraits,
all Maniera art displays a fine aristocratic coldness toward the
spectator. It is as if the picture were content to exist as a hieratic
image, or as a decorative jewel, chill to the accident of being seen.
130

Unless the viewer brings to the painting the refinement of

sensibility, the wit, and the sophisticated resource that the work
of art contains beneath its mask, it will not deign to make
communication.
So far, we have referred only once to that creative style of
painting in central Italy which intervenes, from circa 1520 to 1540,
between the High Renaissance and the Maniera and we have taken
great care to avoid the art historical name of Mannerism, which in
our usage of the last forty years is generally taken to include the
style of those two decades, more or less, that precede Maniera, as
well as the true Maniera itself. Recently, there has been a
tendency to question the application of the term mannerism to the
creative styles of those two post-classical, pre-Maniera decades,
and its chief Florentine exponents in particular have been denied
the dubious advantage of the name.4 There is much sense in
putting the question anew, for a name that serves as label for style
is in practice a charged concept, a handle that shapes the way in
which we take hold of the art to which it is applied.
The problem can be quite succinctly stated. First: is the style,
or the personal varieties of style, of the so-called first mannerist
generation sufficiently close in essential ways to that of the
Maniera to be connected with it, rather than distinguished from it
by a different name? If the answer is affirmative, there is no sound
reason to object to the retroactive baptism of the first generation
with the label "mannerist," nor to the inclusion of the whole
common phenomenon in central Italian painting from 1520 to 1585
or so in a name which says, in effect, that it is of the nature of
Maniera. We already have in our terminology a sufficient
distinction within the general phenomenon: variously, "First and
Second Mannerism," or "Early Mannerism and Maniera." The
terminology is not less explicit, and not more objectionable, than
"Early Gothic and High Gothic" or "Early Renaissance and High
 131

Renaissance." Second: are the styles of both Early Mannerism and

Maniera sufficiently distinguishable in essential ways from that of
the classical High Renaissance, despite what we have called the
Maniera's self-delusion of untainted descent from that great time?
I think that the answers to both questions are affirmative. In
respect to the Maniera itself: if we are willing to accept that the
observations of this essay are correct, it should be unequivocal
that the style of the Maniera is indeed distinguishable in essential
ways from that of the High Renaissance. In respect to Early
Mannerism there should be less occasion still for doubt its
difference from the classical style has been very sharply
characterized in modern art historical writing. But it may be just
this characterization that obscures the appropriateness of an
affirmative answer to our first question also. I suggest that the
nature of Early Mannerism has been misconstrued for us by a
stressed reading of some of the evidence it offers and, conversely,
by the neglect of much evidence in it of a different kind. Further,
the connection between Early Mannerism and Maniera has not
sufficiently been seen in terms of a cultural dynamic with which, in
other historical situations, we are long since familiar.
To make us see with clarity a distinction between Early
Mannerism and the High Renaissance that had been ill made, or
not made at all before, the critics who elucidated this distinction
defined it in extreme terms. The style of the first generation of
Mannerism was described as "anticlassical," in contrast with the
classicism of the High Renaissance and it is perfectly true that the
inventors of the new style were often radically experimental, and
that at the beginning especially some of their experiments verged
on, or actually became, definably anticlassical. The dissolution of
the authoritarian style of the High Renaissance gave liberty to new
invention, and in extreme individualities provoked reactions that
verged on real rebellion. In a milieu of politics and religion that
132

threatened anarchy, it is not surprising there should be a trace of

anarchy in art. But this extreme reaction was not general, and even
where it occurred it was inconsistent and short-lived.
I pointed out some years ago 5 that it would be a more
generally true assessment of the style of the first generation of
Mannerism to describe it merely negatively as "unclassical," rather
than "anticlassical" (and it is, at that, most often classicistic).
Certainly, almost the whole production in painting of the post-
Raphaelesque Roman school requires to be taken in a classicistic
sense. In many cases, the continuity between Raphael and his
descendants is as apparent as the differences in style that emerge.
The most prominent and influential convert to the Roman school,
Parmigianino, was thought of by his contemporaries as a new
Raphael. But this does not obscure the clarity of his relation in the
opposite historical direction, to Maniera. Between the Maniera
and his art, or that of Perino del Vaga, or Polidoro, there is not
only essential kinship of style but, more than this, continuous,
direct, and dominantly formative derivation and it is through the
filter of the style of these masters that the Maniera painter saw his
High Renaissance exemplars.
Even the fractious Florentines, Pontormo and Rosso, should be
reassessed from a less expressionistic point of view. Side by side
with Pontorrno's most drastic experiments there is a strain that
seeks, almost from the beginning, for grace, and in temper this
grazia is close to that of the Maniera-high-pitched, exquisite and
complex (Fig. 13). In Rosso, more rebellious, there is an
aestheticism still more rarefied, and a research after finespun wiry
ornament, at times more exquisite than Pontormo's (Fig. 14).
Rosso's career in the early twenties is a constant vacillation
between shocking innovation and extreme finesse.
In all the masters of this generation, the time of revolutionary
research was short. In general it occupies the first half-dozen years
 133

of the twenties, or less. And in every instance, the maturing of the

revolutionaries' styles is marked by a reconciliation with the ideal
of grazia, and with the idea of the work of art as ornament, that
were major elements of the classicism of the High Renaissance.
Such, surely, is a principal meaning of the style of Pontormo in
Santa Felicita, and of the style of Rosso's works in Rome. This
account, as much as that which represents the opposite view, is
oversimplified, but it seems true that by the middle years of the
third decade-so soon since the new style had begun-we are in
the presence of an almost universal admission of the notion of a
bella maniera that the later Maniera painters would entertain, and
which they thus saw in the art of their predecessors of the first
Mannerism as well as in the classical style.
Obviously, I do not mean that no distinctions should be made
between the maniere, if we may call them that, of the first
mannerist generation and the Maniera proper. There is no
counterpart in the Maniera for the force, the range, and the
freedom of invention of the early mannerists, or for the intensities
that they make of form and meaning. The Maniera's attitude
toward the possibilities of art is, by comparison, restrictive. It
inherits more than it invents, and what it invents of its own lies in
a rare and specialized province of the powers of art. It crystallizes
its inheritance from Early Mannerism, and at the same time
elaborates on it, but only narrowly, within this specialized realm.
As the liberty to profound question and to wide search was,
among the first mannerists, promoted by their wider context of
political and religious culture, so, obviously, was the
restrictiveness of Maniera determined in some part by the political
and religious context of their time.
It may be the restrictiveness of the Maniera's ambitions that
identifies for us, most clearly, its distinction within mannerist
style in general. Its specialized aestheticism is a limit on what we
134

may call the humanity of art. It may be possible to say that when
the power of human communication in a painting done in the
mannerist vocabulary exceeds its value as aesthetic ornament, it is
no longer a specimen of Maniera. It is not only the distinction
between the painting of the first mannerist generation and the
Maniera that this criterion might serve it permits us to understand,
as an art beyond the limitations of Maniera, the accomplishments
of Tintoretto and of Greco. Their distinction from Maniera is not
just one of geography, for Tintoretto evolved a formal repertory
that is effectively a counterpart of that of the contemporary
Maniera of Emilia and central Italy and Greco's Tintorettesque
style was, in addition, briefly but significantly Romanized. Much
of their vocabulary is that of the Maniera, and they belong to it in
time, but they compel this vocabulary to express a profundity of
overt human drama that transcends Maniera's aestheticism. Like
the great masters of the first post-classical generation, Tintoretto
and Greco should belong rather to a wider category of mannerist
style than to the crystallized and restrictive development of it in
Maniera with which they are contemporary.
Our observations on the Maniera have been just that. We have
not for a moment made pretense to tell much more than a fraction
of the story. But by circumscribing the Maniera and relating it to
its antecedents we may have helped to clarify an issue of style
and an issue of terminology for a major part of sixteenth century
Italian art. But having achieved some clarification for this term
and this style, let us remember that what Maniera and its larger
context, Mannerism, represent is but one aspect of the many-
faceted image of Italian painting of the time. I have defended our
terminological status quo I should like to defend, as well, what has
tended to become for us a quite old-fashioned term: we are still
dealing, in Mannerism, with only one among the complex of styles
 135

that coexisted in what used to be called, and still rightly should be

called, the Late Renaissance.

1This paper represents in slightly altered and expanded form a lecture given at the
Frick Collection in October 1962. Suggestions for the few alterations I have made
have been gratefully received from Dr. john Shearman.
2"Mannerism and Maniera," in The Renaissance and Mannerism (Studies in
Western Art, Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art),
Princeton, 1963, D, 174 ff.; and in book form, New York, 1962.
3"Dialogo ... degli errori ... de' Pittori," in Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, P.
Barocchi, ed., n, 1961, 87.
4Most importantly by Luisa Becherucci, "Momenti dell'arte fiorentina nel
cinquecento," Il cinquecento, Florence, 1955, 161ff.; more recently John Shearman,
"Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal," in The Renaissance and Mannerism, op. cit.,
Princeton, 1963, 200ff., and Craig Smyth, op. cit.
5Parmigianino in Rome, An Aspect of the Genesis of Mannerism, paper read before
the College Art Association, January, 1948.
Fig. 1 Andrea del Sarto, Borgherini Holy Family, Fig. 2 Agnolo Bronzino, Holy Fa
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art Vienna, Kunsthistoriches M
 137

Fig. 3 Jacopino del Conte (on a design by Perino del Vaga?),

Preaching of the Baptist, 1538-40.
Rome, Oratory of San Giovanni Decollato

Fig. 4 Daniele da Volterra, David and Goliath, c. 1545.

Paris, Musee du Louvre
138

Fig. 5 Agnolo Bronzino, Allegory of Lust (detail), 1540.

London, National Gallery

Fig. 6 Francesco Salviati, Triumph of Camillus, 1543-45.

Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Sala dell'Udienza
Fig. 7 Medici Venus, 3rd Century B.C. Fig. 8 Agnolo Bronzino, Resurrection,
Florence, Uffizi Florence, Santissirna Annunzia
140

Fig. 9 Giorgio Vasari, Paul III Rewards Merit (detail), 1546.

Rome, Palazzo della Cancelleria, Sala dei Cento Giomi

Fig. 10 Francesco Salviati, Sala dell'Udienza, 1543-45.

Florence, Palazzo Vecchio (The Ceiling on Designs by
Benedetto da Maiano)
 141

Fig. 11 Giorgio Vasari, Forge of Vulcan, 1558. Florence, Uffizi

Fig. 12 Agnolo Bronzino, Deposition, c. 1547. Besan\on,

Museum of Art
Fig. 13 Jacopo Pontormo, St. Michael Empoli, Fig. 14 Rosso Fiorentino, Marriage
1519-20. Empoli, Museo della Virgin, 1523. Florence, San
Collegiata
 MANNERISM AND ANTI-MANNERISM
IN ITALIAN PAINTING

Walter F. Friedlaender

In his life of Jacopo da Pontormo, Vasari speaks

approximately as follows of the frescoes in the Certosa: "For
Pontormo to have imitated Durer in his motifs (invenzioni) is not
in itself reprehensible. Many painters have done so and still do. In
this he certainly did not go astray. However, it is extremely
regrettable that he took over the German manner lock, stock, and
barrel, down to the facial expression and even in movement. For
through this infiltration of the German manner his original early
manner, which was full of beauty and grace and which with his
innate feeling for beauty he had completely mastered, was
transformed from the ground up and utterly wiped out. In all his
works under the influence of the German manner, only slight traces
are recognizable of the high quality and the grace which had
previously belonged to his figures."
As an artist Vasari is a mannerist of a strict Michelangelesque
vein. But as a writer he is for the most part nonpartisan and in
general much more benevolent than critical. His harsh words
against Pontormo's imitation of Durer are surely an expression not
only of his own opinion, but also of the general opinion of the
public. There was a feeling abroad, quite aside from any
nationalism, that a major step had been taken here, one fraught
with consequences. Vasari saw perfectly correctly that the
imitation of Diirer on Pontormo's part involved not merely single
features and the imitation of separate motifs, as was the case for
Pontormo's teacher, Andrea del Sarto, but rather something
fundamental, a change of style which threatened the whole
structure of Renaissance painting. And yet Vasari did not see
deeply enough. It was not Durer's woodcuts and engravings-
144

which just at that point had come to Florence in a large shipment

and (as Vasari elsewhere records) which were very much admired
by all artists-that were leading to such a radical change in
Pontormo's artistic attitude rather it was the reverse. The new
way of feeling germinating in him, but not in him alone, permitted
the young and popular artist to cling to Durer's graphic work
because it appeared as something akin to his own feeling and
usable in his reaction against the ideal of the High Renaissance.
In spite of the short span of barely twenty years in which it
ran its course, the particularly intensive epoch of the High
Renaissance had no unified character. The very fact that
Michelangelo's art cannot possibly be counted in with the
"classic" art of Leonardo, Raphael, Fra Bartolommeo, and
Andrea del Sarto destroys any unity. Taken strictly, there actually
remains only a relatively small number of works in which the
normativeness and balance of high classic style can be
demonstrated. It is not my purpose here to distinguish between
this classic style and the preceding trends of the quattrocento. It
might just be remarked that in the painting of the quattrocento the
dissociation between constructed space in depth and picture
surface with figures is for the most part not yet overcome. The
volume of the bodies, inwardly organized and enlivened by a
central idea, is in most cases not yet set in a circular movement as
it is in the drawings of Leonardo or in the Madonnas of the
mature Raphael (in contrast to Perugino). In the quattrocento the
linkage of this volume with the space is for the most part
incomplete and in many phases, especially during the second half
of the century, often contradictory: for the human figure, there is
spiritualization and surface ornamentation for the space, realism
and perspective construction in depth. The resolution of this
duality, the subordination of masses and space within one central
idea, is the achievement of the High Renaissance, reflected most
purely in the works of the mature period of Raphael.
 145

At the same time, both in theory and practice, definite rules

and norms (first solidly codified, however, only in much later
academic classicistic circles) were created, in large part in
adherence to antiquity, and especially to its sculpture. To these
the proportions, the internal and outward movement, and such, of
the object in nature were subordinated. Thus there arose an "ideal
art" which, however, at the same time laid claims on nature,
indeed in a strikingly canonical sense. Only what this artistic
attitude set up as right and proper in proportions and the like
counted as beautiful and, even more than that, as the only thing
truly natural. On the basis of this idealized and normative
objectivization, the individual object of the classic style, especially
the figure of man, was removed formally, in its organization, and
psychically, in its gestures and expression, from any subjective,
purely optical, impression. It was no longer exposed to the more
subjective whim of the individual artist, but was heightened and
idealized to something objective and regular.
Sharply opposed in many and basic elements to this high,
idealistic, normative attitude which in Florence (aside from
Raphael) Fra Bartolommeo presents in a somewhat stiffly
dogmatic way, and Andrea del Sarto in a more conciliatory, easy-
going and happily colorful fashion, stands the attitude of the
anticlassical style,1 normally called Mannerism.
What is decisive is the changed relationship of this new
artistic outlook to the artistically observed object. No longer, as in
idealistic standardized art, does the possibility of observing an
object in a generalized intersubjective way, by heightening it, and
raising it to something canonical and regular, form art's immovable
basis. Similarly, little attention is paid to individually conditioned
variations produced by the outward circumstances of light, air,
and distance. The mannerist artist, in the last analysis, has the
right or duty to employ any possible method of observation only
as the basis for a new free representational variant. It, in tum, is
146

distinguished in principle from all other possibilities of seeing an

object, for it is neither made valid by any standardized
abstraction nor is it casually determined in an optical way, but
answers only to its own conditions. This art too is idealistic, but it
does not rest on an idea of a canon, rather upon a "fantastica
idea non appogiata all'imitazione," an imaginative idea
unsupported by imitation of nature. Thus the canon apparently
given by nature and hence generally recognized as law is
definitively given up. It is no longer a question of creating a seen
object in an artistically new way, "just as one sees it," or, if
idealistically heightened and ethically stressed, "just as one ought
to see it." Neither is it a matter of recreating the object "as I see
it," as the individual person observes it as a form of appearance.
Rather, if one may use a negative expression, it is to be recreated
"as one does not see it," but as, from purely autonomous artistic
motives, one would have it seen.
Out of the object given through artistic observation there thus
arises a new and strikingly different one. The form of appearance,
heretofore canonical, commonly recognized in an intersubjective
way and hence counted upon as something one could take for
granted-as "natural," is given up in favor of a new, subjective,
"unnatural" creation. Thus in mannerist art the proportions of the
limbs can be stretched, more or less capriciously, merely out of a
particular rhythmic feeling of beauty. The length of the head
changes from being between an eighth and a ninth of the whole, as
had been usual in the Renaissance because this was the norm and
the average given by nature, and is now often between a tenth and
a twelfth of the body length. This was a thoroughgoing change
then, and almost a distortion of the form or appearance of an
object commonly recognized as valid. Even such particular
affectations as the holding of a finger, the wrenching of the limbs
which twine in and out among each other, can be traced to this
quite conscious rejection of the normative and the natural through
 147

an almost exclusive employment of rhythmic feeling. This freer

and apparently more capricious rhythm carries with it the fact
that symmetry, that is to say the linkage of parts of the body as
they cohere through direct, clearly grasped opposition and
distribution of weights, is dislodged or more or less broken up.2
(Compare further below Pontormo's Madonna and Child with Saints
in San Michele Visdomini.) The High Renaissance's regular,
symmetrical harmony of parts becomes unbearable to the
anticlassical style. Linkage occurs through a more or less
subjective rhythmic distribution of weights, which, under some
circumstances, does not exclude a quite strict ornamental ordering
in extreme cases even thrust and dissonance are hazarded. All
this (as strikes us especially in the early Pontormo) gives the
impression that this new form of art is consciously returning to an
apparently more primitive stage, since it partly relinquishes the
proud achievements of the Renaissance. 3 In adherence to
something earlier, there is being formed a new artistic feeling,
which forcibly turns aside from the previous normative one of the
Renaissance. Thus there arises a new beauty, no longer resting on
real forms measurable by the model or on forms idealized on this
basis, but rather on an inner artistic reworking on the basis of
harmonic or rhythmical requirements.
The relation of this new artistic viewpoint to the problem of
space is especially interesting and important. An upholder of the
normative, who feels in a classic way, will take for granted an
unambiguous, constructed space in which equally unambiguous
fixed figures move and act. It is not familiar, visual space
dissolved in light and air, for the most part optically judged, that
the adherent of the normative strives for, but a space which
expresses or should express a higher reality purified of everything
accidental. However, the figures of the rhythmic anticlassical
painter function otherwise, for in themselves they express neither
an established rule of nature, nor any unambiguous rationally
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understood space. In a word, for them the problem of three-

dimensional space vanishes, or can do so. The volumes of the
bodies more or less displace the space, that is, they themselves
create the space. This already implies that an art of purely flat
surfaces is as little involved here as one which is perspective and
spatial. A certain effect of depth is often achieved through adding
up layers of volumes of this sort, along with an evasion of
perspective. In the struggle between picture surface and
presentation of depth in space, which is of such vital importance
throughout the whole history of art, this is a particularly
interesting solution. A peculiarly unstable situation is created: the
stress on the surfaces, on the picture planes, set behind each other
in relief layers, does not permit any very plastic or three-
dimensional volumes of the bodies to come through in full force,
while at the same time it hinders the three-dimensional bodies
from giving any very flat impression. 4 (Something similar is
encountered, with a somewhat different aim, in classicistic art.)
Yet even in the cases where a strong effect of depth is desired
or is inevitable, the space is not constructed in the Renaissance
sense as a necessity for the bodies but often is only an incongruous
accompaniment for the bunches of figures, which one must read
together "by jumps" in order to reach the depth. In such cases the
space is not adapted to the figures as in high classic art, but is art
unreal space, just as the figures are "anormal," that is, unreal. This
is accompanied by another important difference from quattrocento
art. In the fifteenth century the landscape responds to real facts
and to effects of depth (partly obtained through perspective
means) the bodies, on the other hand, often remain unreal and
relatively flat. In the High Renaissance we see this contradiction
resolved in favor of a common harmony of figures and space. In
anticlassic mannerism the figures remain plastic and have volume
even if they are unreal in the normative sense, while space, if it is
present at all apart from the volumes, is not pushed to the point
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where it produces an effect of reality. This is also true, for

example, of the figure paintings of El Greco where, in spite of their
coloristic tendency, the space always has something irrational and
illogically organized about it. (One might cite the space and the
proportions to each other of the foreground and middle-distance
figures in such a work as the St. Maurice.)
In the Florentine aspect of Mannerism, the cult of bodily
volume is often so much emphasized, and the suppression of the
spatial, of the "ambiente," is so strong, that both architecture and
landscape only play small roles as coulisses. The art of disegno
tending toward the abstract, that art of inward and outward
design so much celebrated toward the end of the period in various
theoretical writings such as the Idea of Federigo Zuccaro (but also
playing a part in Vasari), triumphs over the spatial ideal of the
Renaissance.
The whole bent of anticlassic art is basically subjective, since it
would construct and individually reconstruct from the inside out,
from the subject outward, freely, according to the rhythmic feeling
present in the artist, while classic art, socially oriented, seeks to
crystallize the object for eternity by working out from the regular,
from what is valid for everyone. 5
In this pure subjectivism, the mannerist anticlassical current is
similar to the attitudes of the late Gothic the verticalism, the long
proportions, are common to both tendencies, in contrast to the
standardized balance of forms in the Renaissance. How decidedly
the new movement, with its thoroughly anticlassical tone, tries in
both spirit and form to approach the Gothic feeling (never
completely overcome even by the Renaissance), we see in the
works of Jacopo da Pontormo, the true reformer of that artistic
period, and in the uncompromising shock which his reversal
produced in the public and in the critics, as shown in the passage
from Vasari previously cited.
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It goes without saying that every artistic epoch prepares the

next, and that here once again are to be found powerful elements
of its predecessor. The so-called early Renaissance, in spite of its
greater freedom with regard to the object in nature, contains in
many of its phases much that is still medieval. 6 Likewise, despite
their antagonism, the anticlassic or manneristic style, and the High
Renaissance have many fundamental things in common: the
preference, for example, for a plastic, anatomical treatment of the
body, which in certain circles is particularly cultivated and
exaggerated their desire for a strongly tied composition and so on.
In such ways Mannerism is linked with the preceding Renaissance,
especially if one sets it beside the loosening of organization that
occurs in the outspoken Baroque. Yet these relationships, which
are only natural, do not go so far as to justify labeling this
manneristic style a Late Renaissance, or treating it as a decay of
the Renaissance, as has been done until quite recently even though
this is entirely contrary to every older tradition. The
contemporaries and even more the direct successors of
Mannerism, as well as the classicists of the seventeenth century,
sensed the sharp and painful division from the High Renaissance.
This art-historical merger of the two styles was only possible
because too little attention was paid to the whole period, or
because of ignorance of its new tone, as shown in the radical
reversal of its attitude to space and proportions. With greater
accuracy one might have called the strong tendency of early
Baroque a Late Renaissance or neo-Renaissance, for in it (again in
strong contrast with the preceding period of Mannerism), is to be
found a conscious and intentional re-adoption of the Renaissance
idea (again without being able to slough off completely the
achievements of Mannerism).
Every revolution turns into an evolution if one assembles the
preceding storm signals in a pragmatic way. Hence it ought not to
be difficult to point out certain signposts of Mannerism in the
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mainstream of quattrocento art. Nor should it be forgotten that the

victory of the High Renaissance was by no means complete and
final, that a "latent Gothic" or a "latent Mannerism," (depending
on whether one looks forward or back) was present even in the
mature period of "classic" thought. Yet it is essential to establish
that such an anticlassical revolution did in fact take place,
datable almost exactly shortly after the death of Raphael that a
thoroughly new spiritual turn of the methods of expression
emerged (which as far as I know has until now received no
attention or no intensive stress) and finally that this movement
was extensive, flaming up at various separate points and for a
considerable period dominating the once triumphant spirit of the
classic. First, however, we must clarify the relationship of the
greatest genius of the time-who was anticlassical right in the
middle of the classic period-to this new trend, and his
connection with it.
Just as Michelangelo has been labeled the "father of the
Baroque," he has also been set at the head of the mannerist
movement and blamed for all the alleged sins which classicism
assigned to the anticlassical style. There is justification for this,
but only in a limited way. Obviously Michelangelo is not the sole
creator of the new style, in the sense that all artists of this trend at
his time and after are exclusively dependent on him and on his
intimidating and powerful greatness. An individual, be he even as
great and "terrible" as Michelangelo, can not produce a whole
artistic trend by himself and from himself. Even the greatest
personality is bound by many threads to his time and to its
stylistic development, creating it and created by it in a complex
interaction. It is thus with Rembrandt and his chiaroscuro, and
thus with Goethe whose Wilhelm Meister carried on the romantic
movement by which it was itself in turn stamped. The Last
Judgment, that overwhelming paradigm of Mannerism which is
usually set at the forefront of the movement and to which is
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ascribed the blame for the alleged errors of the whole trend, was
painted at the end of the thirties when works as important and
characteristic of the new style as those of Pontormo, Rosso, and
Parmigianino had been long since produced and when hardly an
artist could still escape the frenzy of the new expressive style.
Even the elongation of the figures and distortions of
proportion so characteristic of Mannerism tum up quite late in
Michelangelo's work. His earlier Florentine figures of Bacchus,
David, and the Doni Madonna,7 are altogether normally formed,
indeed rather stocky than elongated in Gothic fashion. The same
applies to the figures for the Julius tomb and in the Sistine, in spite
of the forms of giant limbs as an example, note the Ignudi. A
change really first sets in when Michelangelo is again living in the
service of the Medici in Florence, the breeding place of Mannerism.
Yet it is not a case of a radical reversal, for this change actually
involves in an active way only two figures, the Medici Madonna
and the so-called Victor. They are the typical forms of expression
of the mannerist side of Michelangelo's art, and as such certainly
functioned as intensively "modern" and had a corresponding
influence. The Victor especially is really the mannerist figure par
excellence, with his screw-like upward thrust, his long, stretched-
out, athlete's leg, his small Lysippian head, and his regular, large-
scale, somewhat empty features. On the other hand both the
Victor and the Medici Madonna are only by-products alongside the
great works of the period, the Times of Day of the Medici Chapel,
which like the Dukes too, are not exaggeratedly elongated in their
proportions, even if they are endowed with certain marks of the
new movement. It is notable furthermore that Michelangelo does
not cling to the long proportions of the Victor and the Medici
Madonna but that about the same period-before or around
1530-the figure of the "David-Apollo" is produced, with quite
different and even strikingly stocky proportions. It is like the
Christ of the Last Judgment, which to be sure is still broader and
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more massive. In the other figures too of this work, so typically

mannerist in many aspects, lengthened proportions do not
generally dominate. Only in the groups of the patriarchs, the
Adam and the others to the right and left of Christ, do long,
stretched-out bodies come into view. Nor in the last frescoes of
Michelangelo, in the Cappella Paolina, are they especially
frequent. Only in the impressive fragment of the Rondamini Pietii,
with the limbs that have become so thin, does the feeling of
verticalism break out again in a quite remarkably Gothic way.
Thus the shiftings of proportions in this manneristic direction
show up in Michelangelo for the first time around 1525 to 1530,
and have no important development in the style of his old age.
One might almost be tempted to consider figures like the Victor as
an unconscious concession to Mannerism, especially as regards
proportion.
But that there is a more penetrating connection between
Michelangelo and the anticlassical trend is proved by the fact that
in architecture he shows outspoken anticlassical peculiarities just
during the critical period of the end of the twenties and the
beginning of the thirties. Without being able here to go into the
matter more analytically, I will only point to the fact that in the
architectural parts of the Julius tomb and in the Sistine such
tendencies were not present, or at least not so strongly (certain
interpenetrations in the Sistine do, to be sure, move in that
direction), while on the other hand, one can, quite apart from the
architecture of the Medici Chapel, consider the anteroom of the
Laurentian Library with its staircase, in its intertwinings and
narrowing of space and proportion, as the peak: of manneristic
architecture, and associate it directly with the Victor of the same
period. One strong impulse within Michelangelo's artistic will as it
developed in this period was thus closely tied up with the modem
trend of the times, directed toward overcoming Renaissance
qualities.
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The same applies to composition and organization of space,

except that here the genius of Michelangelo shows the way in
which the anticlassical movement is going to proceed much earlier
and much more effectively. The mature Michelangelo as a sculptor
aims above all to prevent his figures from being surrounded by an
airy space and capable of free movement. He wishes rather to
make them "prisoners of the block" and, going even further, to tie
them up in architectonic prison cells (as in the case of the famous
locked-in columns of the Laurentian Library). The strongest
psychological impulses meet insuperable pressure and
resistance-they are denied space in which to expand. Thus there
arises no solution to the conflict, which, precisely for this reason,
operates all the more tensely and expressively. The strife of
psychic and motor forces can only be resolved outside the block or
its casing in a suppositional space, where the energies of the
imprisoned organism continue and are dissipated. This tragic fate,
so completely un-antique was only realizable through the
experience of Christianity. Michelangelo also carries this over into
the field of painting. The gigantic figures of the prophets and
sibyls of the Sistine ceiling live and act in such a space, fearfully
narrowed, almost canceled, and their powerful expansiveness
points toward liberation only in a transcendental and divine
space. Also in compositions of many figures where the expression
of individual inwardness was less important than representation
of outward emotions, Michelangelo could bring into play this
artistic method-the mutual compression of energies through more
or less complete renunciation of space. This happens above all in
the spandrels of the Sistine ceiling, which are usually less observed
than the central scenes. The small surface to be organized and the
remarkable form of the triangular spandret difficult to cope with,
called for a certain restriction in any case. But it could have been
removed by illusionistic effects of depth and space, or have been
brought into a kind of balance by a classically spatial plastic
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composition. To Michelangelo, however, precisely this narrowness

was desirable. He even underlined it, by compressing the space
even more, and through this very method achieved a previously
unimagined monumentality. The area of the fight between David
and the powerful, already prone giant is diminished by a tent
rising in the background. Judith and her maid tremble, as if over an
abyss, on a very small base and the three-part story of Esther,
with Haman hanging in the middle, takes place shoved into an
astonishingly reduced space. This method of narrowing the space
and compressing the bodies, so contrary to the breadth and the
comfortably organized arrangements of classical feeling, reaches
an expression of even greater strength and vitality in a
representation of a mass action like the Brazen Serpent. For these
reasons this heroic composition might be called the first painting
of the mannerist line, though it lacks the special stiffness of later
development (of Bronzino, for example, who treated the theme in
imitation of Michelangelo, but at the same time with characteristic
differences). Actually, construction is given solely by means of
figures which press up against each other and push each other-
the row of the faithful on the left, and the larger group of the
unfaithful on the right caught in the twinings of the serpent. Only
in the middle and far in the background is a break opened up, in
which the upright image of the brazen serpent appears against a
bright light. To be sure, through this means a view into depth is
provided, but this isolated breakthrough does not prevent the
feeling of spacelessness or narrowing of space. The tense, the
breathless, is forced by the piling up of powerful bodies in very
great motion, torn by layers of light in a space inadequate for
them, so that one might fear lest the intertwined limbs spill over
and burst from the frame to left and right. The same is true of the
Last Judgment, the work of Michelangelo's later period which
overwhelmed everything else simply by its dimensions and by the
intensity of its gestures, and which produced a mixture of terror
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and admiration. Here too an effect of depth is present, called

forth by the naked rock barrier in the front, which allows the eye a
point of departure because it is the one solid point in the whole
painting, as well as by the bark of Charon at the top, and by the
circular vortex with the Jupiter-Christ figure at its center. A space,
then, is present, but this space is not an optical one, such as in
Rubens' Fall of the Angels, leaving the gleaming nude figures bathed
in light and air, nor is it an organized tactile one in which well-
constructed individuals and well-balanced groups live and
expand. Rather it is a space without reality, without existence, in
its upper section completely filled with human bodies, which, tied
up in bunches, come loose and descend from the whole, and when
seen from a distance float about like wisps of cloud. Here too
optical and spatial elements are present-the pushing in and out
of forms, the light with its contrasts and its divisions of groups
but the very lack of a unified viewpoint prevents any illusionistic
effect, as does likewise the relative scale, impossible from an
optical standpoint, of the unforeshortened upper figures and the
lower, which ought to be much larger. Already in the seventeenth
century Francesco Albani objected to this. Even predominantly
"haptic," that is, tangible elements are undeniable these are found
in the symmetrical arrangement and unification of the main upper
group, and especially in the thorough execution of the plastic and
the corporeal, whose unprecedented mastery early brought forth
unrestrained admiration of Michelangelo's knowledge of anatomy.
But these too are canceled out, first through the completely
unhaptic pushing together and merging of the figures within the
sections, and the piling up of bodies, and second through the
exaggeration of the modeling in single figures through the "wave-
swell thrust of musculature" (which is no doubt what Annibale
Carracci meant when in contrast to the figures of the Sistine
Ceiling he characterized the nudes of the Last Judgment as too
anatomical). Similar disapproval was brought up against the
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equalization of bodily forms in young and old, and in men and

women, resulting in a certain schematism. All this-the unreal and
unconstructed space, the building up of the bodily volumes,
especially the whole overwhelming predominance of the body,
especially the nude, and finally the powerful emphasis of the
anatomical at the expense of the normal and the proportioned-
all these things made the 1.11st Judgment the principal work of the
anticlassic mannerist artistic attitude, surpassing all else in
spiritual depth and formal construction.
The Cappella Paolina frescoes, done during the forties, exist
like Michelangelo's late versions of the Pieta, in an heroic isolation.
The space has become more starkly unreal than in the Last
Judgment. There are, to be sure, certain allusions to depth-the
arms of the cross of Peter, the horse dashing off backwards in the
Conversion of St. Paul, and so on-and even foreshortening is not
neglected, as in the figure of Christ leaning down and forward.
However, structure is manifested only through bodily volumes. In
comparison with them the hilltops indicated in the background
have no existence neither through perspective, nor in terms oi
figure sizes and relations is anything like a Renaissance view into
the distance set up. (In the Crucifixion of St. Peter, for example, the
group of figures of women cut off by the edge is much too small.)
The figures are even more abstractly but also more strongly linked
together than in the Last Judgment (which is similar in its general
arrangement). This is so not only because of an ornamental linkage
established through common movements or opposing movements,
though these too are very conspicuous, but even more because of
vital tensions which, running through the volumes of the bodies
and attaching them to each other, tie them together in groups, or
separate and isolate them. Thus in this work-typical of an "old-
age style"-Michelangelo had reached a pitch of spiritual
abstraction that was scarcely understood. So these frescoes,
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which because they are in a private chapel were difficult of access

to the profane eye, have had no important influence. 8
And yet Michelangelo expressed a powerful idea with
typically mannerist methods in a period when Mannerism in
central Italy already had become partly decorative and empty.
Only one other man in Italy still held this idea aloft, and this was
Tintoretto, a kindred spirit not unmoved by Michelangelo.
It is notable that the direct circle of Michelangelo's followers,
more particularly Sebastiano del Piombo and Daniele da Volterra
(we may exclude Venusti), did not significantly carry forward
these anticlassical tendencies of the master. Their work, to be sure,
exhibits some features of Mannerism, which, in any case, after
1520 few artists could altogether escape. One can discover its
traces even within the school of Raphael which, from the later
stanza on, does not take up the Baroque of the Heliodorus in any
effective way but, manneristically, becomes much more unoptical
and unspatial. In Giulio Romano (who becomes of extraordinary
importance for the classicism of the seventeenth century) this is
the case. Even more striking is the changeable Baldassare Peruzzi,
who evolves from his quattrocento-like works (St. Onofrio), to the
high classical ones (Presentation in the Temple in Santa Maria della
Pace), and finally in his late period around 1530, definitively goes
over to Mannerism (Augustus and the Sibyl in Siena). Often too the
boundary lines between the more classicizing and the manneristic
manner are hazy. In any case, neither Sebastiano nor Daniele has
any influence upon the early period of Mannerism.
This is shown very clearly by the way in which Daniele in his
famous Crucifixion in San Pietro Montorio treats the subject in a
quite different and haptic way than did Rosso in his significant
early Crucifixion.
The new anticlassical style, which was later condescendingly
labeled "the manneristic," is not (as in times past people were
fond of saying) merely a minor variety of Michelangelo's great art
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nor is it merely a misunderstood exaggeration, or a weak and

empty flattening of prototypes of the master into a mannered
journeyman's or arts-and-crafts manner. It is instead a style
which, as part of a movement purely spiritual in origin, from the
start turned specifically against a certain superficiality that
exuded from an all too balanced and beautiful classic art, and
thus embraced Michelangelo as its greatest exponent but which in
an important area remained independent of him (and only in one
of its later currents clung to him in a definite and conscious way).
In his Visitation of 1516 (Fig. 1) Pontormo remains on the
whole within the patterns of his master, Andrea del Sarto. The
soft colors, which Pontormo perhaps applies somewhat more
strongly, the strong volumetric stance of the figures, the ideal stage
space that does not reach very far back into depth, closed by the
optically effective semicircular niche, and softly shadowed (in Fra
Bartolommeo's way)-this is a continuation of the style of Andrea
del Sarto and is of a high quality. This painting of Pontormo
represents Florentine classicism at its most brilliant. One can
appreciate Vasari's account of the public impressiveness of a
painting so balanced and so beautiful in color. It is, precisely, a
splendid example of tectonic structure and well-weighted
compositional organization. All the more understandable,
therefore, is Vasari's astonishment that a man of Pontormo's
quality should give up the achievements of his study-this much
admired clarity and beauty-and brusquely attach himself to a
completely opposite tendency. "One must plainly feel sympathy
with a man so foolish as to slough off his good former manner
which pleased everyone exceptionally well, and was much better
than all others, and with incredible effort seek to pursue
something which others avoid or try to forget. Did not Pontorrno
know that Germans and Flemings come to us in order to learn the
Italian manner which he gave up as if it were worthless?"
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A transition is provided by the Madonna and Child with Saints

(1518) in San Michele Visdomini (Fig. 2). 9 The niche architecture,
while still present, is no longer the same empty background foil
built up tectonically so as to widen the space in a beautiful curve.
Instead, it is almost completely hidden by the volumes of the
bodies and really functions only as a rather strongly shadowed
cloak for the Madonna. The pyramidal triangle is still the old
standardized schema,1° but the balance, the arrangement of
weights is destroyed. The Madonna's head forms the point of the
triangle but the axis of her body, which formerly would have been
in the middle, is pushed slightly toward the right, destroying the
isosceles triangle.
Thus the whole painting acquires a swing to the right and into
depth, which is further enhanced by light and shade and is only
canceled out by the counteraction of the three parallel diagonals
that keep the central composition from getting completely out of
order.ll The figures too are shoved in upon each other much more
recklessly the space is thus narrowed in comparison to the earlier,
more broadly settled composition. These are all outspoken
unacademic displacements, but Renaissance elements are still very
strongly present. The execution of the figures is still plastic and
grows outward from an internal center, following the style
Leonardo had created and Andrea del Sarto had in part adopted.
In the facial expressions as well, especially that of the Madonna,
an echo of the Leonardesque smile seems to remain. The
chiaroscuro, which Pontormo otherwise utilizes very little, may
come also from this source, but it is rougher than in Leonardo and
also exceeds the light and shade of Andrea del Sarto, which, for
example in his Marriage of St. Catherine, is much more sfumato.
From the sharpness of the gestures, from the movement in a circle
and in depth, one might infer with equal justice a tendency either
toward the Baroque or toward Mannerism. One might think the
composition was a prank of a young painter who had had quite
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enough of the colorful beauty of Andrea del Sarto, and the healthy
balance of Albertinelli and Fra Bartolommeo, and who for once
wanted to try out something different and freer. A strong swing of
the compass is evident but just where it will come to rest is not
quite clear. All this is documented also by the charming lunette
decorations in Poggio a Caiano (ca. 1520 to 1521, Fig. 3) with the
figures of Verturnnus and Pomona-a creation of half-playful
grace such as one would never have expected from the painter of
the very serious Visdomini picture. How casual and apparently
carefree-though closer observation reveals a very tight
ornamental structure-are the light figures strewn around both
sides of the round window opening, and given bounds and limits
by a low wall. The three figures of women on the right side are
almost as graceful as the Rococo. This fresco in its lovable grace
and happy tone seems still far removed from the new style which
develops, in Pontormo particularly, so seriously and without a
backward look. Only the very narrow layer of space, within
which the figures, for all their contrapposto and strong movements,
are held, indicates the new vision.
How almost the same composition looks when it is transposed
to an anticlassical style is shown by the broadly sketched drawing
in the Uffizi (Fig. 4).12 It has become winter there is the same
round window opening as in the executed fresco, but around it,
instead of softly leaning bodies beautifully covered with leaves
twine bare, hard, knotty limbs. Here too there are three figures on
each side-the putti are canceled out as too playful-but they no
longer have a comfortable space for their development. Tangled in
the empty branches, holding tightly on to them, they are
ornamentally intertwined-their volumes fill the comers of the
lunettes and through their plasticity build the space which is
otherwise not indicated, thus producing an anticlassical,
manneristic crowding of decoration which is completely opposed
to the composition as executed. Psychologically, too, there is a
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strong contrast, for these are wild figures: four naked men and
only two women whose outstretched, twisted limbs cut past each
other within the narrow space. A severe monumentality has taken
the place of the sixteenth-century grace of the fresco. It is,
therefore, very likely that this drawing is not a preparatory study
but was produced later than the fresco at Poggio a Caiano. 13
Immediately after this exceedingly graceful decorative piece for
the Medici Villa, there follows the breakthrough to the new style,
as seen in the surprising and almost shocking frescoes for the
Certosa (1522 to 1525). Painted, as Vasari reports, when
Pontormo had fled from the plague to the remote Certosa in the
Valdema, these consist of five scenes from the Passion executed
on the walls of the transept. As if impelled by the tragedy of the
theme toward another and more inward style, Pontormo has shed
all that was graceful and shining in the Renaissance atmosphere.
All that had been established by Andrea del Sarto and his circle,
the emphasis on the plastic and the bodily, the material and
coloristic, the realized space and the all too blooming flesh tones-
-everything outward now disappears. In its place are a formal
and psychological simplification, a rhythm, a subdued but still
beautiful coloring (with fewer hues and nuances than Andrea del
Sarto preferred), and above all an expression rising from the
depth of the soul and hitherto unknown in this age and style.
In a Christ Before Pilate (Fig. 5), the figure of Christ, his hands
tied to his back, is turned to the side so that his silhouette is a
thin, Gothically swung curve. He is dressed in light violet, a
delicate, fragile, and transparent figure standing before Pilate,
enthroned at one side, in the midst of his attackers and
surrounded by armed men. All these men are schematic, unplastic,
posed in an unreal space. Two halberdiers in white armor rise
ghostly and bodiless into the painting to mark the frontal
boundary of the space. It is cut off at the back by a terrace, while
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a servant, seen from quite another angle of vision, descends the

steps with a golden pitcher and bowl.
Likewise formally simplified and inward in a northern sense is
the Pietii (Fig. 6) unfortunately badly damaged, as are also the
Carrying of the Cross and the Gethsemane. The great vertical of the
posts and ladders of the background underlines the stiffness of
the upright figures of the mourners, placed before the diagonally
set body so that they are seen head on. Here the question of a
balanced composition in the Renaissance sense, or of a movement
of centered figures in free space no longer arises. Archaically
rough, simple vessels of feeling, these almost bodiless figures
stand beyond reality. This spirituality comes to light most purely
in the Resurrection (Fig. 7). Here Christ, his outstretched body
swathed in a whitish burial robe, floats upward. The sleeping
soldiers crouch on the ground at both sides, while their rising
spears mark the vertical. Here too, especially in the body of
Christ, there is to be observed a spiritualization whose ethereal
and ecstatic form, utterly opposed to the healthy Renaissance
ideal, is to grow gradually in the later cinquecento until it reaches El
Greco. Toward this spirituality all the formal achievements of
Renaissance art in spatial organization and exact placement of
figures is intentionally discarded. And this in turn gives rise to the
feeling of the primitive, a style that, compared to the fully
conscious and mastered style of the Renaissance, is consciously
retrospective.
It is no wonder that in Florence these paintings, so differently
articulated from the usual ones, inevitably, like everything new,
stimulated a great and naturally painful attention. Vasari
expresses this clearly in the passages from his biography of
Pontormo which we have cited at the outset and he also shows
what it was that must have disturbed the Italians in this new and
surprising art-the unsensual and its connection with heightened
spiritual expression-in a word, the Gothic. It was precisely the
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Gothic which the Renaissance, insofar as it felt itself the heir of

antiquity, had most bitterly fought, for the Gothic was the
symptom of decline in art, the tasteless and the barbaric. Yet this
northern element kept turning up again and again, and Albrecht
Durer, however much he was himself nourished by Renaissance
materials, was marveled at and exploited at the beginning of the
Renaissance as the most brilliant exemplar of the northern spirit.
Now it is highly characteristic that Pontormo, as one of the
pioneers of the new anticlassic rhythmical style, disgusted by the
formalism of the Florentine High Renaissance, should take the
psychic stance of the German master to himself during his flight to
the Valdema, and even enhance its spiritual meaning. There was
no need for the large shipment of Durer prints, which has been
mentioned, to make Pontormo aware of the German master. He
had already seen Andrea del Sarto utilize Durer's engravings and
woodcuts in his compositions, as he did those of Schongauer. But
Andrea del Sarto limits himself essentially to taking over isolated
elements 14 rarely does he absorb any of Durer's spatial
relationships. His relations stop at externals no spiritual
deepening, no deeply probing alteration of the Renaissance
interpretation occurs. Such borrowings the public or Vasari might
have pardoned in the artist, or might perchance even have
welcomed, but Pontormo did not merely appropriate externals
from Durer he went further and deeper-for him Durer was the
expression and symbol of his own revolutionary anticlassical
point of view. Hence he read much into Durer and drew much
from him-precisely the secret Gothic element which Durer himself
set out to overcome, and this core he took and rearranged in his
own way. The remarkable phenomenon is that Pontormo, still a
Renaissance artist as to period, in imitating the late Gothic
German artist became more archaic and more Gothic than his
prototype.
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The seated sleeping figure at the left in the Resurrection is taken

from the small woodcut Passion of Durer, and the figure of the
Saviour clearly goes back to the Resurrected figure of the Great
Passion. Not only the outward stance and gesture of the figures,
but virtually their dynamic function in the whole image are taken
over by Pontormo from Durer, but out of the country bumpkin of
Durer has grown a sort of cavalier with an almost too elegant
expression. Above all, though, the figure of Christ has changed
surprisingly. Durer's robust male figure, executed in a thoroughly
anatomical way, has in Pontormo turned into a swaying,
supernaturally elongated figure.1 5 All that is physical whether in
Andrea del Sarto's or Durer's sense, has vanished-there remains
only the delicate, bright, almost bodiless appearance, completely
transformed into spirit, which sweeps upward in a spaceless
existence. The over-refinement of the lines goes hand in hand in
Pontormo with a slightly neurotic sensibility of expression, not
found in the serene Sarto, but which, consistent with the more
strongly dematerialized space, goes back beyond Durer almost
into the trecento manner. It is also interesting to note how in the
Christ Before Pilate, Pontormo introduces the halberdiers, seen from
the back and cut off in the foreground. It is probable that Durer's
seated half-figures in the Bathhouse, which are similarly cut off by
a sharp railing, gave Pontormo the stimulus, but how completely
they differ from Durer in their bodily plasticity and their
suggestion of space. In Pontormo they move into the painting seen
strictly from the back, pane-like, almost without any deepening of
space into the picture plane, conceived as repoussoir figures as in
Diirer, but only in terms of a very slight, practically unreal, spatial
layer. But precisely through these means the uncorporeal and
soulful aspect of the swaying Christ figure between them comes
more insistently to our consciousness. These figures seen from the
back carry the picture away from the beholder, make it more
unreal and more distant. This too is an anticlassical motif, which
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turns up for the first time in Mannerism and is expanded from

there on. 16
Thus Pontormo's contact with the northern Gothic produces
the spark needed for a radical change of his style. The disposition
had long been present in him-he had already given warning of his
desire for a revolt in the almost willful shifts from the norm in the
painting of 1518 in San Michele. 17 Above and beyond this
individual tendency, however, Pontormo's ability to absorb and
transmute foreign materials into something new, and so depart
completely from what had preceded him, was part of a new
stylistic urge which lay dormant in others as well. It emerged at
the same time (the beginning of the twenties) in the works of a few
other forerunners, these men too pioneers of a new art which was
soon to dominate the old.
Closely akin to Pontormo is Rosso Fiorentino who now, though
with some hesitation, accomplishes the break with the
Renaissance, with the all too balanced Fra Bartolommeo and the
all too beautiful and soft Andrea del Sarto. His earliest work, the
Assumption (Fig. 8) of about 1515 to 1516, in the forecourt of the
Annunziata, already shows a great independence of will when
compared with the other frescoes done there by Andrea del Sarto,
and Franciabigio, but it also differs from Pontormo. The beautiful
coloring of Andrea del Sarto, the fine painterly flow of tones
(unione) which Pontormo himself never completely renounced, has
given way to an impetuous application of colors. Strong red and
yellow, then green, are set beside each other with scarcely a
transition violet tones, golden clouds, dominate in the upper
portions. The drawing is less exact, dimmer, especially in the faces
on the other hand the closely massed apostles in the lower part of
the picture overlap like a wall, so that though the figures are
conceived in a plastic, spatial manner, there remains little room
for recession in depth. The compact mass reminds us of the cluster
of apostles in Titian's Assumption (painted just a little later), in
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which the moment of exodus is much more emphasized, breaking

an unomamental path into the background through optical as well
as plastic effects and destroying the rigidity. On the other hand,
Rosso confronts us in the Gloria with a pure illusionistic motif.
Here a Madonna figure, quite clearly recalling Fra Bartolommeo, is
surrounded by putti which, foreshortened and standing on their
heads, already anticipate Correggio. It is equally bold of Rosso to
let the hem of the middle apostle fall out over the frame, contrary
to every Renaissance feeling. Thus quite early Rosso exhibits a
clear tendency to burst the canonical bonds, even if he achieves no
radical reversal. On the whole there can often be determined in
Rosso a wavering between the old and the new. His Madonna
Enthroned with Saints in the Uffizi is still generally constructed as
a niche composition, entirely within the stylistic framework of the
Florentine High Renaissance. The bodily structure, and modeling
too, are not divergent in principle from Andrea del Sarto's, but the
handling of the surfaces is quite different. Color and light are
emphasized with extraordinarily greater sharpness, and become
cruder and harsher. Everything is depicted in heavy accents-the
green in the foreground, the changing tones in the sleeves of the
kneeling figures, the sharp light which falls on the ravaged face of
the greybeard at the left the poisonous tones that Andrea del
Sarto had always avoided now appear the faces are more
common although, or perhaps, because, something overly sweet
predominates in them. The large Marriage of the Virgin in San
Lorenzo (1523, Fig. 9) is a more imposing picture in which the new
tendency makes its clear appearance. The arrangement of the
figures on the steps, with the priest as the central figure, is not so
surprising, but essentially the space is formed through the mass of
figures thickly pressed against each other and disappears into the
background toward the church door in a layer intentionally left
indefinite. The figures themselves, especially in this main group,
are very strongly elongated, so that verticalism dominates
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throughout this work. The color again betrays strong luministic

tendencies.
But the work in which Rosso takes the decisive step away
from the balanced and classical towards the spiritual and
subjective is the 1521 Deposition from the Cross in Volterra (Fig.
10). This picture embodies essentially the same attitude we have
already met in Pontormo's frescoes at the Certosa, even if it is
somewhat differently oriented because of Rosso's very different
artistic temperament-a conscious reversal and a return to a kind
of primitivism, if one may use this expression, in contradistinction
to the universally developed and mature Renaissance feeling. In
this respect the painting recalls the medieval Gothic, without its
being proper to seek for a definite prototype not even in Sienese
art. One might say here too that the "latent Gothic" which lived
on in the qll£lttrocento style of Castagno or Uccello or Tura (for this
often misused slogan has its justification here) bursts its bonds in
this most beautiful creation of Rosso partly prompted, no doubt,
by a certain revulsion toward the feeling of some of his own
compositions in which the Andrea del Sarto style had merely been
made wilder. Along with this, the movements in Rosso's painting
function in a way that is more refined, more precious, more
artistic-in a word, manneristic. If one compares it with the
Deposition from the Cross by Filippino Lippi (completed by
Perugino at the beginning of the cinquecento), which in its general
structure was the prototype for Rosso's picture, then one will feel
the uncommonly acute difference. This is no simple continuation
of the theme, such as one may discover in Daniele da Volterra's
great painting,1 8 but a reworking into a quite different kind of
feeling. Even though Rosso took over the theme of the two ladders,
he was still able to make out of this motif, with its direct
requirement of stability, something at once vertical and swaying,
simply through the very high and narrow format in which he
composed the whole. These ladders serve as a weak armature for
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a wreath of figures which twine rhythmically in and out among

each other. Some of the proportions are extraordinarily
elongated-the moving figure of John, for example, who, hiding his
face in his hands, bends over and turns away weeping, with a
detachment which recalls El Greco. The space is unreal throughout
the figures hardly fill it up, but stand in front of it like ghosts. The
sharp light, the peculiarly shining colors, the curves of their long
outstretched limbs, bestow on these figures something unreal, far
removed from any ideal canon. It is absolutely amazing how,
occasionally, volumes of bodies are constructed cubically out of
surfaces which, lighted in various ways, meet each other with
sharp angles. This is especially striking in the kneeling Magdalen
who embraces the knee of the Mater Dolorosa. As in Pontorrno,
but even more passionately, with more accentuation and richer
light and color, this suppression of the usual and the balanced
leads to a new spirituality, an astonishing soulful expressiveness,
which even Rosso himself rarely reaches again. Gesture, become
too rhetorical during the Renaissance, now acquires a new
meaning, pointed (almost caricatural) in its sharpness and
expressive through its stylization. The figure of the old man above
the body of Christ is nothing new in itself, but the way it leans on
the crosspiece with both arms and, with its unkempt Chronos-
head and its fluttering mantle, looms over the cross to form a
lunette that crowns the whole, has in it something entirely unique
and unprecedented. The same thing applies to the lower figures.
Everything is heightened, and everything that would disturb or
diminish this heightening-space, perspective, mass, normal
proportion-is left out or transformed. A general influence from
Michelangelo is difficult to determine the greater inwardness
which runs through the movement is perhaps related to him. In the
figure of the Saviour, however, a detailed relation does exist. The
expression of the head, its diagonal position seen from below, the
posture of the arm, as of the whole body, is doubtless to be
170

derived directly from the stretched out figure of Christ in

Michelangelo's Pietil group, and the dying slave also has a certain
connection with it. Yet Rosso was no more really permeated by
Michelangelo's influence than Pontormo was when he made use of
motifs from the battle cartoon. Any direct northern influence (in
any case very much slighter than with Pontormo) is hardly
ascertainable to be sure, the reaction of the late Gothic against the
classical which does tum up at the same time in the north (e.g.,
Cranach) is similar in spirit, but its appearance in Italy is
naturally much more surprising.
Rosso's very remarkable painting which now hangs in the
Tribuna of the Uffizi, Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro (Fig.
11) is not formulated in terms of psychic depth, but is built on a
purely esthetic basis of form, color, ornamental overlapping, and
spatial layers, yet it is very characteristic of the new
interpretation. It must have been executed before 1523, for about
this time Rosso left Florence and went to Rome. The
Michelangelesque influence extends only to the foreshortened nude
figures of the stricken shepherds in the foreground who very
clearly betray a study of the Bathing Soldiers. Moses, like them,
foreshortened, almost entirely nude, with blond hair flying and
blond beard, exhibits a stronger and even wilder contrapposto than
his prototype in the engravings by Agostino Veneziano. He stands
behind or above the figures which have been struck down and is
striking a third, while a fourth on the other side, with a very red
face and similar light blond locks, his mouth wide open, shouts
out of the picture. Even further upward a new attacker, shadowy
in contrast with the bright bodies down below, a flying mantle as
a circular foil at his side, storms in from the side toward a girl. She
is surrounded by the frightened lambs, her arm outstretched in
fright, a light cloak around her otherwise exposed body, sheer
astonishment on her pretty face. At the extreme upper edge of the
picture, behind a railing, are to be seen fleeing girls, buildings, and
 171

two overlapping profiles. Multiplied layers, brutally projected

gestures, strong plastic volumes of bodies which, pressed closely
together, leave hardly a single unfilled patch of surface anywhere,
strong but entirely unreal colors, characterize this painting, for
which the entire Renaissance furnishes no prototype. A feeling of
space, of a certain depth, does arise through the "addition of
layers" set behind or above each other. Apart from the bodies,
each of which builds its own spatial volume, there is no indication
of depth through perspective. Instead of this, parallel layers move
with the surface of the painting, a step marking the first third and
a railing the second. Even the figure storming in from the side
moves parallel to the picture plane, and the movement of Moses
functions in a similar way. The extreme plasticity of the single
figures is thus, as a whole, absorbed into the two-dimensional
quality of the picture surface and so subdued, although a certain
realistic effect of depth in space is maintained through the actual
spatial volumes and the succession of layers. The unstable
tension between the picture surface and the effect of depth thus
created, combined with an interlocking of layers, is a typical
manneristic method.19 Rosso's picture is indeed the earliest in
which this kind of spatial organization is presented in its extreme
form. Since Rosso is altogether a stronger colorist than the other
Florentine mannerists, he employs light and color to a striking
extent in order to achieve this layer structure. The layer in the
foreground, brightly lighted, has a green base against which are set
off by the light yellow bodies and the red-brown wild hair. Higher,
beyond the step, there is a bluish layer, somewhat more in
shadow, out of which shine the red hair of Moses and his red
garment. The darkly shaded striding man with his flying,
poisonous violet garment and the light blue of the girl are set
above this. With the red-brown of the railing begins the narrowest,
highest layer where red, yellow, and green light up in the garments
of the fleeing figures and a piece of the sky shows between yellow-
172

brown houses. In contrast with the other paintings of Rosso, the

proportions of the single figures are not especially elongated the
masses of the bodies of the daughters of Jethro are almost
standard. In spite of this through the compressed piling up within
the tall format there does arise a feeling of verticalism thoroughly
expressive of the new style. Altogether, in both construction and
color, this painting of Rosso's is the strangest, wildest picture
created in the whole period, and stands quite apart from every
canonical normative feeling.20
The third among the creators and prototypes of the
anticlassical mannerist style is not a Florentine but a north Italian.
This is Francesco Parmigianino, born in 1503, and thus almost a
decade younger than Pontormo and Rosso. Furthermore, he stems
from a basically different artistic culture and thus contributes a
different artistic pattern. For he did not have to struggle against
the stability of Roman and Florentine High Renaissance art, and
he had not, in his youth, absorbed like mother's milk the plastic
anatomy of the bathing soldiers of Michelangelo. For him instead
the grace and the optical subjectivism of Correggio had been the
source in his decisive years, and he was himself inclined by his
whole nature to increase and refine the delicacy and the courtly
elegance of his master. Thus the transition to the new style is not
nearly so rough and revolutionary in him as in the two Florentines.
With these limitations in mind, one can say that the relation of the
developed art of Parmigianino to Correggio is in general the same
as that of Pontormo and Rosso to Andrea del Sarto and the
Florentine High Renaissance.
The early works in Parma show the style of Correggio-the
Marriage of St. Catherine in the Gallery of Parma, for example, is
put together out of Correggesque motifs. More interesting are the
niche figures in San Giovanni Evangelista which, though their
prototype in spatial organization and construction of masses is
Correggio's handsome lunette of St. John on Patmos in the same
 173

church, nevertheless already show a great individuality. For even

more than in Correggio's St. John the figures fill the space of the
chiaroscuro niche, and go beyond Correggio in illusionism, as when
a slip of drapery or a foot hangs over the frame into the world of
the observer. This subjective optical quality is especially striking in
the St. George, where the rearing body of the horse looms high in
the foreground of the picture. Parmigianino again shows this
preference for the illusionistic in his curious self-portrait in the
convex mirror in Vienna, a trick (of exceedingly high quality to be
sure) in which the hand, because it is so close to the mirror,
appears unnaturally large. In this way, along with the optical
painterly tendency, Parmigianino manifests his inclination toward
the bizarre, the unnatural, the anticanonical.
In the course of his four years' stay in Rome (1523 to 1527), he
established his personal style, developing it further to its finest
maturity after the sack of Rome in 1527 caused him, as it did so
many artists, to leave the Eternal City. Thus only a little later than
Rosso and Pontormo, Parmigianino underwent the same
transformation of style. In the harder Roman atmosphere the grace
and softness of the Correggesque style is altered into a harder and
stiffer structure, and from the delicate court ladies of Correggio
develop heroines who, to be sure, are still graceful. This appears
decisively in the one masterpiece of the Roman period which is
preserved to us, the Vision of St. Jerome (Fig. 12), especially in its
upper part, for the lower still shows a debt to Correggio.21
In contrast to the optical weaving of the figures, the sfumato,
the lovely softness of the women of Correggio, Parmigianino's
composition is reduced to only a few figures with sharper
contours, and the figure of the Madonna is of an outspoken
monumentality. This is the attitude found in the later Raphael, in
Sebastiano, in Michelangelo. But it is characteristic that the
Michelangelo of the Sistine apparently exercised little influence on
Parmigianino. The motif of the Madonna with the beautiful boy
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between her knees stems indeed from Michelangelo, but it goes

back to a youthful work of the master, the Madonna of Bruges.
Thus the placing of the Madonna is completely frontal. To this
extent, and likewise in the type, the painting recalls "classic"
feeling. What makes it more modem and anticlassic-in addition
to its neglect of the spatial element-is its verticalism. Its
frontality emphasizes its utterly unusual format, much more than
twice as high as it is wide, a proportion we must recognize as
offering an extreme contrast to Renaissance feeling, absolutely
dedicated to balancing every relationship. Similarly the
proportions of the Madonna are unusually elongated, and still
more so in the sketch for the painting, now in the British
Museum.22 In the sketch the Madonna is presented standing on
the clouds, the Child upright upon her left hip the other hip is
strongly curved and the figure is so elongated that it takes up
three-fourths of the picture surface. Whence came this verticalism
of Parmigianino's? He did not bring it with him from his home and
the Correggio circle. Nor did he meet with it in the Rome of the
1520s--either within the Raphael school in Giulio Romano (even
Peruzzi comes upon it only later in Siena) or among the
Michelangelo followers such as Sebastiana. It was not until the
end of the 1520s, and even then only in single instances, that
Michelangelo's proportions began to stretch out lengthwise as if
snapping apart. In any case he is in Florence, not in Rome. On the
other hand, these changes of proportion, this verticalism, which
are to be so characteristic of Mannerism in so many of its
evocations, are already to be found at the beginning of the 1520s
in that new anticlassical tendency of Pontormo and Rosso.
Besides, it develops that Rosso went to Rome in the same years as
Parmigianino. For the history of Early Mannerism it is certainly a
significant fact that two leaders of the growing style, Rosso and
Parmigianino, came together in Rome and worked beside each
other during the years from 1523 to the terrible days of May,
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1527. Even if little more can be established in detail, they can

scarcely have failed to have been in contact.23
Thus, without venturing into the hypothetical, one can, on the
basis of stylistic facts, deduce an exchange of influence. Rosso,
who was in a position to look back on such brilliant and
completely novel creations as the Volterra Deposition (even if he
did not keep to the same level in Rome but fell into a strange
hesitation) must have been the instigator, and must have made a
significant impression on the much younger Parmigianino. He
could tell him about the anticlassical artistic revolution in
Florence, of which he was himself, along with Pontormo, one of
the main participants. Compared to the heroic works of the High
Renaissance, this style must have been a revelation to the sensitive
young Parmigianino, whose whole temperament was desirous of
novelty. And this explains the change in format, the new
verticalism that is no mere external method, and the other
similarities to the new style evident in Parmigianino's pictures. 24
Further, Parmigianino's conscious and entirely unclassical
neglect of the canonical relation of figure to space may perhaps
reflect the Florentine tendency, or at least be strengthened by it,
even if he gives it other forms.
Both the excessive lengthening of the figure, and the
neglectfulness in the handling of space, are acutely emphasized for
the first time in a somewhat later painting, the famous, because
especially charming, Madonna of the Long Neck (about 1535 to
1540, Fig. 13). Here the elongation of the body is the more
thoroughgoing in that it does not involve the massive giantesses of
Rosso, still partially visible in Parmigianino's own Vision of St.
Jerome, but instead, a slim, elegant lady, an aristocrat, even more
distinguished and courtly than Correggio's female saints. This
uncanonical elongation enhances still further the elegance and the
gracefully and carefully posed effect of the twisted position. The
artistic method is the same, but the new proportions have a quite
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different meaning than in the ascetic Pontormo or in the excited

Rosso. The angels have the same elegant grace, and the overlong
nude leg of the youthful angel at the front, with the vase half cut
off by the frame, carries a quite special accent.2 5
The spatial relations are astonishing. The group of the Virgin
with the angels in front of the red curtain is set very high and off
to one side the eye must shift without transition into a deeper
space where a column rises and a prophet, much too small in
proportion to the group of the Virgin, stands holding a scroll. It is
the same evocation of intentionally unrealistic proportions in the
sizes of the figures, in their relation to each other and in their
positions in space, as in Pontormo's Martyrdom of St. Maurice
(Pitti) of 1529 and as later in El Greco. 26
Thus the Florentines did not (as has been suggested) take over
Mannerism from Parmigianino on the contrary, as is only natural
considering his relative youth, he learned from the anticlassical
movement of Pontormo and Rosso precisely those things that
distinguish him from the preceding generation-the subjective
rhythmic quality of his art, the uncanonical presentation of the
figure, demonstrated in verticalism and in other elements, and the
equally uncanonical handling of space. But Parmigianino is an
independent artist. His color is quite different from that of the
others where Pontormo, originally following Andrea del Sarto, has
soft flowing tones, less differentiated and though simplified
greatly strengthened, and where Rosso forces local color and uses
it dynamically to divide his layers and let them flicker in light,
Parmigianino's coloring relies on the finest nuances. A kind of
greenish general tone is spread over the whole, and to it are
subordinated the local colors, running from moss green to pea
green (in the Madonna of the Long Neck), with some reddish tones
tossed in.27 This and the flowing light (similar to Correggio) in
themselves prove that Parrnigianino does not create with plastic
volumes like Rosso, nor of course so much from within outward as
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Pontormo. Despite the craftsmanlike contour element that with

the subtlest sensitivity bounds his figures, the optical element
always remains so essential that the linkage between the figures is
set up less in a linear than in an optical way. Thus he never builds
his figures exclusively by volume like Michelangelo and some of
the mannerists instead his figures always stand isolated and yet
enclosed in space. Only this space is not proportionate to the
figures in it, and it is here (as has been suggested), that he
approaches tendencies of the early mannerist movement in
Florence. He too uses, besides, the system of additive layers, and
apparently takes this too from Florence that is, he constructs
three-dimensional space by parallel layers and thus brings it near
the picture plane. This is already apparent in his early portraits
(for instance, the very typical one of 1524 in Naples), but more
insistently still in a late painting, the masterly Dresden picture of
the Madonna with the Two Deacons seated before a balustrade.
But he never interlaces or shuttles the layers, nor the figures either
the optical element of color and light plays such a part, that the
effect is different, more loosely spatial, less stiff than in Tuscan
Mannerism.28 In the Dresden picture it is notable how far in space
the Madonna in her glory of light on the clouds stands behind the
balustrade figures. Individually Parmigianino's own is the "grazia"
so famous in the Carracci circle. The infinite distinction of stance,
the recherche and precocity of movement and turn in the body, the
transparency of narrow, exaggeratedly long-fingered hands
expresses his artistic nature, albeit the predisposition was already
provided in Correggesque art. This has nothing directly to do with
Pontormo and Rosso, neither of them "elegant," but over and
above Parmigianino, the individual, it expressed the new
mannerist feeling.2 9
The grace of Parmigianino could the more easily influence
Florentine Mannerism of the second generation, in that the ground
was already laid in the work of Botticelli and others. Thus a
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mutual influence was possible, in that Parmigianino took over the

bases of the new aspects of his style from the Florentine
movement of 1520, but himself in turn-especially through his
prints and drawings-had a reciprocal influence on Florence.
The new style that cast off the classic, and against the
Renaissance pattern of canonical balance, set up a subjective
rhythmic figuration and an unreal space formation, rests
essentially on these three personalities: Pontormo, Rosso, and
Parmigianino. In Florence it developed out of the Andrea del Sarto
circle as an outspoken reaction against the beauty and repose of
the Florentine High Renaissance between 1520 and 1523 it is
already fully formed. In Rome, Parmigianino, himself an issue of
Correggio's style, comes to Rosso's side. The sack of Rome in 1527
scattered the seeds of the new tendency far and wide, and it
perhaps attained its wider significance in European history
through that very fact. In Florence, Pontormo's work proceeds
further, his masterpieces appear-the Entombment, the Louvre
painting. Following a Michelangelesque period, which for a time
brings him into direct dependence on that great man, he winds up
with his strange frescoes for San Lorenzo, of whose monumental
abstraction the only traces we have are in drawings. But in his
pupil Bronzino his trend is carried on, not only in the portrait,3 0
but, above all in figure and space composition. From this point on
is formed the "mannerist" trend so typical precisely of Florence.
Rosso, after some wandering, comes to Fountainebleau and
through his paintings and decorations in the new mannerist style
(to which scrollwork also pertains) this "northern Rome" becomes
the pilgrimage center for northern and especially Flemish artists.
Through Rosso and Primaticcio, his follower, the anticlassical
style spreads through the northern countries. Parmigianino's works
achieve a huge circulation in northern Italy by way of Venice and
the Bassano circle he Goined with Tintoretto, who also covers
mannerist ground) becomes a decisive influence on the last and
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perhaps greatest practitioner of the mannerist style, El Greco.

Over all lies the powerful shadow of Michelangelo. We have seen
how anticlassical elements were present in him a priori. Yet
Michelangelo, though he is so typically "anticlassic" is not of
decisive influence on the actual establishment of the mannerist
style around 1520. His influence begins in a direct way only with
the Medici Chapel, and more significantly with the Victor in the
field of sculpture, and in the field of painting with the Last
Judgment, from which even a Tintoretto could not escape. The
further development of the mannerist style cannot be followed
here our scope is limited to sketching its establishment in the
twenties of the sixteenth century. It is not any too often possible
to put one's finger so exactly on a turning point in the flow of
artistic things, in the way in which the passage from Vasari-the
voice of the public-in dealing with Pontormo's falling away from
true art has enabled us to do. This also made it possible to point
out the archaic elements so intrinsic to Early Mannerism and, in
Pontormo especially, to demonstrate the influence of the north. 31
This turning point, then, is established for Pontormo by a
document, but it applies not merely to this one artist personally
rather it is-to seize it stylistically by the hand-a general shift of
style in which Rosso and a little later Parmigianino participate,
and which becomes the point of departure for a European
movement. 32 With Raphael's death classic art-the High
Renaissance-subsided, though to be sure, like the "divine"
Raphael himself it is immortal and will always come to life again
in a new form. Its immediate successor is the new, anticlassical
viewpoint-the mannerist-subjective, which now becomes
dominant. Despite all the countercurrents this dominance persists
for almost sixty years, until a new reaction is successful, a
reaction deriving equally from the Carracci and the diametrically
opposed Caravaggio, and consciously laying hold on the
preceding period of the early cinquecento. Pontormo, Rosso,
180

Parmigianino, with the genius of Michelangelo hovering above

them and reaching beyond them, introduced this period, which
is not a mere transition, not merely a conjunction between
Renaissance and Baroque, but an independent age of style,
autonomous and most meaningful.
1
In using the expression "anticlassical" as a label of the new style around 1520, I
have not overlooked the purely negative character of this term. However, the contrast
of this term to the "classicism" of the High Renaissance seemed to me justified in
order to describe the beginning of the new period. It is well known that the usual
term "Mannerism" originally had a derogative meaning, so that it by no means
embraced the essence of the new movement. Yet a decided tendency away from this
pejorative attitude has occurred even with the word "manneristic," just as happened
in the cases of the terms "Gothic" or "Baroque"-a tendency which seems to indicate a
greater and more general understanding of the positive values of the style. The
present essay grew out of an inaugural lecture at the University of Freiburg in the
spring of 1914.
'One might be tempted to use the word "eurythmy" for this since, in ancient art
terminology, r'vp)'811i a stands in a certain opposition to a'llllETpa but eurythmy too,
in ancient times, serves in the last analysis only for the proposes of the canonical;
thus, changes in proportion in statues which were placed high up had canonical; thus,
changes in proportion in statues which were placed high up had basically only the
purpose of producing a standardized impression. Cf. also the passage on the armor
in Xenophon, Memorabilia (III, 10,9).
'How far tendencies of the quattrocento are actually picked up, and how these acquire
essentially other meanings in anticlassical manneristic art is still to be investigated. 'In
contemporary architectural ornament too (for example in church facades) the surface
acquires a stronger relief in a three-dimensional sense. Depth, however, is only
obtained through the things themselves, through the interlocking and the shuttling
back and forth of the architectural and the ornamental members, not, as in the seicento,
through movement and space. The same thing applies to grotesque ornament.
'"Optical" art in a narrower sense is only subjective in a conditional way, for it starts
out from the subject from the single individual, but wishes to establish the object even
if seen 1/ travers. The word "subjective" is used by Alois Riegl in this more materialistic
sense. It also plays upon the subjective status of the observer since it requires from
him activity, transformation, and reaction, as for example, in foreshortenings. Yet the
word "subJective" can also be applied in a purely spiritual sense, in the sense of a will
to free construction, unobjectively, as it is in Mannerism.
''On this point, cf. the book by August Schmarsow, Galik in der Renaissance (Stuttgart,
1921), which is rich in observations.
'The early works of Michelangelo, especially the cartoon of the Bathing Solders, are, to
be sure, of great significance for all artists of the period, but more in the formal aspect
of their construction and movement of bodies. The Doni Madonna, too, has with
certain tendencies of later Florentine Mannerism in the artificiality of its movement
and in the peculiarly cold presentation of color with changing tones.
 181

&raddeo Zuccaro took over a figure from the Conversion of St. Paul in his painting
in the Doria Gallery. The frescoes must have been made available to him, since the
ceiling in the Pauline Chapel was executed by the Zuccari.
9occasionally a replica in the former Doetsch collection has been considered the
original, but to the contrary see Carlo Gamba, I disegni di f. Carrucci detto il
Pontormo (Florence, 1912), and Piccola Collezione d'Arte, No. 15.
10 As it is to some extent in Andrea del Sarto's Marriage of St. Catherine 1512,
which it much recalls in the arrangement.
11The same thing is also to be seen turning up in Giulio Romano in his Anima
einting, later in date.
2No. 454, Bernard Berenson, Drawings of the Florentine Painters (London, 1903
and Chicago, 1938), I, 311, proposes that this drawing, stylistically so different, is
about ten to twelve years later than the fresco, i.e., at the beginning of the thirties
when Pontormo, who had not completed the work in Poggio a Caiano, received a
commission for it for the second time. However, Mortimer Clapp, Les Dessins de
Pontormo (Paris, 1914) considers the drawing to be for a variant project from the
same period as the fresco. In that case the stylistic variability of the artist would
be astonishing. The drawing of the figures is surely after 1530, when Pontormo
had temporarily come strongly under Michelangelo's influence. On the other hand,
the Uffizi drawing departs too greatly from the fresco even in content to be merely
a variant. Conceivably it is a project for another lunette (like Uffizi) which comes
before 1530 but later than the fresco.
13The preference for contraposti could, to be sure, derive from Michelangelo's
formal language, at least in a quite general way, i.e., from the art of Michelangelo
when he was still more or less close to nature (e.g., the Battle of Cascwa).
Drawings of Pontormo also refer back to it. It would be more interesting to know
whether at that stage of his activity Pontormo already knew the Sistine. The nude
youth sitting on tile wall who grasps the branch as it leans down, recalls the
Jonas in its backward strain. (Observation by Panofsky.) Yet it is precisely the
characteristic element which is lacking-the strong foreshortening. Assuming that
Pontormo thought of the extraordinary figure of the Prophet at all, it would mean
that the wild giant limbs had been transformed into something easy, almost
graceful. Drawings made from the Sistine may also have been available to
Pontormo. Michelangelo himself, who at about this time lived in Florence, seems
first to have come into closer contact with Pontormo at a later period.
14As, for example, the man at the extreme right in the Beheading of John in the
Scalzo from Durer (see Bartsch 10 and elsewhere).
15This comes out even more clearly in a Berlin drawing, which rises up more
slowly and steeply. Conceivably it is not autograph, though, but made after
Pontormo. Cf. Fritz Goldschmidt, "Frederick Mortimer Clapp. On Certain
Drawings of Pontormo" in Repertorium fiir Kunstwissensclzajt, 35 (1912), 559;
"Kupferstichkabinet Zeichningen von Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo" in Amtliche
Benchte aus den preussisclzen Kunstsammlungen, 36 (1914-15), 84; and Hermann
Voss, Die Malerei der Spiitrenaissance in Rom und Florenz (Berlin, 1920), 169.
16In Andrea del Sarto such half figures in the foreground, half or completely
turned toward the spectator, link him up with the holy event in a quite opposite
way-thus it becomes subjective and Barogue motif (e.g., in the Madonna with
Saints of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, 1528). Figures seen from the back in the
sense of Pontormo (his are the earliest) appear on the other hand in El Greco, for
example in the Spoiling of Christ.
182

17But likewise too in other paintings which cannot be more thoroughly treated
here, for example in the cassoni from the Life of Joseph at Panshanger and in the
National Gallery in London, the last of wh1ch is striking through its quite
exceptionally abstruse arrangement of space and proportion of the figures. Most
remarkable, too, is the John fhe Evangelist at Pontormo (Pieve) which, in its long,
lanky figure of an aged man, recalls El Greco, and which was created remarkably
early, about 1517 (according to Gamba, Disegni, 5). It would be tempting to place
it rather in the neighborhood of the stiffly soaring Louvre composition of the Holy
Family.
18oaniele must have known Rosso's painting in Volterra, but in contrast to Voss,
Spiitrenaissance, 123, I would also assume a direct link, especially in the upper
froup, with the Crucifixion of Filippino in the Academy.
9compare, for example, the allegory by Bronzino in London. This "addition of
the layers" thus pushes on into the classicistic too (compare my book Nicolas
Poussm [Munich, 1914]); only the shuttling back and forth disappears.
20ane may compare with this the handling of the same theme by Botticelli in the
Sistine Chapel in order to recognize the difference between a "Gothic artist of the
early Renaissance" and an early mannerist.
21I think that here, in addition to connections with the St. John by Raphael in the
Uffizi, one can also see others with Correggio's Madonna with St. Sebastian in
Dresden. The Baptist takes the same central position as the St. Geminianus and
looks outward w1th similar strain, and the spatial arrangement of the sleeping
Jerome seen in foreshortening reflects the St. Roch in Correggio's painting. This
last in any case must have been produced no earlier than around 1525, but
Parmigianino could have seen studies of it, or drawings after it as well. To be
sure, we would then have to place Parmigianino's painting around 1527 at the end
of his Roman stay, following Vasari, and not at the beginning as Lili Frohlich-
Bum proposes in her book Parmigianino (Vienna, 1921), 22 (for which dating no
impressive reasons are evident in any case).
22Compare the reproduction in Frohlich-Bum , Parmigiani no, 20.
23The same engraver, Caraglio, who worked for Parmigianino, also worked for
Rosso, whose very tYJ?ical mannerist divinities in niches he, among others,
engraved. Then too it IS certainly no coincidence that Parmigianino's St. Jerome
was commissioned for Citta di Castello and that Rosso too soon thereafter (in
1528) delivered a strange Transfiguration for the cathedral of the same city. This
at least permits the inference of the same circle of interested people and patrons.
24The heroine type of the Madonna which has been cited, in the Vision of St.
Jerome, this noble figure with the rather strong features, the high-waisted costume
which permits the broad, strong breast to come forward may go back in general to
the Roman attitude which tends to make things heroic and antique, and to be a
development of the female type of the late Raphael and Michelangelo-the Sibyl
by Peruzzi in Siena also shows a similar presentation in the costume and cut of
the features. But Rosso's giant women, too, as already presented in his Florentine
raintings such as the Marriage of the Virgin, may have played a part in this. In the
Transfiguration for Citta di Castello, which still draws its Impulse from his
Florentine period, we find a female type very closely related to the Vision by
Parmigianino.
25In Pontormo's masterpiece of the Entombment in Santa Felicita, the youthful
angel which supports the body of Christ under its arm at the extreme side shows a
certain parallel, even if not nearly so accentuated. The Love Cutting his Bow in
 183

Vienna, which belongs to the same period, also shows a certain relationship with
the cowering angel in the foreground of Pontormo's painting. Parmigianino could
have seen this painting shortly after it was produced, on his stopover in Florence
in 1527 on his flight to Bologna. Yet Correggio's St. George in his Dresden
Madonna may have served as a direct source for the angel with the vase, at least
for the motif of the nude leg turned to the foreground.
26The column was originally supposed to end in an architectural form (see the
drawing illustrated by Frohlich-Bum, Parmigiani no, 44) but it was not executed,
since the painting according to its inscription is "non finito." But a similar column
also rises in the background in the ruined landscape of the Holy Family in the
Uffizi, which was greatly influenced by Giulio Romano. Whether Parmigianino
would really have carried the column higher seems questionable. The effect is too
~ood as it is.
7In the Dresden painting with the Deacons, the hands of one and the same person
are handled, in their painterly aspects, completely differently from each other: the
hand on the red background is greenish and on the green background is reddish.
This is not only a surprising optical observation of the effect of contrasting
colors, but also a most unclassical trait. Correggio always treats the hands as
2Suivalent and standardized.
2 Bedoli, who carries on Parmigianino's style in Parma, attaches himself much
more closely to the Florentine procedure in space, in the additive, layers, etc.
29Here too the extent to which the affections of the quattrocento live on in
Parmigianino would have to be investigated-so that one could establish a kind
of archaism here too--and the extent to which mannerist and quattrocento "grace"
differ from each other.
30The contrast of mannerist portraits of Pontormo, Rosso, and Parmigianino with
the Renaissance would require separate treatment.
31Jn the portraits of Parmigianino too there has been thought to be visible
something unltalian and subjectively northern (Frohlich-Bum, Parmigianino, 32).
In any case this element in Mannerism met the northern peoples halfway, which
e?Plains the remarkably quick picking-up of the same thing in the north.
32The particular f>OSition of Beccafumi ought to be considered for a more complete
understanding. His relation to Sodoma is similar to Pontormo's and Rosso's
relation to Andrea del Sarto, and Parmigianino's to Correggio, but being in Siena
he does not have the European influence as they do, and is thus not of such direct
s~ificance for the rise of the style.
3 The question arises: is there any broad explanation in the history of culture for
this apparently sudden change of style? For the appearance of weariness, of
reaction against the all too great beauty and stability of high classic art, could
scarcely cover the matter and satisfy as a single explanation. Doubtless reasons
may be found in the general viewpoint of the period. Certainly parallel
indications can be found in literature and in music; yet to establish any such
interchange of influence among the arts one would have to have a mastery of the
materials reaching into detail if one would avoid arriving at mere generalizations.
The materials of religious ferment are certainly present in tne time in all
sufficiency, and they perhaps explain also the turn toward the spiritual which
characterizes the beginning of the movement. But it would be cfifficult to find
causes for this (parallels are something else). There is interest in the
extraordinarily free observation by Giordano Bruno, cited by Julius Schlosser in
Die Kunstliteratur des Manierismus (Vol. VI of Materialien zur Quellenkunde der
184

Kunstgeschichte), 110, "The artist alone is the creator of the rules and rules exist
just so far and are just so many as there are artists." Yet this is only stated for the
art of poetry. In the field of the theory of art compare, besides, the quotations cited
in Scnlosser's materials, Panofsky, Idea, 1924 ( 39 ff., "Mannerism.") I have
devoted a thorough review to this important book elsewhere.
Fig. 1 Jacopo Pontorrno, Visitation, 1515. Fig. 2 Jacopo Pontorrno, Madonna an
Florence. Chiostro della Santissima Child with Saints, 1518. Flore
Annunziata San Michele Visdomini
186

Fig. 3 Jacopo Pontormo, Vertumnus and Pomona, 1520.

Florence, Poggio a Caiano

Fig. 4 Jacopo Pontormo, Study for Lunette Decoration of Poggio a

Caiano, 1520. Florence, Uffizi
 187

4 ~-
-~--~,_'"...__ '

Fig. 5 Jacopo Pontormo, Christ before Pilate, 1523. Florence,

Certosa del Galluzzo

Fig. 6 Jacopo Pontormo, Pietii, 1523. Florence, Certosa del

Galluzzo
 Fig. 8 Rosso Fiorentino, Assumpt
Fig. 7 Jacopo Pontorrno, Resurrection, Virgin, 1515. Florence, Sa
1523. Florence, Certosa del Galluzzo Annunziata
Fig. 9 Rosso Fiorentino, Marriage of the Fig. 10 Rosso Fiorentino, Deposition
Virgin, 1523. Florence, San Lorenzo Volterra, Pinacoteca
Fig. 11 Rosso Fiorentino, Moses and the Daughters Fig. 12 Parmigianino, Vision of St. Jerom
of Jethro, 1524. Florence, Uffizi London, National Gallery
 191

Fig. 13 Parmigianino, Madonna dal Colla Lungo, 1535. Florence,

Uffizi
This page intentionally left blank
 EL GRECO AND MANNERISM

Max Dvofak

Max Dvofak, 1874-1921, was professor of the history of art

at the University of Vienna. He himself is not well known to
Americans because none of his writings have been translated. Yet
he did have many pupils and his books have continued to exert
considerable influence so that much familiar writing and lecturing
on art is, in fact, Dvorak at second hand. It is therefore worth
while trying to make at least one of his own works more generally
accessible.
The essay which follows was chosen partly because it is
typical of his work. He had a gift for direct artistic perceptions
combined with a determination to define their significance in terms
of the history of ideas. A second reason for choosing this lecture
is that, although dealing with a well-known artist, it relates him to
a problem about which very little has been written in English.
Today the concept of mannerism is more precise than it was when
this lecture took form, yet the very sweep of Dvorak's concepts
make them still stimulating.
Greco und der Manierismus was given as a public lecture in
October, 1920, and was published posthumously in the collection
of Dvofak's lectures and essays, Kunstgeschichte als
Geistesgeschichte. Dvorak left a complete text for the lecture but
there was little indication as to what illustrations should go with
it. I have included here the six which appeared in the German
publication and added several others. The fact that the
manuscript was meant to be read aloud and was not reviewed by
the author before publication accounts for the literary style which
is sometimes over-dramatic, and occasionally prolix. The fact
that German was not Dvofak's native language led him now and
then, to somewhat odd usages. All these shortcomings are
194

intensified by translation, not to mention others which have been

introduced unwittingly. In rendering this lecture into English I
have often been unable to reproduce Dvofak's sentence
construction. I hope his meaning has never been altered, although
there is a constant danger of change in emphasis.
The reader must bear in mind the conditions under which this
lecture was prepared. Vienna in 1920 had just ceased to be the
center of a great empire and had just become the overextended
capital of a small and helpless country. Dvofak was deeply
aware of the world around him, and it is not surprising that at
times the general tone of this essay reflects specific local problems
all too clearly.
I wish to express my gratitude to Professors Jakob Rosenberg
and Sydney Freedberg who have been kind enough to read this in
manuscript and who contributed many helpful suggestions.
El Greco's reputation among his Spanish contemporaries was
based on a painting in St. Thomas', Toledo, the Burial of Count
Orgaz. A stone plaque under the picture explains what is
represented. Don Gonzalo, Count of Orgaz and Procurator of
Castille, was a benefactor of this church where he expected to be
interred. At the very moment the priests were preparing him for
the tomb--Oh wonder of wonders--Saints Stephen and
Augustine descended from heaven and buried him with their own
hands.
El Greco has represented this legend in a remarkable way. The
painting consists of two parts: below, the burial is depicted,
above, the reception into heaven. The lower part is likewise
divided in two, a ceremony and a miracle. The ceremony is shown
with Spanish dignity and at the same time a literalism which
recalls contemporary Dutch masters. The corpse, clad in armor,
lies on a bier and to the right a priest is shown in an attitude of
awe and concentration reading the prayers for the dead. In the
corresponding position on the left a monk silently contemplates
 195

the deceased as if he would bid him farewell. The mourners are

arranged in an unbroken row between these two comer figures-
the flower of the Toledan aristocracy forming, as it were, a frieze.
These Hidalogos in their black suits and white ruffs are grave and
attentive, like the figures in a Dutch portrait group. (Yet,
individuality of likeness is played down in favor of uniformity of
expression.) There is something hard and at the same time fanatic
about the faces. They suggest ascetic self-discipline, an inherited
system of values and minds which can comprehend things that the
eyes cannot see and hands cannot touch. Let us continue.
Apart from the ceremony, something is going on of which most
of the company have no suspicion. Two messengers have arrived
from heaven, messengers who undertake to bury the earthly frame
of this true servant of the church. Above, freed from that earthly
frame and ringed by an ethereal vision of clouds and insubstantial
figures, the count is solemnly received by Christ and the Virgin.
Two participants in the ceremony see what the rest know nothing
about, the Priest in a white surplice on the right who glances
upward in the greatest astonishment, and the boy on the left in the
foreground. He looks out of the picture and points at the two
saints with his left hand, as if he would call the spectator's
attention to the miracle. Thus, there is a heart filled with faith
there is the soul of a child, not yet closed off by the poison of
doubt, and still aware of the miracles of this world. (Finally, there
is the spectator whom art shall exalt to a purely spiritual realm.)
That defines the significance of this remarkable picture. El
Greco sets forth, as if in an elaborate floral display, everything
which made the painting of his day famous. Here is the skillful
composition of the Roman School, a Venetian command of color,
the portraiture of the Netherlands. Who else since Titian's death
could represent rich vestments with the bravura shown here in the
two saints? Who else since Tintoretto could catch with such
mastery the fleeting quality of a vision? Who since Michelangelo
196

could solve the most difficult compositional problems with such

boldness? Yet there is more to the picture. Beyond the bounds of
mere earthly beauty, truth and accuracy, it makes mystery and
spirituality manifest.
Where does the scene take place? Did we not know, we could
hardly guess. By night, apparently in the church, of which,
however, we see nothing. Ever since Giotto, a sure organization of
forms in space had been the fixed basis of all pictorial
representation. This has now disappeared. Is the room wide or
deep? One does not know. The figures are herded together as if
the artist had fitted them into the space clumsily. But at the same
time the flickering light and the painter's sense of the supernatural
open out limitless expanses above.
The fundamental idea of the composition is old and simple
preceding artists had used it hundreds of times in representing the
Assumption. Yet how its character has been changed! Since the
frame cuts off the figures in the foreground no ground line is visible
and the forms seem to grow upwards in some magic way. Here is
the prelude to exaltation which still has to overcome some
opposition in the lower register. But the rising movement bursts
like flames through the isocephalism of the row of mourners. In
the blaze of light above El Greco both follows and denies the
traditional symmetrical arrangement. Hitherto, in scenes which
show a ceremonial reception into heaven, the composition had
served to give pictorial expression to certain rhythm, a rhythm of
material things deployed with architectural regularity. El Greco
takes this meaning away from it. A different rhythm appears
nothing is quite vertical. The clouds and the floating figures are
not organized according to a system based on the laws of gravity
and the overcoming of those laws. The apotheosis is informed
with a dream-like, unreal existence which follows only the
painter's inspiration. This applies not only to the composition but
also to the individual shapes and to the colors. The latter are
 197

something apart and do not try to reproduce what appears to

the eye. Rather they resemble a feverish vision in which the
spirit frees itself from earthly bonds to lose itself in a starry,
super-rational world.
His contemporaries in Toledo called El Greco the seer of
spirits, and with some justification. "Ya era loco" says the
present-day custodian who takes visitors to look at the picture.
He was crazy. More politely expressed-'a noble mind but
unhinged'-that judgment has persisted until very recent times.
It is even found in the history of art when the author adopts a
materialist and 'scientific' order to defend him (that is no longer
necessary), but in order to come closer to the sources of his
remarkable art.
As is well known, Domenico Theotocopuli was a Greek from
Crete which was at that time ruled by Venice. Like many of his
countrymen, he too was educated in the city of lagoons. He was
trained in the workshop of Titian, then almost ninety years old.
Here he became familiar with Titian's great experience of the
phenomena of color and how to reproduce them
impressionistically. He was influenced likewise by the aged
Bassano, the painter of sharp contrasts of light and dark, as well
as by Veronese, the master of delicate silvery tones. But all this
left him tmsatisfied. At that time Italian art had reached a
turning point in its development. A wholly new spiritual
impulse had taken hold of it, an impulse originating in Rome
but affecting even the younger Venetian painters. So in 1570
we find El Greco in the Eternal City, where he had come with
letters of introduction to Giulio Clovio, the miniature painter.
Then the trail is lost till 1577 when he appears in Toledo,
painting pictures which, aside from their technical mastery,
have scarcely anything in common with the works of his
Venetian youth. El Greco is a new man. It was
said at the time that he had been converted in the interim. Such
a spiritual rebirth is the key to a great master. It is that which
198

raised him to the eminence he holds for us today, so we must

search out its every root.
We have no external point of departure. We cannot verify
what happened to El Greco in the seven years between Rome and
Toledo either by dates or by works of art. To be sure we can do
what is ultimately more important we can discover where he
received new ideas and impressions.
We must therefore turn our attention to Michelangelo. The
greatest figure of the century, he, more than anybody else was
destined to anticipate the spirit of the coming generation. As an
old man Michelangelo created works of art which have until now
lain beyond the limit of critical comprehension, just like El Greco's
paintings. Judged by naturalistic standards they have frequently
been considered unfinished works or the drawings of senility. To
this group belong the Pieta in the Palazzo Rondanini, the
Deposition in the Cathedral at Florence, and the drawings of the
human figure from the master's last period. To it belongs a series
of studies for a Crucifixion which can tell us about Michelangelo's
ultimate artistic beliefs and his legacy. High Renaissance art was
essentially pagan and during that period this subject had gone
completely out of fashion. What does it mean when the time-
honored pathetic theme re-appears in the work of the aged
Michelangelo? Presumably he wished to study the representation
of the nude again, a study which for more than one hundred and
fifty years had been the principal source of artistic progress in
Italy. Yet how these "nudes" differ from everything the Italians
had hitherto understood by the term, including Michelangelo's own
earlier work.
Consider a drawing for the Battle of Cascina, done in his
youth from a living model. The single parts of the body are
rendered as faithfully and naturalistically as possible. They are
individualized and, as the ancients would have said, perfected.
Art was knowledge, it had to replace revelation and make men
 199

aware of cause and effect operating in the world around them. In

a second phase of development, in the Sistine Chapel and on the
Medici Tombs, Michelangelo goes beyond the living model. The
forms he creates are superhuman, heroic, and therefore opposed
to the forms found in normal individuals. Instead of the old
transcending power we have a race of Titans, a deification of
man. A third phase is represented by the Last Judgment. By now
such is the artist's command of anatomy, such his knowledge of
pose and movement that he not only goes beyond the living model,
he makes of the human body a medium for expressing grandiose
and personal conceptions. This is self-apotheosis, a power of
artistic creation which triumphs over nature and rivals the divine.
It breaks down. Michelangelo never tries to paint this way again.
The things he draws or models in his late years seem to belong to
another world.
From Giotto on art was more and more thought to be a matter
of skillful composition, dramatic treatment, forms filled with
natural vitality, forms drawn with conviction, forms effectively
related to one another spatially, physically, and psychologically.
All these ideals reached their climax in Michelangelo's early work.
All have now disappeared. Here is a simple triad, three massive,
unarticulated figures, one thinks of mediaeval sculpture or
painting. They are almost formless if one considers what had
hitherto been understood as form. The point of departure had
been to reproduce the material substance of the outer world.
Certainly Michelangelo no longer achieved that ideal. Now the
figures are mighty. They are amorphous masses as indifferent in
themselves as stones by the roadside yet vibrant throughout,
volcanic, filled with a sense of tragedy that flows from the
innermost depths of the soul. To him who has grasped this, all
earlier representations of the crucifixion seem insipid and
superficial. For here the source of the tragedy is not something
external, to be explained by mechanics, it is an inner experience.
200

The mystery of that death which sets men free has brought upon
the artist an inner upheaval and to build the figures, not from the
outside inwards, but from the inside outwards, as if the body
were possessed by the spirit. There is no looking back. The sense
of life and of death which permeates the figures does not depend
on earlier ideals of spacious beauty and faithfulness to nature.
Or take the Pieta Rondanini. Far more than the experiences of
a life-time-one of the richest lives an artist ever lived-separates
the Pieta of his old age from the Pieta of his youth. The things he
had valued most highly when young came to seem worthless.
Now the wonderful curving construction has disappeared the
masterly pulling together of the figures into a group seems
meaningless, as does that treatment of the surface where
Michelangelo for once had surpassed the ancients. Here is a dead
mass, hanging loosely down, without any attempt at
individualization, or bodily idealization. Yet it is a moving elegy.
Never before was the meaning of Christ's death so deeply
grasped, never was grief shown weighing so heavily upon the
human spirit.
Thus, at the end of his life, Michelangelo turned away from a
style which was concerned with the imitation and the formal
idealization of Nature. He rejected the objective Renaissance view
of the world considering that the emotions and experiences of the
psyche were more important for art than faithfulness to sense
perceptions. His work became un-naturalistic. In terms of all
history this was nothing new, for if we scan the whole course of
art, we find that un-naturalistic periods are commoner and last
longer than periods of naturalism. Even in the latter an
undercurrent of unrealism continues as a legacy from earlier
epochs. Ages of naturalism seem almost like islands in a great
current of thought which considers the representation of inner
emotions more important than truth to Nature. And yet it seems
inconceivable that at the close of his career Michelangelo should
 201

tum away from his personal style, and from a style by which his
native land had achieved an outstanding position in the world.
Moreover, he turns back to the other, the anti-naturalistic attitude
towards art, which was the attitude of the Christian middle ages.
This change depends first of all on his spiritual development.
In middle life he had a god-like command over everything which
could be founded upon the Renaissance view of art. He pushed
the solutions of its fundamental problems as far as was possible,
and, like the Impressionists during the last century, he reached
limits that might not be exceeded. A nature as deep as
Michelangelo's could not remain unaware of this. You could not
express everything that moved mankind just by perfecting and
intensifying material form the attempt to do so had miscarried as
Michelangelo was able to declare in works such as the Last
Judgment. Hence, even the Renaissance's naive, antique, happy
affirmation of the world gave him no pleasure. Following the
general trends of his time, his deep and meditative spirit turned
back to the most profound questions of existence: for what does
man live? What relation is there between transitory, earthly and
material values and eternal, spiritual and immaterial values?
Michelangelo assumes the stature of a giant when one realizes
that he, the most celebrated artist in the world, gradually denied
everything on which his fame rested. Lonely and withdrawn, he
tormented himself continually. "Non vi si pensa, quanto sangue
costa," nobody thinks how much blood it has cost me, he said at
the time. Finally, he completely renounced the material arts of
painting and sculpture, arts which as people then understood
them could no longer meet the demands he made. He confined
himself to the creation of a building for the glory of God. In this
the unreal Gothic line of the rising dome was going to lift itself
over all the material splendor of imperial and papal Rome. At the
same time his aged hand produced drawings or studies for
sculpture in which he appears not triumphant but as a seeker.
202

These drawings also show the expenditure of much blood and

energy of spirit. They do not reveal overwhelming power,
terribilita they are a calm confession of humble fervor.
I have dwelt on Michelangelo because his last style was the
beginning of a new anti-naturalistic orientation of art on which El
Greco's works in Toledo were based. Hitherto this fact has been
overlooked. I have treated him at length because in his own career
he completed a course of development which the art and culture
of the time likewise pursued. It is not, as the nineteenth century
believed, the masses who set the character of evolution and
determine material and spiritual culture it is the spiritual leaders.
For El Greco's generation, as for our own, the Sistine ceiling, the
Medici Chapel, and the Last fudgmentconstituted a reservoir of
artistic forms. Yet, the impulse which was decisive for Italian art
of the second half of the century proceeded from those last works
of Michelangelo discussed above.
A second great artist can show us this, an artist who was
likewise decisive for El Greco's further development. This was
Tintoretto. He, too, had gone through a spiritual rebirth, and
during exactly the same seven years as the Toledan master.
People call it the transition from his golden style to his green style,
and do not rack their brains about what that transition means.
Tintoretto's early pictures rival Titian in their splendor of color.
This is replaced by a grey-green, an Ash Wednesday tonality,
from which a few hues shine forth like incandescent flowers. The
meaning of the innovation is clear. Venetian painting had stood
for the richest possible development of the sensual appeal of
natural colors. Tintoretto substitutes a ghostly plan of fantasy.
Smoky masses of color, lightning flashes of color, are a reflection
of subjective, spiritual states that have nothing to do with the
observation or reproduction of actual appearances.
Yet, more than color is at stake. In a picture like the Brazen
Serpent the composition is curiously wrenched the forms are bent
 203

and stretched without regard for normal poses or natural spatial

disposition they are interwoven according to the secret laws of a
passionate pathos. One sees a witch's sabbath of wildly twisted
bodies and lines. Shapes flash out of the darkness as if the figures
had been dismembered. An evil light whisks over all things as
though they were spooks.
On the other hand, the Ascension of Christ is a vision. In every
earlier representation of that event the central feature had been the
landscape with the apostles scattered about in it. Here, all but
the Evangelist have been cast out, thrust into the background.
Reality has become unreal the only reality is what transpires in the
brain of that one man. He had been reading apart from the others
now, the vision wells up in his mind. Christ rising to heaven is
neither far nor near, neither palpably flying upward nor an optical
illusion. He is a mental apparition which has nothing to do with
natural laws and to which, in turn, nothing is actual. Light and
shade as they affect clouds, movement, and colors do not perform
their normal function. As so often in Greco, light and shade are
not opposites, but are jointly the means by which dream-like
images are expressed.
Perhaps, Tintoretto's drawings of this period reveal even more
clearly his development to an art of inner sensation. They differ
fundamentally from all other Renaissance studies and preparatory
sketches. Created in a moment of utmost artistic ecstasy they are
records of visions. In their flaming protest a new affirmation of
truth does battle with the old understanding of art. Things should
be represented not in terms of conventional concepts of reality,
but as intuition has discovered them and as imagination has seen
them.
From Michelangelo Greco adopted anti-natural form from
Tintoretto he took anti-natural color and composition.
Yet, both together do not suffice to explain his Toledan style
completely. We must proceed further and speak of a general
204

process whose center lay not in Italy but north of the Alps.
"Nescio, At nescio Quid?" To know what you don't know-the
Jesuit Sanchez's famous phrase in his work on Ultimate and
General Knowledge-this best characterizes the situation. In
northern Europe, especially in Germany, a ferment had been
working since the beginning of the sixteenth century. As in our
own day there was opposition to capitalism, to the worldliness of
the church, and to that materialism which had seized upon the
whole of religious life. This movement led, of course, to the
Reformation. But anybody with a subtle intellect scon found that
the Reformation was an unhappy compromise. It sought to
harmonize the mysteries revealed by religion with rationality in
thought and life. Yet, the new concept of good works resulted in
lives based on public success and private gain. Worldliness,
banished from the church, was taken up by the state and adopted
by everybody in private. These were changes for the worse.
Disillusionment with the Reformation led to a skepticism and
doubt as to the value of rational thinking and rational codes of
behavior. It led likewise to a consciousness of the insufficiency of
the intellect and a realization of the relativity of all knowledge.
One can talk of a spiritual catastrophe spreading from political
life. Whether secular or religious, the old systems and categories
of thought collapsed as did the old dogmas concerning knowledge
and art. The change we could observe in Michelangelo and
Tintoretto within the limited field of art, is a criterion for the
whole period. The paths that had led to knowledge and to the
building up of spiritual culture were lost. The result seemed to be
chaos, just as our own time seems chaotic to us.
In the field of art this phenomenon is called mannerism.
Mannerism is not a defined period, but a continuing movement
whose beginnings go back to the opening of the sixteenth century.
The name is most unfortunate. Historians of art who applied
naturalistic standards saw that now the majority of artists
 205

avoided independent creation based on nature. They recognized

that the mannerists were content to work with and to transform
traditional forms just as were artists after the collapse of the
ancient world.
Such an analysis far from exhausts the essence of the
movement. The view of the world current in the late Middle Ages,
the Renaissance and the Reformation, was universally
acknowledged. When such a structure collapses there must be
ruins. Artists, like an increasing number of people in all
intellectual fields, lost the support of general maxims. To this loss
may be attributed their industry, their intense ambition, and their
petty concerns. The spectacle of an unprecedented disturbance
confronts us. In diverse ways and by a motley mixture of old and
new philosophers, writers, scholars, statesmen, and likewise
artists tried to find new underpinnings and new objectives. For
example, artists sought them in artistic virtuosity or in the new
formal abstraction summarized in the teachings and theories of
the Academies. On the other hand, a new emphasis was placed
on artistic content. At times this was of the coarsest, at times
literary and most sophisticated. Subject matter expanded on all
sides as the artists felt the need of recognition, that is to say, as
they felt obliged to emphasize the subjectivity and originality of
their attitude towards the world.
Interesting though it is, I cannot further discuss this general
ferment. Two trends gradually emerged which were of the greatest
significance for the future. Both were based on the urge to enrich
man's life and to solve his problems through psychological
knowledge.
One trend proceeded towards that goal by considering the
condition of life as well as those preconceptions of the communal
and of the individual psyche which determine it. This realistic
and inductive trend is common to Rabelais, Breughel, Callot,
Shakespeare, and Grimmelhausen. In succeeding centuries it
206

grows increasingly preponderant until it reaches its climax in the

realistic art of the last century, and above all in realistic literature
from Balzac to Dostoevski.
The second trend was deductive its sources were feelings and
perceptions through which alone certainty and exaltation were
sought. This trend (expressing itself principally in religion),
centered in Catholic countries, notably France and Spain. Strange
though it seems, Luther's tremendous attempt to take religion into
the realm of the intellect and of inner experience had a deeper
influence in those lands than it did in Protestant countries. In the
latter the attempt remained tied to an official church. Catholicism
rejected this union. Because of that, in spheres of activity where
the old church raised no objections, religious awareness could
develop more intensely.
These spheres were first and foremost, private devotion,
meditation, and emotional exaltation. For them the second half of
the sixteenth century was a kind of Spring. They blossomed forth,
particularly in France and Spain. In French literature their finest
flower was the Philothea of Francois de Sales. This work combines
wisdom as regards the conduct of life, with the most delicate
psychological advice as to how one can develop within one's self
the peace of God, and how one can orient one's spiritual life
towards eternal values. Lastly it showed how one can achieve
intensity of perception in one's daily life. Montaigne, a good judge
in such matters, considered that this kind of intensity had richly
compensated contemporary Catholicism for the loss of those who
had turned apostate. When, later on it was taken over by secular
thought, it became the most important source for all modern
poetry of sentiment down to Werther and Childe Harold.
The new spirituality also affected the visual arts as the works
of the little known French mannerists show. Artists like Dubois,
Freminet the sculptor, Germain Pilon, the painter, Toussaint du
Breuil, or the engraver, Bellange are connected to the school of
 207

Fontainebleau. Above all they are related to Primaticcio, as

Pilon's bust of Jean de Morvillie proves. They created works
whose frank and lively spirituality of expression had been
unknown in art since the Imperial portraits of the third and fourth
centuries. In Pilon's bust the physical appearance is but a mirror
image of the fire raging within. Greco some years later conceived
his own self-portrait in the same way.
Alternatively, these French mannerists drew forms and scenes
which seemed like illustrations for the Philothea, Bellange's Three
Marys at the Tomb is an example, particularly the Madonna. She
is absorbed in spiritual concentration on the sweet sight of a
miracle. "The world is no more mine, and I myself am no more
mine, and only that which lives in my heart of hearts is truth and
happiness," these words were said of that very episode. The long,
slender figures with their small, gracefully bent heads, their sweet
expressions, and their nervous hands, turn up in Greco. What is
more, the fact that the whole manner of presentation is used to
express beauty of soul, proves that Greco knew the work of the
French mannerists. He took from them what the Italians could not
provide, the idea that through emotion one might completely
overcome this world. That was the great inheritance of Northern
Christianity in the Middle Ages.
The French must have led Greco further, led him to the nation
where not only were these ideas preserved intact for the longest
time, but where even in the sixteenth century they were undergoing
a transformation and being revived on a new foundation. They
led him to Spain, to the land of Alumbrados and religious
spectacles, the land of St. Ignatius and St. Theresa, the land where
despite the Renaissance and its forms, building, as well as feeling,
was still Gothic. Here medieval mysticism and inner intensity
together set dazzling fires alight.
Two traits were characteristic of leading Spaniards: the study
of self and an ability completely to surpass in their thinking and
208

feeling those limits which naturalistic presuppositions had

established. "What I see," said St. Theresa, "is a white and red
that cannot be found anywhere in nature, which give forth a
brighter and more radiant light than anything man can see, and
pictures such as no painter has yet painted, whose models are
nowhere to be found, for they are nature herself and life itself and
the most glorious beauty man can conceive."
El Greco sought to paint the kind of things the saint beheld in
her ecstasy, to paint them not as if he had attached himself to her,
but from an identical point of view. For both, subjective
experience has become the sole law of spiritual uplift. Despite all
changes a residual desire to render nature objectively remained
part of the painter's purpose in France and Italy. By contrast, in
Spain artists had no intention of sacrificing the expression of inner
emotions to those last surviving Renaissance ideals of truth and
beauty. Even before Greco, Michelangelo's mannerism had been
combined with Spanish exaltation, as can be seen in a Pieta by
Luis Morales, Greco's predecessor in Toledo. Works like this
which were at once melancholy and tragic certainly influenced
Greco. But, even more, he was influenced by the whole spiritual
atmosphere. This made possible the utmost exploitation of all
those elements of the new art of expression he had brought from
Italy and France. It also led him completely to subordinate actual
models in favor of his artistic inspiration.
Greco's figures were excessively long, and seem not of this
world. Consider the painting in Toledo of St. Joseph, the youthful
clinging Christ, and the choir of angels around the saint's head.
That is not the kind of picture a thousand artists before Greco and
(photographs aside) a hundred thousand after him could have
produced. What we see here is not something real, not a
reproduction of nature, but a statement made to the spectator in a
still, small voice. St. Joseph and the young Christ, what do they
say to me? I see a man ill-favored, worn by care and overwork,
 209

lacking all charm. He is a carpenter, yet something other than a

carpenter, a man filled with supernatural goodness and humility.
Thanks to God's especial grace he stretches upwards like a
column, and to this column the godly can cling. Simultaneously a
harmony arises which streams like the melodies of angels into the
hearts of the spectators.
Greco often painted portraits in which the sitters look like
brothers. Because he views them from a higher point of vantage
all men are more or less alike-masks and phantoms. At the
same time there are also portraits which can only be described as
tragic, the Grand Inquisitor Guevara for instance. In the presence of
this picture who would not think of the Grand Inquisitor, the
visionary figure in the Brothers Karamazov. The hunched-up body,
the cold, piercing glance represent not this man or that, but fate
itself.
Above all, Greco tells the stories of the Bible. Sometimes he
paints fables, as in the Getltsemane, which can be described as a
fairy-tale in color. The background is a dark and formless night
out of whose depths a beam falls mysteriously on Jerusalem. Yet,
glowing in the twilight foreground are inconceivable, unheard-of
colors-<:inabar, yellow ochre, rose madder. It is a magic garden,
and into this magic garden the heavens descend in the form of a
white cloud on which a white angel kneels.
In most cases, however, it is the visionary character which is
dominant, as in the Resurrection. The miracle bursts on the
watchmen like an explosion. One has fallen down in the
foreground the others are seized with paroxysm of fear and
amazement. Their hands are in the air they throw themselves
sideways in wild confusion, as if they were shaken about by a
hurricane. Thus, a tragic outward movement arises. Intensified by
the contrast between Christ and the figure falling forward this
movement gives the Resurrection a supernatural upward impetus.
210

It does more convincingly than was possible with any of the

means hitherto used in art.
Even more striking is the Opening of the Fifth Seal. The prophet
sees the day of wrath breaking he sees the souls of the martyrs
crying aloud for vengeance, he sees those who are worthy of the
word of God receiving their white garments. The difference of
scale between the figures is most striking. At the left front edge
the Evangelist kneels with outstretched hands behind, angels bring
raiment of the risen. They are portrayed in various poses, some of
which are derived from late drawings by Michelangelo. One
imagines John to be standing. A colossal figure compared to the
others, he looks not back but on high. Mightily moved, he sees
things undreamed of, things at which the figures behind him can
only hint. His form is more dynamic than anything hitherto
known in art. It represents the solution of a problem which till
this moment must have seemed insoluble: a solid block which has
become pure spirit.
And finally, a landscape by Greco, Toledo in a Storm. This is
no portrait of a landscape. As by a flash of lightening a soul is
laid bare before us, a soul carried away by the demoniac forces of
nature, a soul which identifies its mood with that of the grandiose
display. This reveals to it the unreality of all earthly things and
makes clear their metaphysical meaning.
While Greco was painting these pictures, the figure of Don
Quixote, the pure idealist, was taking shape in the imagination of
his Spanish contemporary, Cervantes. Dostoevski considered
Don Quixote the most beautiful character in all history, next to
Christ. Greco, likewise, was a pure idealist. His art was the
climax of a pan-European movement whose aim was to replace
the materialism of the Renaissance with a spiritual orientation of
men's hearts. Yet, this movement proved to be but an episode.
From the seventeenth century onwards the cult of worldly success
began to gain supremacy. In their drive for supremacy even the
 211

painter of Toledo came to be thought mad, even as people forgot

the heroism of Cervantes' central character, and considered him a
comic figure. One hardly needs to mention how El Greco
necessarily fell more and more into oblivion during the next two
centuries. They were an age when scientific knowledge was
dominant, an age of mathematical thought, of superstitions
concerning thusality, of technical progress an age when civilization
became mechanized. Culture was of the eye and of the brain, not
of the heart.
Today this materialistic civilization is coming to an end. I am
not thinking so much of the external collapse which is only the
result. I am thinking of that inner collapse which could be seen
developing in every realm of intellectual life during the last
generation. In philosophy and epistemology, spiritual knowledge
has assumed leadership. In the natural sciences the
presuppositions of the positivist tradition used to be considered
as solid as rock. Now they are crumbling away from the bottom
up. As in the Middle Ages, as in the period of mannerism, so
today literature and art have turned to those absolutes of the
spirit which do not depend on faithfulness to sense perception.
Finally, in that interrelationship of all experiences which is the
secret law of man's fate everything seems to point towards a new
spiritual and anti-materialistic epoch. In the eternal struggle
between matter and spirit the balance inclines towards the victory
of spirit. Thanks to this turn in affairs we can recognize El Greco
as a great artist and as a prophetic soul. His fame will shine
brightly forth even into the future.
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 MANNERISM: THE HISTORIOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND

Ernst Hans Gombrich

It is important at this point to state that there is no one definite principle

available a priori and enabfing a classification suitable for every purpose to be
made...

The necessity of introducing some classification and the caprice attaching to

it. i~ m?st stri~ing ... in history ... the n.ecess~ty continu~lly ar!ses of making
d1stmct10ns which are seen on close consideration to be flmd and madequate ...
Max Planckl

Anyone who has read through G. N. Fasola's useful paper

'Storiografia del manierismo'2 or, better still, through the literature
she listed or overlooked-and I cannot claim to belong to this
second category-will realize how applicable this extract from
Max Planck is to our particular problem. In such a Babylonian
confusion of tongues it may well be useful, as a preparatory step,
to go back to the origins of the concept of mannerism. The four
brief texts I have assembled and translated here are intended to
facilitate this orientation. 3 If they seem at first to be out of place
in a discussion of recent concepts, I would plead that, as
historians, we know how intimately the 'recent' is bound up with
the remote. Nowhere, moreover, is this more relevant than in the
study of such categories as are represented by our stylistic
concepts.
There are historians who are 'realists' in the mediaeval sense of
the term. Holding fast to the belief that universalia sunt ante rem,
they would maintain that mannerism, for instance, has an
existence of its own, and even an 'essence' that might be thrashed
out in our discussion or intuited through Wesensschau. There are
others who are nominalists in the sense of this ancient
controversy, and who only acknowledge the existence of
individual works of art, dismissing our categories as mere flatus
vocis. They scorn concepts because they want to get down to facts.
214

I confess that I have more sympathy for their attitude than for
that of their opponents, but it has been amply proved that it, too,
lands us in insuperable methodological perplexities. 4 Which are
our facts? There must be some criterion of relevance, and this can
never be found in any particular facts themselves. It follows that
stylistic concepts can never be derived from accumulated
observations of unselected monuments. It may be said that
'ideally' we should clear our minds of all preconceived ideas and
look at one work of art after another produced in a given period
or area, noting down diligently what they have in common. But
those who approach a problem with an empty mind will
inevitably get an empty answer. If you ask a truly unprejudiced
investigator to find out what most paintings of a period have in
common, he may come up with the answer that they all contain
carbon. It was to avert this kind of intellectual disaster that
Aristotle introduced the distinction between essential and
inessential definitions. But with this harmless-looking step he
opened the way to the 'realist' belief in the independent existence
of 'essences'. It seems that we have, after all, to know what is
'essential' to mannerism if we want to get hold of examples of
mannerist paintings.
As a matter of fact the deadlock is not so serious as it sounds.
It is true that we cannot approach the past without preconceived
notions, but nothing forces us to hold on to them if they prove
unsuitable. If anyone were convinced that mannerist paintings are
'entirely devoid of space' (to quote an examination answer I
remember), he could probably return with the verdict that no such
painting could be discovered between ancient Egypt and
Mondrian, and even this negative result would be a result, after
all. For, if may quote a remark Sir John Summerson once made in a
discussion on this subject, stylistic categories have the character of
hypotheses. We test them in observation. If I try to examine the
origins and credentials of the concept, it may help to explain why
 215

I believe such a discussion to be particularly important in the case

of mannerism. We shall find, I believe, that, like any such
intellectual category, it was created to meet a historiographic
need, and that it finally triumphed as an idea that had as yet
scarcely proved its value in contact with the facts of the past.
This need not mean that it cannot fit the facts, but it must alert us
to the possibility of a radical revision.
The main historiographic pattern which classical antiquity
bequeathed to the Western tradition is that of progress towards
an ideal of perfection. The advantage of this pattern in giving
coherence to the history of any art was demonstrated by Aristotle
for the story of Greek tragedy, by Cicero for the rise of oratory
and, of course, by Pliny for the rise of painting and sculpture. For
the late-born critic, however, the pattern had a grave drawback. It
lies in the nature of this conception of the gradual unfolding of an
ideal that it must come to a stop once perfection is reached.
Within the pattern the subsequent story can only be one of
decline-which may be bewailed in general terms but hardly
chronicled as an epic of individuals each making his contribution
to this dismal story. There is only one way in which a great
individual or group can be introduced into this post-classical
sequence: by recourse to a second historiographic pattern of even
more mythical origin, the idea of rescue and restoration, the return
of the golden age through some beneficent agency.
My first text is an example of this technique from the writings
of Dionysius of Halicamassus, which deals with the restoration of
oratory to pristine Attic perfection after the debauches of
'Asianism'.
The affinity of this pattern with that of the Renaissance hardly
needs elaboration. The restoration of good letters is a constant
theme of the humanists, and Vasari, as we know, applied it not as
the first but as the most detailed and persuasive historian to the
history of art. The part of the Asian villains is taken by the Goths,
216

and once more Italy came to the rescue and allowed a new cycle
towards perfection to begin again, which leads 'da Cimabue in poi'
to the perfection of Michelangelo.
This triumphant imposition of a coherent reading on the
history of the arts in Italy presented subsequent generations with
the same problem that had faced the post-classical critics of the
ancient world. What was there that remained to be told and how
could it be subsumed under some intelligible concept? Clearly the
only way to describe the history of art after Michelangelo was
either in terms of decline and corruption or in terms of some new
miraculous rescue. My second and third texts are designed to
show that that is what really happened. In the great new upsurge
of painting in Rome a generation after Michelangelo's death,
Caravaggio is cast in the role of the seducer and Carracci as the
restorer of the arts to a new dignity. In between lies the
despondency into which the new Asians-the mannerists-had
cast the arts.
But the seventeenth-century critics and historians who wanted
to write this story found more descriptive tools in Vasari than this
inevitable pattern of rise and fall. For Vasari was not only an
historian, he was also a critic, and being himself a painter of the
epigonic generation he gave a much clearer idea of the way ahead
than he is usually given credit for.
We oversimplify his scheme if we draw attention only to the
pinnacle on which he placed Michelangelo. It is true that Vasari
saw in Michelangelo the master who had brought the most noble
and most central task of art to unsurpassable perfection, the
rendering of the beautiful human body in motion. But as a
practicing painter Vasari shows himself very much aware of the
fact that there are other tasks, slightly less exalted perhaps, but
no less useful to the painter, and in these Michelangelo had left the
field to others, notably to Raphael. If Michelangelo is the highest
 217

peak, Raphael is a neighboring range only slightly less high but

much easier of ascent.
It is in the life of Raphael that Vasari adumbrates and
anticipates the historiographic pattern his seventeenth-century
continuators were to use. For Raphael was, in a sense, the first
great artist who lived under the shadow of Michelangelo's
achievement and, therefore, the first to show the way to those
who came after him.
Well known though these passages are, I still want to quote
some extracts, though they lose some of their force when they are
not seen in their full context: towards the close of that remarkable
biography:

Since he could not reach Michelangelo in that field to which he

had put his hand, Raphael resolved to see him equaled and
perhaps surpassed in the other parts, and thus he did not devote
himself to imitate the manner of that master, so as not to waste
time in vain in that pursuit, but rather turned himself into a
first-class all-rounder in those other parts mentioned. If only
many other artists of our time, who desired to exclusively to
pursue the study of Michelangelo's work, had done the same!
Instead of failing to emulate him and to attain to his perfection,
they would not have labored in vain, nor produced a very
harsh manner full of difficulties, without beauty, without
colour, and poor in invention [ne fatto una maniera molto dura,
tutta piena di difficulta, senza vaghezza, senza colorito, e
povera d'invenzione], while if they had tried to become all-
rounders and to imitate the other aspects, they could have been
of use to themselves and to the worldS

We also learn how Raphael proceeded towards this goal, how

he selected the manner of Fra Bartolommeo as his foundation,
'and mixed it with the best he found in other masters to make out
of many manners one single one, which was from then onward
considered his own, which was and will always be infinitely
esteemed by artists'.
We know that Vasari thought that Raphael did not quite
avoid the temptation of competing with Michelangelo and thus
doing harm to his reputation. He winds up this assessment with a
homily to artists on studying their own bent and natural
218

inclinations, for nobody can do more than nature has endowed

him to do. Uccello and Pontormo are named as warning examples
of artists who did not know their station, as it were, and who
thus toiled in vain.
I have concentrated on this well-known text because I think
that it really contains the whole subsequent history in nuce.
Agucchi, Baglione and Bellori, Passeri and Malvasia, who wanted
to continue Vasari's works and allocate a proper place of glory to
Annibale Carracci, could hardy do otherwise than present him as
a saviour from decline who at last understood the importance of
Raphael's precept and selected a perfect mixture of styles, thus
overcoming the debased and problematic maniera of the affected
imitators of Michelangelo.
As far as the position of Annibale in this scheme of things is
concerned, I can afford to be brief, since a relentless critic of this
hypothesis has arisen in Denis Mahon, who has tested the fable
convenue of his eclecticism against the facts of Annibale's life and
art and found it wanting. 6 Mahon has also described how the
decline in prestige of the classical theory of art since the days of
Romanticism has turned a historiographic pattern originally meant
as an eulogistic conceit into a category of abuse. What I want to
stress in conclusion is the corresponding swing of taste that turned
abuse of mannerism into eulogy. As the prestige of classical
perfection went down, that of any movement that could be seen in
contrast to this perfection was bound to go up. In the nineteenth
century the revulsion against the real or pretended ideals of
Raphael and the Carracci took the form of Pre-Raphaelitism. It
was not before the revolution's of twentieth-century taste that the
conclusion began to be drawn that if the alleged reaction against
mannerism attributed to the Bolognese was really 'a bad thing',
then post-Raphaelite mannerism may have been 'a good thing'
after all. This revision was facilitated by the very scheme of things
imposed by Bellori, who saw the balance of perfection threatened
 219

from two sides, from that of vulgar naturalism on the one side,
and that of bizarre conventionalism on the other. The extract from
Dvol'ak's lecture of 1920 on Greco-one of the first rehabilitations
of mannerism-shows that twentieth-century critics who
participated in the reaction both against Academic art offtciel and
against Impressionism had no difficulties in understanding and
applying this tripartite scheme. For them, both Naturalism and
Classicism were anathema. Is it surprising that they saw in the
rejected alternative of mannerism the predecessor of an anti-
realistic and anti-idealistic modern art, maligned as their friends
were maligned?
Add to this the Hegelian dogma, according to which all artistic
trends must of necessity be interpretable as manifestations of the
dialectic upward movement of the human spirit that manifests
itself in all aspects of an age, and you have Dvorak's basic
hypothesis-which enthroned mannerism as the expression of a
spiritual crisis and upsurge in which the anti-materialists and the
anti-humanists of our age could find their own image. 7
All this could be inferred without any reference to the works of
art themselves. I did not discuss any examples and none are
needed for this analysis. For this network of categories and its
fate in the hands of critics has a momentum of its own that is
rather divorced from the real events of the past. Mannerism has
become a vogue-word, but such key monuments of the period as
the fresco cycle in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence (not exactly an
unimportant commission) are still unpublished.
Could it be that many works of art produced in the later
Cinquecento are less attractive to our critics and historians than is
the idea of an anticlassical art? For here, I think, is the salient
point. The concept of mannerism as a separate style and period
arose originally from the need to set off certain works from an
ideal of classical perfection. It therefore became by itself the label
for something considered unclassical. But while the idea of
220

progress towards more accurate imitation of nature has an

objective element that can be tested against the facts, the ideal of
classical perfection is much more elusive or, if you like, subjective.s
We have become so used to setting the accent somewhere near the
Stanza della Segnatura that we experience any deviation from this
particular solution as less harmonious. This leaves us only with
the choice of regarding these-to us-unclassical developments as
symptoms of decline or of deliberate rebellion. But surely, to those
who lived through those years this would have seemed an entirely
false and artificial alternative. While they subscribed to the idea
of artistic progress, they certainly did not yet subscribe to the idea
of a final culmination. On the contrary, I believe, as I have said
elsewhere,9 that certain aspects of mannerism can be seen as a
kind of feedback effect caused by the very idea of artistic
progress. Could this effect even have led to an objective decline?
Can it ever be proper to talk in these terms, or should we rather
look at each of the works produced in the period as efforts in their
own right, created in a given situation? Which concepts of
mannerism put forward in the last few decades can best help us
to do precisely this?

TEXTS

I. Dionysius of Halicarnassus. On the Ancient Orators

(c. 25 B.C.). Dionysii Halicarnasei Opuscu[a, ed. H.
Usener and L. Radermacher, I (Leipzig, 1899), pp.
3-5. For a full and more literal translation of the
Proemium see J. D. Denniston, Greek Literary
Criticism (London, 1924).

My dear Ammaeus, we must be thankful to our own time both

for the progress of other enterprises, as most of all for the great
advance made in the study of civic oratory. For in the preceding
period the ancient and philosophic rhetoric was flouted, grossly
outraged, and debased. Its decline and gradual decay began with
 221

the death of Alexander the Great, and in our own generation it

reached the verge of extinction. Another rhetoric sneaked into its
place-one intolerably showy, shameless, and licentious, without
any trace of philosophy or any other liberal art. Craftily it
deluded the ignorant mob. It lived in greater wealth, luxury, and
grandeur than its predecessor and fastened itself to those
positions that should by right have belonged to the philosophic
rhetoric ... As when a riotous strumpet lords it in a household over
a lawful, freeborn, and virtuous wife, spreading confusion on the
estate and claiming the property by stealth and intimidation, so
the Attic Muse, of ancient and indigenous lineage, was stripped of
her dignities and covered with shame in every city and centre,
whereas her rival who had but yesterday emerged from the low
dives of Asia, a Mysian or Phrygian prostitute or some Carian
abomination, presumed to govern Greek states, driving the true
queen from the council chamber-the ignorant ousting the
learned, the wanton the chaste ...
I believe the cause of that great transformation for the better to
have been Rome, the mistress of the world, who drew all eyes
upon herself, and in particular those who rule in that city,
distinguished by their high character and by their conduct of
public affairs .... I should not be surprised if, thanks to them, that
former fashion for raving oratory failed to survive another
generation.

II. G. B. Agucchi, Trattato (c. 1610). Tr. after the text in

Denis Mahon, Studies in Seicento Art and Theory
(London, 1947), pp. 245,247.

After Painting had been as good as buried and lost for many
centuries, the art had masters in our modem times who brought
about a kind of rebirth from those first rude and imperfect
beginnings of its origins. It would not have been reborn and
perfected so speedily, however, had the modem artists not had
222

the shining example of the ancient statues in front of their eyes,

preserved up to our own days. It was from these (as also from the
works of Architecture) that they were able to learn that delicacy
of design which has, to such an extent, opened the way to
perfection....
It is the truth that the aforementioned masters and so many
other worthy artists who followed in their footsteps proceeded to
the perfection of art and thus acquired for our age the glory of
rivaling the age of antiquity, when an Apelles or a Zeuxis with
works of marvelous beauty inspired orators and writers to sing
the praises of their brush it is no less true, however, as will not
have escaped persons of sound understanding, that after the
times in which the heads of schools or aforementioned styles of
our age flourished, and when all the others strove to imitate those
masters with good taste and knowledge, it came to pass that
Painting declined from the peak it had reached to such an extent
that, though it would not have fallen again into the utter darkness
of its former barbarism, it became at least changed, corrupt,
straying from the true path, so that knowledge of the good was
almost entirely gone, while new and different manners arose,
remote from the truth and from the plausible, more wedded to
appearances than to true substance, with the artists content to
feast the eyes of the populace with fine colours and gaudy
dresseslO and making use of things cribbed from all over the place
poor in outline, rarely well composed and indulging in other
notable errors, they strayed altogether far from the right path that
leads to the best.
But while that beautiful profession was thus infected, as it
were, by such artistic heresies and in danger of getting lost
completely, there arose in the city of Bologna three persons ....
 223

III. G. P. Bellori, 'Vita di Annibale Carracci', Le vite ...

(Rome, 1672), pp. 19-21, 79.

It was at the time when Painting was most admired among

men and appeared to have descended from Heaven, that the
divine Raphael brought its beauty to perfection by the finishing
touches of art, bringing it back to the ancient majesty of all the
graces and enriching it with all the excellences that had rendered
her most glorious in an earlier time among the Greeks and the
Romans. But since, down here on earth, nothing ever remains
unchanged, and since what has reached a peak must of needs tum
and come to a fall, in a perpetual up and down, we find that the
arts, which from Cirnabue and Giotto onward had little by little
advanced in the long course of two hundred and fifty years, were
soon seen to decline, and from a royal state become humble and
vulgar. 11 For when the happy age waned, all its form dissolved.
Artists abandoned the study of Nature and adulterated the arts
with manner, that is to say, with a capricious conceit founded on
routine rather than on the imitation of reality [ ... vitiarono l'arte,
con Ia maniera, ovogliamo dire fantastica idea, appoggiata alia pratica
e non all' imitatione}. The first germ of that destructive vice showed
up in the painting of highly reputed masters and it then struck
roots in the subsequent schools. It is incredible to what a degree
the arts degenerated, not only in comparison with Raphael, but
also of those others who initiated the manner .... In that protracted
agitation, the arts were assailed by two opposite extremes, one
consisting in the complete submission to natural appearances, the
other to the imagination. Their originators in Rome were
Michelangelo da Caravaggio, and Giuseppe d' Arpino. The first
simply copied objects as they appear to the eye, without selection
the other did not even look at nature and merely gave free rein to
impulse [seguitando Ia liberta dell'instinto] and both of them,
favoured by enormous success, were regarded by the world as
admirable and worthy of imitation. It was at that point, when
224

Painting was declining towards its end, that more favourable

stars looked down on Italy and that it pleased God that in the
city of Bologna, Mistress of Science and of Scholarship, there
should arise a most elevated genius, and that with him the arts
that had fallen and become all but extinct were to rise once
more. That man was Annibale Carracci, whose life I now
intend to write.
We are obliged to his studies and his erudition, venerating
him as the restorer and the prince of the reconstituted art .... He
showed a way to profit from Michelangelo, which had not been
followed by others and which is again neglected today: for he
left the manner and the anatomies of the Last Judgment on one
side and looked instead at the beautiful nudes of the
ceiling .... He dedicated himself to Raphael, whom he took as
his master and guide in narrative painting, but improved on
his invention and extended his skill to the rendering of
emotions and the grace of perfect imitation. His peculiar style
was the fusion of the idea and of nature, gathering up in
himself the most worthy excellences of earlier masters ....

IV. Max Dvorak, 'Uber Greco und den Manierismus'

(lecture delivered October 1920), Kunstgeschichte als
Geistesgeschichte (Munich, 1924), pp. 275-6.
Not many words are needed to explain why Greco was
bound to be increasingly forgotten in the subsequent two
centuries, the centuries dominated by natural science,
materialist thought, belief in causality and technical progress,
when civilization was a matter of mechanization, of eyes and
brain but no heart. Today this materialist civilization is
approaching its end. It is less the external collapse I have in
mind, for this was only a symptom, than the internal one that
has been discernible for a generation now in all fields of life: in
philosophy and intellectual life, where the humanities have
again taken the lead, and where even in science the
foundations of that old positivism, which were
 225

considered so firmly grounded, have been thoroughly shattered

literature and the arts have turned towards spiritual absolutes, as
they did in the Middle Ages and in the period of mannerism, and
have turned their backs on fidelity to sensuous nature. There is a
uniformity in all these events, which the mysterious law of human
destiny seems to guide towards a new, a spiritual and anti-
materialist age. In that eternal struggle between matter and spirit,
the scales are inclining towards a victory of the spirit, and it is to
this turn of events that we owe our recognition of Greco as a great
artist and prophetic mind whose glory will continue to shine
brightly.

1Max Planck, The Plzilosoplzy of Physics, trW. H. Johnston (New York, 1936), 11,
14.
2scritti ... in onore di Limze//o Venturi (Rome, 1956), I, 429-47.
3See Appendix, 104-106 above.
4K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London and New York, 1959).
5Le vite ... , ed. G. Milanesi, IV (Florence, 1879), 376.
6studies in Seicento Art and Theory (London, 1947).
7I have criticized this tendency in my review of A. Hauser's Tlze Social History of
Art, republished in Meditations 011 a Hobl1y Horse (London, 1963), 86-94.
8For the justification and limitation of this view, see 'Raphael's Madomza della
Sedia' 70 above.
9'The Renaissance Conception of Artistic Progress and Its Consequences', 10
above.
10cf. Boccaccio on Giotto: 'He brought back that art to light which had Jain
buried for many centuries because of the errors of some who painted rather to
charm the eyes of the ignorant than to appeal to the understanding of the site'.
Decameron, 6th Day, 5th Story.
llcf. Text I of this paper:: 'driving the true queen from the council chamber'.
This page intentionally left blank
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE USE OF THE CONCEPT
OF MANNERISM

Henri Zerner

Mannerism has been a central subject of art historical

discussions during the last half century. The term as a historical
and critical category has meanwhile been adopted by students of
music and literature and by cultural historians and has become the
name of an age of civilization. Thus, art history bears a heavy
responsibility, and while the art historian might be tempted to
drop this by-now unwieldy, cumbersome notion altogether, he
owes it to his colleagues to try to elucidate the possible uses of the
word and the causes of the present state of confusion. If nothing
more, I should like to make it clear to students of music and
literature that their difficulty in using the concept of mannerism
does not spring exclusively from applying a concept evolved in
another discipline.
The debate developed with the partial rehabilitation of the art
that separates the High Renaissance from the baroque. This period
was condemned as "mannerist" by the seventeenth century, and
this anathema lasted until the end of the nineteenth. It was only
with the questioning of classical norms, particularly under the
influence of an expressionist sensibility in early twentieth-century
Germany and Austria, that the situation was reexamined, and at
that point the term emerged as a stylistic category without
derogatory implications.
I should like to distinguish two trends during this initial period
of reassessment. Max Dvorak characterizes mannerism directly in
terms of expressive content. 1 Mannerism is defined as an artistic
spirituality, and the spiritual explanation of the forms coincides
with their description. It is worth noting further that Dvorak is
essentially concerned with a general tendency in art, of which El
228

Greco is one of the prime exponents. His views are historical only
insofar as he is concerned with the persistence of spiritual values
through the sixteenth century, a period when they had mostly been
subdued by the materialist rationalism of the Renaissance
repellent to Dvorak. Walter Friedlaender, on the contrary, in his
famous essay on the anticlassical style, starts from a specific
historical situation and a given body of artistic material, namely,
the painting of central Italy after Raphael's death.2 And he
systematically gives a formal definition of the stylistic
phenomenon before he attempts a spiritual or cultural
interpretation.
After the initial rediscovery, a great deal of work was done to
exhume the discarded paintings, and historiography developed
along the two lines sketched above. The ideas of Friedlaender gave
the impulse for a detailed study of the first reaction to the
classical style of the High Renaissance, which found its most
elaborate expression in the last chapters of Sydney J. Freedberg's
Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome and Florence (Cambridge,
Mass., 1961). The views of Dvorak, on the other hand, were
largely redirected by the rise of a surrealist sensibility, which
changed the emphasis from the spiritual to the fantastic. It was no
longer the spiritual values of late sixteenth-century art that were
singled out and extolled, but the irrational as such. Meanwhile, the
term mannerism was extended to other cultural domains,
particularly by Ernst Curtius, who used it for all unclassical
tendencies in literature. 3 This ahistorical tendency coupled with
the voraciousness of surrealist taste culminated in Hocke's Die
Welt als Labyrinth (Hamburg, 1957).
In spite of very divergent ideas, scholars for a long time
seemed to know what they meant by mannerism. Thus Friedrich
Antal, in a well-known essay, could discuss the whole
development of sixteenth-century painting in Europe, the relations
between Italy and the Netherlands from the 1520s on, in terms of
 229

mannerism without feeling obliged at any point to explain what he

meant by it. 4 One could give many other examples of the
confidence of art historians that, in spite of considerable
disagreement as to the limits of mannerism and its historical
development, they were dealing with a specific phenomenon. But
the looseness of the concept eventually became worrisome,
especially because the spiritual expressiveness by then firmly
attached to the general use of the word mannerism did not seem to
fit a whole range of mid-sixteenth-century works in central Italy
which were being reconsidered in the 1950s. As early as 1955
Luisa Becherucci proposed to restrict the use of mannerism to this
art, which we shall call art of the maniera. 5 There was, therefore,
no longer any agreement about a core of works one could call
mannerist, and the historiography of mannerism arrived at a
crisis.
It was time to stop, to try to bring some order in one's ideas.
Two conferences were held with this intention: the Accademia
Nazionale dei Lincei in 1960 and, more fruitfully, the International
Congress of the History of Art in New York in 1961. At that
point, the main participants, Craig H. Smyth and John Shearman,6
appeared to have a great deal in common because of their
emphasis on mid-sixteenth-century painting and on Roman, rather
than on Florentine, developments. I shall try to show that, from
the point of view of method, their ideas are divergent, and that
the consequences are important in the interpretation of the works
in question.
Shearman's effort was enthusiastically welcomed: he fought in
the name of common sense he proposed to push aside the
cumbersome historiographic super-structure, to go back to the
original sources and see what mannerism really was. Buttressed
by an outstanding erudition and an easy and agreeable style of
writing, his cause was bound to be heard favorably.
230

"Let us take it as axiomatic, as history entitles us to do, that

every mannerist work must exemplify the quality maniera." This
sounded reasonable enough now all that remained was to define
maniera as it was understood at the time, and all historical
complications would be eliminated. From his examination of
sixteenth-<:entury texts Shearman found that maniera could always
be translated by style. This concern with style, with the means of
art, this "aesthetic ideal" would then be at the heart of a "stylish
style," which Shearman in 1961 presented as current in sixteenth-
century art but which in the elaboration of his ideas in mannerism
(1967) became a style of civilization.
For Shearman, maniera means refinement, sophistication,
artificiality, elegance, polish, accomplishment, and savoir-faire it
precludes overt passion, violent expression, real energy. Any work
"drenched in maniera" is to be called mannerist. Thus equipped,
one may easily decide what is or is not mannerist, although some
cases are bound to remain in doubt. Most of the art of central Italy
fits the concept comfortably, although only some of Michelangelo's
works, like the Victory in the Palazzo Vecchio, are mannerist. In
Venice only Andrea Schiavone seems to be a full-fledged
mannerist, while Tintoretto is eliminated by his energy. In France
Jean Goujon is mannerist, while clearly Jean Duvet (not discussed
by Shearman) is not, as he is too expressive and insufficiently
polished. In the Netherlands, artists like Maerten van Heemskerck,
although they prepared the ground, are too violent to qualify for
true mannerism, while the later schools of Haarlem and Utrecht
do.
Shearman claims a long tradition, only abandoned in this
century, in favor of his use of the word mannerist, a tradition
starting with the contemporaries of the art in question. This claim
is justified only to a point. As Shearman himself notes, in the
sixteenth century and in the writings of Giorgio Vasari in
particular, maniera is used as a critical term and designates a
 231

quality, or attribute, of art. In no case is it used as a criterion of a

historical period, even though, according to Vasari, it was fully
developed and generalized only in his third, or modem, period
(i.e., from Leonardo on). It was in the seventeenth century that the
historical concept formed: in the period after Raphael and before
Carracci, the artists worked di maniera, the very basis of their
condemnation. It is significant that while Vasari-for whom
maniera was, on the whole, a virtue-certainly did not consider
Raphael or the young Michelangelo as lacking in this quality,
Giovanni Bellori and other seventeenth century theorists did not
call either of these artists manieroso. The significance is, I believe,
not only that a different generation saw something different in the
art of Raphael, but also that the meaning of maniera had partially
shifted. In fact, the use of the word in sixteenth-century writings is
extremely loose, in the same way as our use of the word style is.
Vasari himself does not use it exclusively as a term of praise, for
he connects the weakening and monotony of Perugino's late works
with an excessive reliance on maniera. The continuity of
application and stability of meaning of the word from the
sixteenth to the seventeenth century cannot be as complete as
Shearman would have us believe. Furthermore, with the
introduction of maniera as a historical criterion, there is an abrupt
change in the way historians divide the period, first without, and
then with, a break after what we call the classical generation. It is
not surprising that Shearman seems to hesitate between Vasari's
and Bellori's period divisions. Although he would like to preserve
Vasari's terminology and artistic valuations, he cannot help but
see an essential difference between the art of Raphael and that of
Salviati, all the more because he wants to show that the latter is
great in its own way.
Shearman's employment of the term maniera derives from his
conception of history and from his method. His attitude may be
described as an effort to abolish historical distance. He wants to
232

describe the past as it was, to see and appreciate sixteenth-

century art with sixteenth-century eyes, as far as possible. Of
course, this desire goes hand in hand with a belief that we have
more or less direct access to historical facts. A strong Rankian
historical positivism is not, however, practicable for Shearman
because he cannot claim to restrict himself to events. As an art
historian he is necessarily concerned with values and value
judgments. "It [mannerism] can and ought to be appreciated or
rejected on its own terms, and according to its own virtues, not
ours." The "terms" are looked for in the writings of the time to
avoid introducing modern distortions.? I have little sympathy with
such an abdication of historical judgment and perspective. Apart
from what Walter Benjamin calls the sadness of such a historical
attitude, it has a dangerous methodological consequence: while all
modern interpretations are held as suspect, contemporary
sixteenth-century critical and historical views have to be taken at
face value and gain an absolute authority. The art of the period is
seen through the declared estheticism and the historical optimism
of the period. In other words, Vasari knew best.
But a more attentive reading of Vasari reveals an underlying
anxiety. How assured could he be that the wheel of fortune had
been stopped or that the biological process in terms of which he
understood the development of art had been arrested, that the
golden age had come to stay? For him a peak had been attained
with Michelangelo and Raphael, and art had reached its limits.
His boast that with his own generation a painter could paint much
faster is hardly a contradiction, for this is a meager sign of
progress indeed. The mixture of bragging and defensiveness that
underlies Vasari's writing about recent arts mixture also found in
Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography-hardly indicates complete
self-confidence and peace of mind. And when we look at the
works themselves, it is difficult indeed to believe that these
 233

extravagant displays are exclusively the effect of esthetic

enthusiasm and carefree joie de vivre.
Even granting that sixteenth-century texts do not demand a
more critical interpretation than Shearman supposes, his use of
them creates difficulties. He defines mannerism by establishing a
criterion with which works are tested and consequently included
or excluded. This arbitrary procedure results in some very acute
observations on the group of works thus selected, most
impressively in Shearman's treatment of what he calls
"characteristic forms." But from the point of view of historical
interpretation it has an important weakness: it isolates mannerism
from all the other phenomena that are tested and rejected, and
particularly from the "anticlassical" art of the young Rosso and
Pontormo.
Shearman uncompromisingly rejects the idea of a crisis, either
artistic or spiritual, marking a break after the classical
Renaissance, because a lack of passion or of violent expression is
part of his definition of maniera and, consequently, of mannerism.
Form and expressive content are therefore discussed
simultaneously as they are by Dvofak and his followers. Simply,
the content has changed to a lack of expression, or to effeteness,
and this, so to say, negative expressive content is part of the
working definition of the style in question. This adapted
Geistesgeschiclzte facilitates the comparison among different
cultural forms, through what is assumed as a community of
meaning expressed in the different branches of cultural life. The
cultivation of elegance and artificiality and even the precedence of
the beautiful over all other values are not formal attributes but
contents they do not belong to one particular art but apply to
different arts and can define the core of a cultural community.
Shearman, in spite of his claims to a factual kind of history,
reaches a view of mannerism as a general cultural phenomenon
234

involving mannerist literature, mannerist music, and so on-in

short, a style of civilization. It is like standing Dvorak on his head.
Shearman's supercilious attitude toward modern
historiography, far from doing away with historical theory, as one
would hope, marks a regression to some of its cruder forms. Craig
H. Smyth's reticent essay, on the contrary, shows a keen
awareness of successive historiographical acquisitions. 8 It
acknowledges the direct lineage of Wolfflin and Friedlaender and
adopts their disciplined method. Smyth's contribution is most
remembered for its concern with Roman reliefs as a primary source
of mid-sixteenth-century art, but this aspect of the work is not, in
my opinion, the most important. Not enough attention has been
paid to Smyth's profound discussion of what he calls the
"conventions of the figure." He shows how the artists used a
repertory of characteristic poses and gestures to create a rhythmic
pattern of angular accents on the surface of the picture. These
units are arbitrarily used without regard to the subject of the
work.
What Smyth describes is a method of constructing
pictures. He has arrived at it by induction through the observation
of a specific body of works, those of mid-sixteenth-century
painters of central Italy (Bronzino, Salviati, etc.). His approach
allows a confrontation with contemporary criticism, and Vasari's
well-known passage on the repetition of an ideal figure for all the
personages of a painting appears as an interesting theoretical
justification of Vasari's own practice. The method of construction
itself, which seems very strange today, even if we have developed
a taste for it, gained wide popularity during the sixteenth century,
but it was not universally accepted. For instance, Francesco
Prirnaticcio brought it to Fontainebleau, and his Concert, painted
on the wall of the musician's tribune in the Salle de Bal is
characteristic in its elaborate arrangement of arms and legs (Fig.
1).9 A contemporary artist, perhaps a northern painter, who
 235

copied it on a panel now in the Yale Art Gallery (Fig. 2), felt
obliged to give a rational justification to the gesture of the central
figure by adding a musical instrument.
A limitation of Smyth's morphological approach is that it
confines the discussion to particular domains, in this case to
painting. Easy passage from one art to another is lost. For
instance, there is great difficulty in corning to any agreement as to
what may be called mannerist architecture among historians who
attempt a formal definition of the style. Even within a much more
limited domain, it is not clear how Smyth's analysis could be
carried over from single painted compositions to a decorative
system or cycle. Such ensembles, however, became particularly
important during the period under discussion, and, as may be
seen at Caprarola, a great deal of effort and inventiveness was
devoted to their elaboration. One may predict that the attention
of historians of painting will turn in this direction after having for
a long time concentrated on single compositions, and a serious
discussion of ornament will play a major role.
Smyth's painstaking effort to demonstrate the origin of many
of the poses and pattern methods used by maniera artists in
Roman reliefs is not to satisfy an idle curiosity for sources or to
show each borrowing as a decisive and yet fortuitous event, but, it
would seem, to place maniera within a new general view of the
Renaissance. This conception, however, he has only adumbrated.
If I understand it correctly, it opposes a dominant tradition, with
a seminal origin in late antique reliefs, to another classic trend
chiefly concerned with "flowing harmony and pliant figures in
unity with space." In this view, a large number of borrowings from
quattrocento, which students of mannerist art have pointed out,
may be assimilated to the borrowings from antiquity since they
belong to the same relief tradition. This could also account for the
community of forms linking maniera art to Pontorrno and the
"anticlassical mannerism" of his generation. There is a tendency to
236

overlook this community of forms because it is too obvious,

especially in such painters as Bronzino or Salviati (Fig. 3), but it
remains an important aspect of the period and makes Shearman's
isolation of what he calls mannerism untenable. Smyth, however,
does not confront the problem of this relation. In this respect, one
deplores his reticence, but in compensation, there is his strong and
strictly handled assessment of maniera forms. As for the efficacy
of Smyth's general view of Renaissance art, any discussion must
await his fuller presentation of what would be the first novel view
of Renaissance style since Wolfflin.
In an important essay of 1965, "Observations on the Painting
of the Maniera," Sydney J. Freedberg adds to Smyth's methodical
assessment.lO I do not mean by this that he starts where Smyth
leaves off, but that their contributions, although arrived at from
different points of view, reinforce one another. Like Smyth,
Freedberg starts with a certain bulk of material. The principal
question to which he addresses himself is the meaning of this art,
not so much what it signifies as how it achieves significance. Here,
Freedberg makes important observations about the building up of
tensions among the formal features of the works, the use of
quotations from previous art, and the disruption between meaning
and subject matter. The problem of borrowings as quotations, in
particular, is brilliantly treated. It makes it clear that sources may
not be given a historical interpretation without consideration of
their meaning or, more precisely, of their function within the new
context. Thus, quotations from the High Renaissance betray a
difference in procedure and not just an artistic community. In the
maniera nature is only encountered at one remove, usually through
the cultural screen of previous art. This treatment, by the way,
does not exclude a keen awareness of nature, as should be clear
from some acutely realistic passages, which present recordings of
nature more precise or "realistic" than those in High Renaissance
 237

works however, such passages are always caught in a context that

points to the artifice.
Freedberg, too, has read the texts of the period, but he treats
them critically in the light of artistic practice. And the break with
the High Renaissance is reasserted firmly:
The conviction the Maniera painter entertained of belonging to
the same gender of art as the first great masters of the "modern
manner," was true in part, but it was also a profound and not
always perfectly successful self-deception, which the criticism
of the next century uncharitably revealed.

Freedberg vigorously reaffirms the break between the art of the

maniera and that of the High Renaissance, as well as the general
continuity between the first postclassical generation (Pontormo,
Rosso, Polidoro, Giulio) and the maniera. But in these
observations he does not examine the latter relationship in detail.
He only suggests in general terms that the difficulty comes largely
from a wrong assessment of the "first generation mannerists" or, in
other words, from too great an insistence upon the Florentine
development and its anticlassical, expressionistic aspects and an
insufficient consideration of the art of Rome. In any case, striking
differences remain between the meanings of different works within
what Freedberg sees as the stylistic unity of mannerism, not only
between the aggressive estheticism of Bronzino and the earnest
violence of the young Pontormo, but even between the elegance of
the maniera and Parmigianino.
It might appear at first sight that, in the end, Shearman,
Smyth, and Freedberg agree on the general contour of maniera art:
attempts to restrict the term nzannerisrn to the maniera make little
difference as long as everyone is talking about the same thing. But
everyone is not talking about the same "thing." Historical
categories are not things or natural objects but constructs which
are more or less pertinent, that is, which accommodate more or
less data and observations. Shearman not only treats mannerism
like something that exists (or existed) but also blurs different
238

levels of historical abstraction by using the aesthetic ideas of a

small group of artists as a criterion for a whole style of European
civilization during a large part of the sixteenth century. The most
apparent result of this weakness is a misrepresentation of some
important works. His book leaves the general impression that
mannerism is a sort of art for art's sake, an art disengaged from
life and any experience other than esthetic, and that it must be
understood and judged as such. I do not think that this is even a
fruitful way of looking at the works of the specific group that
actually propounded something resembling this esthetic theory.
But when it is applied to Parmigianino it decidedly seems a
distortion. The Madonna of the Long Neck, however beautiful,
refined, and elegant, directly suggests, to me at least, an intense
spiritual experience. In other words, even at the level of intention,
disregard of reality does not point to the discreteness of the world
of art but to the autonomy of the spiritual world.
The investigations of Smyth and Freedberg-and Shearman,
for that matter-show to what extent the maniera was an art of
culture. By that I mean that its conventions depended on a
knowledge of the art of the past, especially the recent past, and
were not inherent in the works themselves. In the maniera to a
much greater extent than in Early Mannerism and the High
Renaissance, the justification of the forms was exterior to the
context in which they were used. Today's art seems to be in a
comparable situation, a fact that would explain why we are more
receptive to the maniera than previous generations. A work by
Ellsworth Kelly has meaning largely because of our knowledge of
its place in the historical development of art, because of our
understanding of the reduction it operates within that context.
Otherwise it would be senseless surfaces of flat colors.
The conventional nature of maniera art explains why its
meaning was quickly lost sight of. The example of the copyist who
misunderstood or rejected Primaticcio's intentions is
 239

characteristic. But if this fact explains the long period of neglect, it

does not justify the hate and contempt that so often pursued this
art. An adequate assessment must account for this distaste, even
if we want to rehabilitate the works. In this connection, it is
important to emphasize that the immediately expressive
anticlassical or postclassical art-in which I would include
Parmigianino and Giulio, even though one is suave and the other
classicistic -rarely suffered the absolute condemnation that fell
upon the maniera.
Freedberg shows how the forms and figures assembled in
maniera are cut off from their original meaning by being taken out
of context. The result is that the artist's preoccupation appears
totally esthetic, that is, predominantly concerned with the
processes of art. Does this mean that those who elaborate on the
torment and anxiety of the mannerist age, including the maniera
proper, are totally in the wrong? I do not think so. The agitated,
sometimes violent, forms inherited from the previous period
retained something of their expressive force, something of the
significance they had either in classic Renaissance art or for the
generation of Pontormo. But there was a slight displacement or, if
you like, a shift in the relation between form and content. As they
became conventional and institutionalized, the charged forms and
figures, no longer attached to particular feelings, emotions, or
situations, became expressive of a communal subconscious. I do
not mean this in a Jungian sense, of a perennial dream of
humanity, but, on the contrary, of something peculiar to a given
social community. (Clearly I apply terms used for individuals to a
social group. But the mapping out of an individual's psyche is an
intellectual tool developed by psychologists rather than a reality,
and the pattern might still prove useful when applied to a social
entity.) I call this collective expression subconscious, because it is
bound up with the very conventions of the artistic language it is
attached to the artistic idiom or style and not to one artist or to
240

one work. And it may even be in direct contradiction to a

particular work. As such, it escapes the artist's control, although it
is effectively exploited under the most favorable conditions. This
part of the meaning of works of art exists at any time but seems to
assume a more prominent role during the maniera. The rhetorical
exaggeration, the emptiness of expressive poses, are playful on
one level but also reveal an underlying unrest, an unadmitted
torment.
I shall give some examples to illustrate this hypotheses, but
only an examination of many works would confirm its utility.
Alessandro Allori's well-known Pearl Fishermen (Fig. 4) is a work
of refinement and charm and unquestionably belongs in the art of
the rrumiera. The agitated, contorted figures are in contradiction to
the generally pleasant character of the scene, the subject matter
apparently being less important than the general tone. The whole
conception is, in fact, strongly reminiscent of Michelangelo's
Deluge on the Sistine ceiling (Fig. 5), a work in which he puts the
greatest strain upon the classical idiom. It would be fair to say
that Allori was anxious to emulate the art of Michelangelo, its
formal beauty, without retaining the poignancy of the work. The
result, however, is an overstatement, which, if we are attentive to
it and take it at all seriously, appears a strangely troubling
absurdity.
At a much higher level of accomplishment, Cellini's Saltcellar
(Fig. 6) made for Francis I, is equally ambiguous. The gold and
enamel are festive the extreme elaboration for so little salt and the
iconography of Neptune in such a context are clearly playful. But
at the same time there is something extremely serious about the
work, in the very expression of the faces, in the heroic nudes so
strongly articulated. The violent contrasts of scale, particularly
between the two female nudes (Amphitritis and the nude on top
of the small arch of triumph), the ambiguity of the sea horses that
have the liveliness of real sea horses but are in fact the decoration
 241

of Neptune's throne-all this creates tensions that exceed courtly

entertainment and the charm of an ornate object. In the saltcellar,
one of the most successful works of the time, amusement becomes
a pretext and a mask for seriousness. In a reversal of relation, the
mock-heroic turns into a very elevated kind of poetry, although
the elevation of tone is ostensibly involuntary, essentially
unrelated to, and at odds with, both the scale and the purpose of
the work.
In the end, it still seems profitable to envisage sixteenth-
century art in terms of a crisis and the collapse of the humanistic
ideals of the High Renaissance. In at least one other domain a
refusal to acknowledge a crisis could not claim the support of
common sense. Luther's theses of 1517 marked the beginning of a
crisis in spiritual and religious life, although one could show that
they were prepared by a long historical development in the
fifteenth century and before -indeed history may always be seen
as a continuum. The relation between this crisis and that of art,
however, is a dangerous subject, and I should not like to venture
into it here: on one hand, it would be unhistorical to deny any
connection on the other, a historical interpretation directly
explaining one by the other and presenting the artistic phenomena
as an expression of spiritual life would be too crude. While certain
works may be understood in terms of the religious ideas they
reflect, it is doubtful that a style could be explained convincingly
in this fashion. The reason is simply that spiritual life itself is not
a primary aspect of existence but a form of expression, a cultural
phenomenon comparable to art.
The sixteenth century apparently did not solve its artistic
crisis. The first artists to be faced by it gave a number of highly
personal responses, not only Pontormo and the anticlassical
artists of Tuscany, but also Giulio, especially in the Sala di
Costantino, and perhaps also Polidoro.ll Succeeding generations
appear to have suppressed and masked the crisis by an
242

affirmation of confidence in artistic professionalism. The

estheticism of the maniera and the reliance on the art of the past
are the result. But this confidence in professionalism and in the
independence of esthetic values, implicit in the works and explicit
in the written theory, this belief that art can disengage itself from
life, seem to me no less of a self-deception than the historical one
exposed by Freedberg. The result is that a palpable portion of the
work's meaning, what is inherently expressive in the forms,
appears to escape the artist's control, to be independent of the
work's function and even in frequent contradiction to the explicit
subject matter. No wonder that this phenomenon, which I cannot
but call an artistic alienation, became the subject of profound
distaste during an age that was progressively more concerned with
expression, with the unity of the work of art, and the central
importance of "decorum."

1"0ber Greco und den Manierismus," in Kunstgesclzichte als Geistesgesclziclzte,

Munich, 1928. For an abbreviated English translation, see John Coolidge,
Magazine of Art, XLVI, No.1 (1953), 23.
2"Die Entstehung des antiklassischen Stiles in der italienischen Malerei urn 1520,"
Repertorium fur Kwzstwissenschaft, XLVI, 1925, 49ff.; trans. in Mannerism and
Anti-Mannensm in Italian Painting (New York, 1957).
3European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (New York, 1953); the work was
originally published in 1938.
4"zum Problem des nieder!andischen Manierismus," Kritische Berichte, III-IV
~1928-29), 213ff.
"Momenti dell'arte fiorentina nel cinquecento," in Libera cattedra di storia della
civiltii fiorentina (Unione fiorentina): II Cinquecento (Florence, 1955), 161ff.
6Manierismo, borocco, rococo: Concetti e termini (Rome, 1962); Studies in Western
Art: The Renaissance and Mannerism (New York, 1963) vol. II. Cf. particularly C.
H. Smyth "Mannerism and Maniera" 174-199; J. Shearman '"Maniera' as an
Aesthetic Ideal," 200-221.
7"In the attempt to rescue sixteenth-century art from the ill repute that much of it
enjoyed in the nineteenth century, it has been endowed with virtues peculiar to
our time-especially the virtues of a~gression, anxiety and instability"
(Mannerism, 1967, 15). The idea that such' v~rtues" were superimposed on works
just to save them from disrepute, out of, I suppose, historical charity, seems strange
and unlikely to me.
BMannerism and Maniera (Locust Valley, New York, n.d. [1962]); the text is the
same as that in Studies in Western Art but with the addition of 58 pages of
footnotes. These provide a comprehensive review of the literature and a number
of important observations. One only regrets the lack of an index.
 243

9The painting, executed by Niccolo del Abbate, still exists in the Salle de Bal but in
a much damaged condition. The extent of the damage was revealed by the removal
of the nineteenth-century repaints. We reproduce instead Primaticcio's original
drawing in the Albertina (fig. 1). That the triangle was not introduced in the
fresco is confirmed by Betou's etching made in the early seventeenth century. The
Louvre preserves a damaged but beautiful painted version, emanating from the
circle ofPrimaticcio and possibly based on the drawing. This painting might have
been the immediate model for the Yale panel, which does not seem to have been
c~ied from the fresco.
1 Art Bulletin, 1965, 187ff.
11 Polidoro is a difficult case because much of his work has been destroyed;
however, his physiognomy has been greatly clarified by modern Bntish
connoisseurship and by Marabottini's recent monograph. The main extant
painting remains the Carrying of the Cross in Naples, a very individual and in
many ways unexpected work. Longhi's belief that a northern artist must have
collaborated with Polidoro and painted the main figures is an unlikely hypothesis
firmly rejected by Marabottini, but it points significantly to Polidoro s expressive
tendencies.
244

Fig. 1 Francesco Primaticcio, Concert, c. 1545. Chalk Drawing

with White Heightening. Vienna, Albertina Museum

Fig. 2 Anonymous Sixteenth-Century Painter, Concert, after

Primaticcio. New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery
 245

Fig. 3 Francesco Salviati, Visitation, 1538. Rome, Oratory of

San Giovanni Decollato

Fig. 4 Alessandro Allori, Pearl Fishermen, 1570-73. Palazzo

Vecchio, Florence, Studiolo of Francesco I
246

Fig. 5 Michelangelo, The Deluge, 1508-12. Rome, Vatican,

Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

Fig. 6 Benvenuto Cellini, Saltcellar of Francis I, 1540-43. Gold

and Enamel. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
 MANNERISM, ITALIAN STYLE

Malcom Campbell

It is appropriate that our considerations of Mannerism begin,

geographically, in Italy and that they should focus on the fine
arts.i The phenomenon of mannerism in the sense that we now
use the term to identify a development in the arts in the sixteenth
century first occurred in Italy. In the twentieth century, however,
the province of Mannerism has been vastly expanded by many
advocates of the term. Nowadays mannerism is nearly as much a
household word as Renaissance or Baroque, and it is undoubtedly
more fashionable. The term has been universalized in the arts and
humanities-it belongs to us all. For better or worse it has
escaped its original chronological, geographical, and artistic
boundaries, or, as some would proclaim, it has been liberated
from them. Although use of the term outside of its original
preserve has not won universal approval, I think we can assume
that when we write Mannerism with a capital "M" we all, from
within our various fields, would agree in at least general terms
about what was meant or implied by this nomenclature, even if
we doubted its validity or legitimacy.
The term Mannerism in modern historical studies derives from
the Italian maniera as it is used in the critical and theoretical
literature of the sixteenth century. This fact is important because
it means that the term does not necessarily carry its primary
significance in English usage, that of connoting "exaggerated or
affected emulation of, or adherence to, a particular style or
manner" with implied qualities of being "stilted or artificial."
Maniera for some writers in the sixteenth century was, in the
language of sociology, value free; however, for others it was
freighted with precisely the pejorative inferences we attribute to
Mannerism when written with a lower case "m." Thus, for
248

example, Baldassare Castiglione in his book of courtly etiquette, II

Cortegiano, first published in 1527, used the term unprejudicially
when he described the bella musica as "il cantar bene a libro
sicurarnente e con bella maniera. "2 Maniera in this instance clearly
means style as a neutral element, its qualities being imparted by
bella. This was not always the case, however, and in an early
application of the term to the visual arts, the Venetian, Lodovico
Dolce, informs us at mid-century that painters denigrated works
of art in which forms and faces were repetitions, calling such
effects "maniera , doe cattiva pratica, ove se veggono forme e volti
quasi sempre simili. "3 It is possible that Dolce's comment reflects
a specifically Venetian prejudice. His terminology, as Denis
Mahon, followed by Craig Smyth, has suggested, may have been a
precedent for the negative use of the term in the seventeenth
century. 4
Our most influential cinquecento art historian, Giorgio Vasari,
followed Castiglione and conceived of maniera as an essentially
neutral characteristic of art. In his monumental Le vite de' piu
eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architetti, published in 1550, and, in
amplified form, in 1568, he used maniera repeatedly and in ways
synonymous with our word "style" in both the larger sense of the
style of an historic period (as in maniera greca) and in the sense of
an individual artist's style. 5 Thus for Vasari, maniera and style
could be used interchangeably. However, as most art historians
have noted, when used to describe the work of an individual
artist, maniera in Vasari's use of the term reflected an important
element of its root source in man o (hand) and thereby
incorporated a component of technique achieved through manual
skill or, as he would have termed it, pratica, as opposed to
perceptual or intellectual faculties. 6 It was in this sense that
Vasari used the term maniera when he established his criteria by
which a work of art was to be judged: "aggiugnendo alle cose de'
primi ordine, misure, disegno e maniera."7 To enhance the maniera
 249

of their art, Vasari advised artists to "frequently copy the most

beautiful things," to compose their figures from the most beautiful
hands, heads, bodies and legs, to make figures of the greatest
possible beauty which when "applied to every figure in every work
of art produces what one calls the bella maniera. "8 According to
Vasari it was correct pratica to select a canon of the most beautiful
figures and to apply this repertory of types to the figural action of
every figure in every painting. In short, what had been maniera and
cattiva pratica for Lodovico Dolce was for Vasari buona pratica and
la piu bella maniera. In the final analysis, the differences in the
attitudes of Dolce and Vasari toward this type of maniera would
appear to have been a matter of taste. Furthermore, it was the
opinion of Vasari that artists who possessed to an uncommon
degree the bella maniera were his generation of Florentine artists
and a few non-Florentines who also enjoyed the heritage of
Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo of whom the latter
represented the pinnacle of artistic achievement. Michelangelo
had reached this artistic summit by virtue of personal genius, but
also because he was born at an opportune moment. In Vasari's
view, art had continually evolved and improved from its rebirth in
the works of such early Renaissance masters as Cimabue and
Giotto, and Michelangelo's art was the triumphant summation of
this evolutionary development. 9
From our consideration of the historical setting in which
maniera was both honored (by Vasari) and vilified (by Dolce) we
can adduce several useful generalizations. Mannerism when used
as an English equivalent to sixteenth-century maniera refers to
motifs based on exemplary prototypes (in the view of its
practitioner) that, once selected, become a consistently practiced
artistic vocabulary. Disegno was of pre-eminent importance to the
piu bella maniera and it followed that a prerequisite of the bella
maniera was exceptional technical competency and virtuoso
manual skill. The artists of the maniera were for Vasari (and
250

almost certainly for Dolce) members of Vasari's generation, who

practiced their art ca. 1530-1575, and would therefore include, in
addition to Vasari himself, most notably Agnolo Bronzino and
Francesco Salviati. To this group would be added other artists
such as the team of artists, most of whom were somewhat
younger, who worked with Vasari in the Studiolo of Duke Frances I
de' Medici. This identification of the core practitioners of
mannerism as the bella maniera conforms to subsequent application
of the term in the literature of art. For example, when, in 1678,
Carlo Malvasia roundly condemned artists for being manieroso, he
singled out Vasari and Salviati, together with several younger
Florentines and some Bolognese artists he regarded as infected by
the style, for special vilification.1° Dolce, writing from a
chronological position seven years after Vasari's first edition and
from the point of view of a Venetian, and Malvasia, writing
slightly more than a century after the appearance of the second
edition of Vasari's Vite and from a Bolognese point of view,
together give us negative evaluations of maniera, but agree with
Vasari on its stylistic properties, and at least in the case of
Malvasia leave no doubt that the generation of artists associated
with it were Vasari's or that the epicenter of the style was
Florentine.
Other seventeenth-century commentators concurred with
Malvasia in general while broadening the geographical distribution
and the chronological spread and enlarging the number of maniera
practitioners. None of these was more influential than Gian Pietro
Bellori who took up the term, linking it-as had Vasari-with the
triumph of the Renaissance, but drawing conclusions about the
qualities of the style that echo Dolce and Malvasia. For Bellori,
this Vasarian progress culminated in the art of Michelangelo and,
above all, in the art of Raphael, but then, alas:
 251

The artists, abandoning the study of nature, corrupted art with

the maniera, that is to say, with the fantastic idea based on
practice and not on imitation [by which he means imitation of
nature]. This vice, the destroyer of painting, first began to
appear in masters of honored acclaim. It rooted itself in the
schools that later followed. It is incredible to recount how far
they degenerated then, not only from Raphael but from those
artists who had introduced the maniera. Florence, who boasts
of being the mother of painting because of her very glorious
professors, and the whole of Tuscany, without praises of
painting, were silent. Artists of the Roman School no longer
lifted their eyes to the many antique and modem exampfes,
consigning all praiseworthy advantage to oblivion.ll

This is not a very happy picture of the art that gave our
symposium its topic, and it is one that remained virtually intact
for almost two hundred and fifty years. The Bellori legacy was
important not only because it was enduring, but because it
expanded the term maniera to be a characteristic of the immediate
followers of Raphael, that is, the generation preceding Vasari. This
expansion gave maniera a generational character that it had not
previously enjoyed. Vasari's generation (often termed the
generation of the High Maniera by modem art historians) was
given the precedent of a slightly earlier generation, i.e., the Raphael
School {identifiable as Perino del Vaga, Giulio Romano and
Baldassare Peruzzi) and such "masters of honored acclaim" as
Jacopo Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino and Parmigianino.12
In 1899 Heinrich Wolfflin published his beautifully written
study of High Renaissance painting entitled Die klassische Kunst.
The concluding part of the last chapter of the first part of this
book is ominously entitled "Der Verfall." 13 In it Wolfflin described
the state of art after the death of Raphael and Michelangelo. For
Wolfflin, the late works of Michelangelo were awesome and
deeply unsettling and he opened his discussion of "The Decline"
stating:
252

Nobody would wish to make Michelangelo personally responsible

for what happened to Central Italian art he was what he had to be,
and he remains sublime even in the distortions of his ultimate style,
yet his influence was formidable. All beauty came to be measured by
the standard of his works, and an art which was the product of
special and personal circumstances became the universal style. It
will be necessary to look at this phenomenon-"mannerism"-
somewhat more closely.14

Herewith the development which Vasari had found

praiseworthy the emulation of selected prototypes, especially
Michelangelo, as prerequisite to achieving the bella maniera, was
roundly condemned. This condemnation was followed by an
opinion of mannerism as a style that casts the criticism of Bellori
in highly formalistic terms. Wolfflin accused mannerist artists of
seeking:

to obtain stupendous effects of mass, utterly rejecting Raphael

architectonic methods. Spaciousness and beauty of proportions
became alien concepts the feeling for the potentialities of a
plane surface as spatial area became completely atrophied.
Painters began to rival one another m the atrocious
overcrowding of canvases, in a dissolution of forms which
deliberately sought a contradiction between the amount of
space available and the objects in it ... and art became
completely formalized and no longer paid any attention to
nature, constructing motives of movement accordmg to personal
formulae and making the human body a purely schematic
machine of joints and muscles.

The artists singled out by Wolfflin for special denigration were

predictable Giorgio Vasari and Agnolo Bronzino.15
On several counts WOlfflin's remarks are much more significant
for later criticism of mannerism than has generally been
acknowledged. First, I would note the fact that he refers to
mannerism as a specific, historic style. To the best of my
knowledge, this is the first instance where it was so designated.
Terms such as di maniera or manieroso imply a style, but the
redundancy of stile manieroso (stylish style) in Italian must have
impeded such usage. Second, I would argue that although
Wolfflin's comments on the "phenomenon of mannerism" are brief,
 253

they reflect a close reading of Vasari and Bellori and that, based
on these sources and on personal observation, he had a clear
conception of the mannerist style. Third, W olfflin was a
formalist-a very great formalist-and it was therefore inevitable
that his investigation of mannerism, like those he pursued of
Renaissance and of Baroque art, would deal exclusively with
problems of style and eschew such questions as the interpretation
of content in the work of art, historical context, and role of
collectors and patrons. When reaction came to Wolfflin's
evaluation of mannerism as a degenerate style, the arena in which
virtually all of the ensuing controversy was to occur remained for
a long time the one of his choosing, that of formalistic analysis.
Of course, it is perfectly true that Wolfflin did not find the
style the least bit simpatico and, as Donald Posner has noted, he
omitted mention of it in his Principles of Art History which
appeared as Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe in 1915. 16 But I
would argue that Wolfflin was well aware of the mannerist style
and that its omission in this instance was due to his belief that it
had no contributory role in the history of the Renaissance and
Baroque styles. It must be borne in mind that long before the
twentieth century rehabilitation of mannerism, Wolfflin had
played a crucial role in the re-evaluation of the Baroque. In the
preface to his first book Renaissance und Barock, published in 1888,
he had stated: "It has become customary to use the term baroque
to describe the style into which the Renaissance resolved itself or,
as it is more commonly expressed, into which the Renaissance
degenerated."17 In the same early work, Wolfflin made another
observation that should not be overlooked. Although he did not
use the term mannerism, he did identify a phase of dissolution in
the sixteenth century and established its chronological limits as
1520 to 1580, a time period that most scholars thereafter assigned
to mannerism. W olfflin's rejection of mannerism was the
connoisseur's response to a style that failed to enjoy the qualities
254

that found favor in his aesthetics his perception of the style,

however, was remarkably acute. Like Giorgio Vasari's evaluation
of Gothic, it was, as Erwin Panofsky pointed out in the case of the
sixteenth-century critic, learned, accurate, but negative. IS I would
conclude that Wolfflin's assessment, albeit negative, laid out the
general context in which mannerism was to be reappraised along
positive lines. A younger generation of scholars was to see
mannerism in its initial stages as in conflict with the High
Renaissance rather than a mere decline from it.
In 1914, at the University of Freiburg, Walter Friedlaender
gave his inaugural address on the origins of what he termed an
anti-classical style in Italian painting about 1520.19 The title of
Friedlaender's address did not incorporate the term mannerism,
but he so names this anti-classical style throughout this bench
mark essay. Wolfflin had termed the High Renaissance classic for
Friedlaender mannerism was anti-classical. For him mannerism
did not merely grow out of (or degenerate from) the High
Renaissance it was in opposition to it. Friedlaender perceived
artistic confrontation in the response of the artists he identified as
the first generation of mannerists to the style of the High
Renaissance. The agents of this challenge to High Renaissance
authority were former practitioners of the very style against which
they revolted: Jacopo Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino and
Parmigianino.
Although we cannot here do justice to the position of either
Wolfflin or Friedlaender, it is interesting to note their similar
responses to Jacopo Pontormo's Visitation of 1516, a fresco in the
cloister of the Annunziata in Florence, and their contrasting
reactions to this artist's later paintings. Wolfflin saw Pontormo's
Visitation as a brief moment of greatness in the career of "an artist
of second rank, borne along by a great age in which he lived, [who]
has here created a picture of real significance and influence."2°
 255

Concerning Pontormo's later career, Wolfflin was predictably

silent.
Friedlaender seconded Wolfflin's remarks on the Visitation, but
his reactions to Pontormo's later works were a reversal of his
predecessor's. It is precisely this portion of the artist's career that
most interested him. Two years after the Visitation, Pontormo
painted his Madonna and Child with Saints for S. Michele
Visdomini in Florence. Friedlaender considered this painting to be
a transitional work and there is an element of excitement in his
identification of the emergent mannerist style in it.

The niche architecture [of the Visitation], while still present, is

no longer the same empty background foil built up tectonically
so as to widen the space in a beautiful curve. 1nstead, it is
almost completely hidden by the volumes of the bodies and
really functions only as a rather strongly shadowed cloak for
the Madonna. The pyramidal triangle is still the old
standardized schema, but the balance, the arrangement of
weights is destroyed. The Madonna's head forms the point of
the triangle but the axis of her body, which formerly would
have been in the middle, is pushed slightly toward the right,
destroying the isosceles triangle. Thus the whole painting
acquires a swing to the right and into depth, which is further
enhanced by light and shade and is only canceled out by the
counteraction of the three parallel diagonals that keep the
central composition from getting completely out of order. The
figures too are shoved in upon each other much more recklessly
the space is thus narrowed in comparison to the earlier, more
broaoly settled composition. These are all outspoken
unacademic displacements, but Renaissance elements are still
very strongly present.21

The 1518 painting of Pontormo was only a first step, a

transitional moment, to be immediately followed by far more
radical, indeed revolutionary artistic events in the work of
Pontormo, Parmigianino and Rosso Fiorentino. In the work of the
latter, especially, Friedlaender perceived a "decisive step away
from the balanced and classical towards the spiritual and
subjective."22
According to Friedlaender, the classic moment of the High
Renaissance enjoyed artistic hegemony in Central Italy for
256

approximately two decades then, shortly before 1520, it was

challenged by the antithetical style of mannerism.23 Later, in a
second essay, entitled "The Anti-mannerist Style," Friedlaender
more fully articulated the chronological schema and the
generational development of the style.24 In taking up the issue of
the second generation of mannerist practitioners, Friedlaender
stated: "Thus it was that the older style (which I have called 'anti-
classical,' for lack of a better word, but which is usually termed
'manneristic' by a process of reverse derivation from its offshoot)
became 'mannered.' In other words, the noble, pure, idealistic and
abstract style, lasting approximately from 1520 to 1550, was
transformed in the succeeding phase (about 1550 to 1580) into a
manner it became di maniera by repetition, cleverness, and playful
exaggeration on the one hand, by weak concessions on the
other."2 5 Giorgio Vasari would have recognized Friedlaender's
second phase as belonging to his own generation, but he would
have assuredly protested this ignominious description of his
cherished bella maniera which was as severe as that of his
contemporary, Lodovico Dolce.
Mannerism, as perceived by Friedlaender, had its starting
points in Florence and Rome, but it quickly spread to
Fontainebleau and then to the rest of Europe. 26 In the final
statement in this essay Friedlaender introduced the concept of
mannerism as a period rather than merely a stylistic phenomenon.
In his closing remarks, Friedlaender carried his thesis on
mannerism one step further. He stated "Pontormo, Rosso,
Parmigianino, with the genius of Michelangelo hovering about them
and reaching beyond them, introduced this period [italics added],
which is not a mere transition, not merely a conjunction between
Renaissance and Baroque, but an independent age of style,
autonomous and most meaningful."27 These words are a striking
mirror reversal of Wolfflin's evaluations.
 257

Friedlaender's lecture (even before publication) won adherents.

A re-evaluation was underway, one that was to embrace all the
arts.2 8 I do not want to attempt a review of this literature, but
rather to focus on a 1951 publication that can serve, and indeed
did serve, to a degree that I believe has not been fully
acknowledge, as a prolegomenon for scholarly work done in the
field from 1951 to current investigations. I refer to Arnold
Hauser's The Social History of Art, where a lucid exegesis of the
problem of mannerism interpreted as a societal as well as an
artistic crisis was set forth in just a few pages.2 9 Hauser saw
mannerism as a Pan-European event occasioned by the
inadequacy of a classical style as an expressive mode for an age
lacking social composure. Root causes included the economic
decline of Italy, the crisis of the Reformation, the 1527 sack of
Rome, and the intrusion of European politics and foreign armies
into Italy. Mid-twentieth· century conditions were seen by Hauser
as sufficiently similar to make his generation particularly
sympathetic to a style that "concentrated, above all, on breaking
up the all too obvious regularity and harmony of classical art and
replacing its superpersonal normativity by more subjective and
°
more suggestive features. "3 For Hauser, mannerism could
potentially express quite diverse phenomena. It could deepen and
spiritualize religious experience, and, in a state of heightened
intellectualism, it could consciously and deliberately deform
reality. In most cases, these tasks were accomplished with
subtlety and elegance. Hauser perceptively observed that Wolfflin
lacked an experience of post-Impressionist art that might have
aided an assessment of the spiritualistic aspects of mannerism
and lessened his rejection of what he and Hauser perceived from
differing aesthetic criteria as its anti-naturalism. Hauser cast
wide his mannerist net among the arts and caught such diverse
personalities as Tasso, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Bruegel, El Greco,
Heemskerck and Callot. According to him there were elements of
258

realism in mannerist art, and they often existed in an abstracted

environment-in a condition not unlike that of a dream, a
condition he found "reminiscent of contemporary art, as
expressed ... in surrealist painting, in Franz Kafka's dream world,
in the montage technique of Joyce's novels and the autocratic
treatment of space in the film." 31 Hauser perceived the mannerist
style as co-existing with others. Citing Pinder, Weisbach, and
Hoerner, he claimed a competitive, countrapuntal interaction of
early Baroque and mannerism across the sixteenth century from its
third decade to its closing years, a competition finally "won" by
the Baroque. Finally, he located the artistic center of mannerism in
the European courts: the Medici in Florence, Francis I at
Fontainebleau, Philip II in Madrid, Rudolf II in Prague, and
Albrecht V in Munich, and he saw these centers with their royal or
would-be royal patronage, sophistication, and hedonism as
conductive to this style. In his opinion, "The mannerism of the
courts ... especially in its later form, [was] a uniform and
universally European movement-the first great international style
since the Gothic." 32 Hauser's methods of art historical
interpretation were closely paralleled by the work of his
contemporary Frederick Antal. 33 Both scholars saw the
phenomenon of mannerism through the perspective of Marxist
economic history, which Hauser attempted to apply to literally all
of art history, an approach which left him vulnerable to the attack
of specialists in the history of art to whom he appeared to be a
wayward and dogmatic interloper from intellectual and economic
history. In a field as politically and methodologically conservative
as art history, it was possible for critics to reject his larger
arguments by faulting him on errors of fact and to ignore instance
of perceptive observation because they were components of
poorly founded, broad generalizations. Also, because Hauser's
discussion of mannerism was published in a work that embraced
 259

the history of art from cave painting to Picasso, it was often

omitted from specialized bibliographies. 34
Hauser never made claims for the originality of his view of
mannerism however, at the very least it reflected a developing
climate of scholarly opinion and stood as a bellwether of scholarly
production in the field in the next two decades which witnessed a
spate of exhibitions, articles, and books, including a disappointing
one by Hauser himself on the subject. 35 As his own book on
mannerism attests, Hauser was too sweeping in his installation of
mannerism as a major episode in the cultural history of Europe.
To apply the term to all human endeavor in the arts between ca.
1520 and ca. 1600 is to dilute what intrinsic meaning the term may
carry, and to declare an artist "mannerist" and thereby limit all his
artistic production to the term is, for reasons discussed below, a
gross oversimplification of terminology and of creativity. When he
addressed the problem of mannerism in a monographic study,
Hauser succumbed to a tendency already evident in his earlier
work, that of assuming like historic circumstances and like content
in works of art sharing some stylistic similarities, however slight or
fortuitous these might be. Nevertheless for students of art history
of my generation, Hauser's thesis constituted a pioneering and
challenging attempt to transcend formalist polemic and to give the
mannerist style a full-fledged historical context.
In the 1950s, exhibitions celebrated the Age of mannerism and
its triumph as a European phenomenon.3 6 The terminology of
mannerism was extended to history, literature, and music. 37
Major artists were treated as practitioners of mannerism in
monographic studies.3 8 Symposia and international congresses
were held at which the historiography, scope, and limitations of
mannerism were reported. 39 One of the most important of these
meetings occurred in 1961 when the Twentieth International
Congress of the History of Art devoted a session to the topic
"Recent concepts of mannerism,"40 at which a number of
260

challenging papers were delivered. Two of these papers are of

particular interest to us because they represented divergent
responses to the thesis of social and economic determinism as
causal in the formation of mannerist style as popularized by
Arnold Hauser.
Frederick Hartt's "Power and the Individual in mannerist Art"
presents the case for political determinism as the causal force
behind mannerism. 41 Without reference to earlier attempted
chartings by Hauser-or others such as Briganti-Hartt boldly
sailed the fragile vessel of mannerism across the troubled waters
of social history and psychology:

In examining the behavior of the individual in early mannerist

art, one does not even have to set the accent very near to the
[frescoes of Raphael in the] Stanza della Segnatura to realize
that something rather appalling has taken place. Devoid of
physical harmony, petrified by anxiety, incapable of action, the
tormented figures so characteristic of mannerism suggest much
less the nohon of artistic rebellion than that of collective
neurosis. And if the origin of neurosis is to be sought in the
distortion of the early relations between the individual and the
sources of power, it is significant that in Rome and Florence, by
about 1517, the traditional sources of power in Church and
State had run dry.42

A rebuttal of Hartt's thesis was implicit in the paper given in

the same session by John Shearman entitled "Maniera as an
Aesthetic Ideal."43 Later, in 1967, Shearman was to attack more
specifically the position of Hartt in his excellent book, mannerism.
There he wrote:

There has been a great deal of argument over the causes of

mannerism. Disputes arise mainly because the historical
factors which are thought to have determined the evolution of
the style are so often of a kind very remote from the rrocesses of
artistic creation. The invasion of Italy, the Sack o Rome and
subsequent economic collapse were responsible, it has been
suggested, for an intellectual and cultural climate of crisis
peculiarly favorable to the development of mannerism-the fact
that similar political and economic conditions in other periods
and places did not have similar artistic results being
conveniently overlooked.
 261

There is as little necessity as excuse for an explanation of

mannerism in terms of tension or collective neuros1s. It was, on
the contrary, the confident assertion of the artist's right, which
he seemed to have regained in the High Renaissance, to make
something that was first and last a work of art and ... there
were enough related aesthetic convictions asserted with
confidence in mannerism's own cultural context to suggest to us
that what was done was thought to be absolutely the right
thing to do. Nothing forces us to make the effort of
understanding but reason should at least prevent us from
dressing up the wicked fairy of art-history in non-period corset
and costume to make her more attractive to our eyes. 44

Of course, certain non-artistic events were causal in the case of

some artists. In the case of Michelangelo, for example, the
religious crisis, the collapse of the Florentine Republic, the death of
a favorite member of his household and his own irreversible aging
do indeed temper and transform his art. But, in fact, the
designation of Michelangelo as a mannerist artist resists proofs
both visual and documentary. Rather, the evidence suggests that
he was a model for artists of the Maniera. We should recall
Friedlaender's description of Michelangelo's position in sixteenth-
century developments as "hovering above [the other artists] and
reaching beyond them. "45
Obviously, the foregoing brief and arbitrary survey of the
literature of mannerism does not solve the problem of defining the
term or resolve the conflicting interpretations of its form or
content. The fact that two art historians, Hartt and Shearman,
have drawn such diametrically opposed conclusions from the
same evidence-indeed from the same monuments-is a striking
demonstration of the frustration and conflict that has been
occasioned by attempts to arrive at a definition of mannerism that
explains its artistic motivation, form, and content. It is not
surprising that the term has been ignored or even rejected by some
twentieth-century historians of art. Frederick Clapp, writing on
Pontormo in 1916, did not use the term.4 6 In 1920, when Herman
262

Voss published a corpus of post-High-Renaissance Florentine and

Roman painting he eschewed the term, entitling his work simply
Die Malerei der Spiitrenaissance in Rom und Florenz and reserving the
term mannerism principally for artists of Vasari's generation. 47
Recently, several art historians have more aggressively assumed a
rejectionist position on the mannerism question. For example,
James Ackerman, in his 1961 monograph on the architecture of
Michelangelo, called the concept of mannerism "one of the most
successful artifacts of twentieth-century art history" and, allowing
that the Laurentian Library is usually central to every definition of
the term in architecture, he stated, "I believe that while the concept
of mannerism has facilitated criticism in the past, gradually it has
come to obstruct our perception by urging us to find in the work of
art what our definition of it states we must find." 48 Without
presenting a case against the use of the term, John Pope-Hennessy
omitted it from the title of his monumental study of Italian
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sculpture, Italian High
Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture. 49 In his considerations of Giulio
Romano's Palazzo del Te, Egon Verheyen elected not to address
the problem of the relation of this building in the concept of
mannerism. "In a different context," he wrote, "this question may
be valid here, however, such a discussion would not contribute to
the clarification of the issue at hand."50
To these examples may be added the fact that one recent critic
of the term mannerism, Michael Levey, has claimed, while
admitting that the word maniera existed in the sixteenth century,
that the term as a label "cannot be traced back, certainly not
firmly, much before 1900." "Nowadays," Levey continues (it
seems to me rather archly), "when we are constantly told to use
the evidence of the period we are discussing, that date [1900]
must seem rather late for detection of a phenomenon."Sl Now this
is hyperbole on this basis we would have to call not only the style
of mannerism, "Renaissance," but to use the latter term to
 263

somehow cover nearly every style phenomenon in the sixteenth,

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Surely such simplification
would incur considerable losses and rather few gains. Baroque
and Rococo were originally abuse terms and were, furthermore,
only applied post factum to the artistic events they have come to
identify.
If we are to continue using the term (and the concept) of
mannerism, how shall we do it? The answer, I think, is very
flexible, and only when it helps us to more fully understand the
work, or works, of art.
In attempting to draw some conclusions from this survey, I
would like to suggest that one problematic issue central to the use
of the term mannerism is the need to clarify what we mean by an
historic period as opposed to-or at least as distinguished from-
-an artistic style. We should recall that Vasari used the term
maniera to signify a style as in an individual artist's style or in the
sense of a collective style of a given historic period. But neither
he, nor his contemporaries, nor the writers of the seventeenth
century introduced the maniera per se as an historic period.
W olfflin wrote of the phenomenon of mannerism as enjoying
parity with Renaissance and Baroque. Referring to mannerism,
Friedlaender stated "this period [is) not a mere transition between
Renaissance and Baroque, but an independent age of style,
autonomous and most meaningful. "52
After Friedlaender's articulate defense of mannerism, it was all
too easy for popular publications, particularly art history surveys
and textbooks, to enthrone mannerism as an historic period to be
delegated its own chapter, along with the art of the Renaissance
and Baroque. As we have noted, there is considerable sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century documentation to support a style called
the Maniera, but none to justify a mannerist period. For periodic
distinctions, I would suggest that we use Renaissance and Baroque
as Wolfflin did when he published Renaissance und Barock in 1888.
264

The distinction implied is, I believe, more than mere semantics.

Mannerism should be relegated to being one of the styles of the
Renaissance Period, along with other stylistic denominations
students of the period have found useful, such as the High-
Renaissance style (or the classic style as Wolfflin and Friedlaender
termed it on occasion.) The sixteenth century, from the High-
Renaissance style to the clear emergence of the Baroque Period,
might be likened to a hank of rope, a composite of several strands,
one of which can be identified as constituting the mannerist style,
a style that co-exists with other styles in Italy and indeed in
Europe during the latter part of the Renaissance Period.
In defining the Italian style of mannerism, we would do well to
recall the caveat provided by Ernst Gombrich in his introduction
to the session devoted to mannerism at the Twentieth
International Congress of Art History, namely that we not
exaggerate the typicality of that most classic of High-Renaissance
masterpieces, Raphael's frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura, in
establishing the normative standards of the High-Renaissance
style and so to view every deviation from it as mannerist. 53
Definition of the mannerist style would be well served if we
first determine its core in both a chronological and geographical
sense and then attempt to establish its artistic parameters. To do
so we would do well to abandon the point of conflict between
classic and anti-classic as elucidated by Friedlaender, who saw
mannerism as the willful emergence of a new style in conflict with
that of the High Renaissance around 1520. Instead, we should
move our inquiry to mid-century, where we encounter the
generation Vasari had proclaimed to be the practitioners of the
bella numiera. It is these artists, often termed the second generation
of mannerists, whose style is frequently called the High Maniera,
who epitomize the mannerist style. These are the artists-
including sculptors and architects as well as painters-to whom
we should address our investigations of the characteristics of
 265

mannerism in terms of form, content, and social and historical

context. Here I would like to briefly inventory some salient
characteristics we would discover.
Mannerism was a court-based style that was developed for
and was patronized by autocratic rulers and their associates in
Italy, and it was similarly patronized elsewhere. The style was
not in conflict with that of the High Renaissance. In point of fact,
it derives its stylistic properties from it thus one finds in the true
mannerist artist a dependence on Michelangelo (as Vasari
indicated) and on Raphael (as Bellori noted in his criticisms). The
formal qualities of the art of these two masters are important but
not the exclusive sources of the style.
As had been true of other styles in the Renaissance, the role of
the antique was an important resource, one which was studied for
both its classical and for its aclassical properties. Content in both
religious and secular art tends to be highly recondite or, if familiar,
to be rendered sufficiently obscure in visual presentation as to
require prior knowledge of text or program on the part of the
spectator. Great emphasis was placed on technical skills and
elegance, that is, on Vasari's pratica and grazie. It was a style that
an artist could take up, then move away from (as did many
northern artists who worked in Italian studios, then returned to
their homelands). For Italian artists of Vasari's and succeeding
sixteenth-century generations, there was the possibility, as indeed
there always is for an artist in a rich and varied cultural context,
to alter his stylistic criteria to suit a particular task or commission.
Thus artists may have more than one stylistic mode. If Vasari's
circle was relatively dedicated to the mannerist style we need not
expect the succeeding generation to be so consistently loyal to the
style. Jacopo Ligozzi (1547-1627) is a case in point. When
appropriate, he produced paintings in the mannerist style, and for
recording natural phenomena he worked in a quite different,
intensely descriptive and scientifically objective style.54 The same
266

distinction could be extended to many other artists. Gianbologna

(1529-1608), for example, is famous for his consummate
performances in bronze of figures who singly or in groups display
nearly endless variations on the figura serpentinata, the
quintessential mannerist formula, and for his brilliantly
naturalistic bronze animals. 55 Finally, there are examples, such as
the grottoes of Bernardo Buontalenti (1531-1608), in which the
extraordinarily contrived and artificial qualities of a man-made
mannerist cavern were combined with naturalistic materials such
as coral and natural rock to create an environment in which art
and nature were conjoined. Typical of the later practitioners of
the mannerist style, the commitment of these artists to the Maniera
is, as the century draws to a close, increasingly serendipitous.
Styles, like fashion, ebb, are reinterpreted, and are destined to be
rediscovered, revived, and ultimately transformed. In the case of
mannerism just such a process was to occur, as has been often
noted, periodically across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The definition of mannerism I am suggesting is scarcely
revolutionary rather it constitutes a consolidation of the term with
an identifiable and relatively homogeneous corps of artists who
share its conventions. The case of later artists who practice its
formulae on occasion, use it to satisfy the requirements of a
particular commission, or borrow from it, becomes perfectly
explicable. Our task is to define their association with mannerism
and explain the circumstances, aesthetic, historic or patronal, of
their involvement with the style. To merely label such artists as a
third generation of mannerists and to ignore the element of
naturalism and the distinctly un-mannerist handling of light and
color in much of their work is counterproductive.
But what of the generation that preceded that of Vasari? It
was with two representatives of this generation, Jacopo Pontormo
and Rosso Fiorentino, that Friedlaender began his discussion of an
anti-classical style. Friedlaender implied that these artists were
 267

the leaders of the first generation of mannerist artists, a position

which has won general acceptance. In order to underscore the fact
that Pontormo and Rosso represented a sharp departure from the
High-Renaissance style, we may recall that Friedlaender noted
Vasari's disapproval of their new "anti-classical style" which the
sixteenth-century artist-biographer had seen as derived from
Durer and hence Gothic.5 6 This constitutes strange parentage
indeed for mannerism, which to Vasari was the bella maniera and
of which he was so proud. In designating the style of Pontormo
and of Rosso in the 1520s the initiation of mannerism,
Friedlaender placed the style in conflict with the High
Renaissance, an aesthetic position which is surely anomalous with
that of Vasari. If, however, we remove from the mannerist canon
precisely those works of Pontormo that Vasari critic Vasarized
(the frescoes at the Certosa del Galluzzo in particular) and the
work of others, such as Rosso in the 1520s, then the role of
mannerism as an Hegelian antithesis to a Renaissance thesis
begins to dissolve. 57 Artists slightly older than Vasari, Perino del
Vaga, Giulio Romano, and Parmigianino, fall into place as artists
who at moments of their careers participate in developments
leading to mannerism. mannerism can claim some but not all of
their production. Such a disposition renders mannerism a
remarkably consistent style, one whose fortuna fluctuates between
the late 1520s, when trends leading to this "stylish" style emerge,
to the 1590s by which time the style is fading away. If this view is
taken, mannerism can no longer be perceived as a rebellion against
the High Renaissance, as classicism versus anti-classicism.
However, such a disposition leaves out precisely those works of
the late teens and early 1520s with which Friedlaender began his
analysis of the style. In late stages of their careers both Pontormo
and Rosso will draw closer to the mannerist style. In truth, only
certain of their works even in the earlier period are necessarily
omitted from the formation of the mannerist style. These works,
268

like those of the mature El Greco that fail to fit into the categories
of either mannerism or Baroque, recall that later master in their
brilliance and even, to a degree, in their spiritual powers which
reach far beyond mannerism per se in transfiguring material reality.
The term mannerism may be useful in establishing a general
historical context for the work of Giulio Romano at the court of
the Gonzaga in Mantua in the late 1520s and early 1530s it will be
of limited usefulness in the interpretation of the art of Jacopo
Pontormo or Rosso Fiorentino in the same period. The stylistic
complexities of this two-decade period need further study. The
problem lies not in the inadequacy of the term mannerism, but in
the reduction of the sixteenth century to a High Renaissance,
mannerism, Baroque stylistic succession (and incipient
concomitant periodic distinctions). To abjure the use of the term
altogether as some scholars have advocated seems even more
unproductive. Michael Levey has argued that the limited use of
the term of mannerism along the lines that I have advocated
would make of it "not so much a true style as a limited trend,
hardly more than a Tuscan-Roman manifestation, with a few
camp-followers like Spranger."58 To my mind a "Tuscan-Roman
manifestation," comprising significant portions of the careers of
Giulio Romano, Perino del Vaga, Parmigianino, Pontormo, Rosso
Fiorentino, and wholly embodying the art of Giorgio Vasari,
Francesco Salviati, and Agnolo Bronzino, which reaches in
significant ways several generations of painters, sculptors and
architects and which has international "camp followers" of the
courtly brilliance of Bartholommaeus Spranger, is a style well
worth our attention.

1The literature devoted expressly to the problem of Mannerism and the visual arts
is vast. Three books are recommended here, both for the merits of their texts and
for their notes and bibliographies: Craig Hugh Smyth, Mannerism and "Maniera,"
(Locust Valley, N.Y.: Augustin, 1962), an expanded version of a paper presented
in 1961 and published in The Renaissance and Mannerism, Studies in Western Art;
Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art, vol. II, ed. by
 269

Millard Meiss (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), which should be

consulted for additional papers; Sydney]. Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500-1600
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970); and John Shearman, Mannerism
~armondsworth: Pengum Books, 1967).
Baldassare Castiglione, II Cortegiano (Venice, 1527), Vol. II, xiii.
3Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura (Venice, 1557) in Paola Barocchi, ed.,
Trattati d'arte del Cinquecento fra manierismo e controriforma (Bari: G. Laterza,
1960-1962), I, 196.
4oenis Mahon, Studies in Seicento Art and Theory (London: Warburg Institute,
University of London, 1947), 64, and Smyth, Mannerism and "Maniera," 5 and
nn. 31 and 32.
5Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' piil eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. by
Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols: (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1878-1885), passim.
61 follow Smyth's interpretation of Vasari's use of maniera as interchangeable
with style. Smyth, Mamzerism and "Maniera," 4-7 and especially n. 26 (where
counter proposals of S. L. Alpers and M. Treves are rejected) and 35, 40. Pratica
and manzera are not to be construed as interchangeable (Ibid., 6 and n. 38).
7vasari, Le vite, IV, 7.
8Jbid., 8: "La maniera venne poi Ia piu bella dall'avere messo in uso il frequente
ritrarre le cose piu belle; e da guel piu bello o mani o teste o corpi o gambe
aggiugnerle insieme, e fare una ftgura di tutte quelle bellezze che piu si poteva, e
metterla in uso in ogni opera per tutte le figure; che per questo si dice esser bella
numiera [italics added]."
9See Smyth, Mannerism and "Maniera," 9. For Vasari's conception of artistic
progress, the classic discussion is in Julius Schlosser, La letteratura artistica, 3d
Italian ed., with notes by Otto Kurz (Florence: La Nuova ltalia, 1964), 315-346,
e~ecially 316-320.
1 Carlo Malvasia, Felsina pittrice (Bologna, 1670), I, 358.
11Gian Pietro Bellori, Le vite de' pittori, scultori e arcltitetti moderni (Rome, 1672),
annotated ed., edited by Evelina Borea (Turin: G. Einaudi, 1976), 31-32: " ... gli
artefici, abbandonado Io studio della natura, viziarono l'arte, con Ia maniera, o
vogliamo dire fantastica idea, appoggiata alia pratica e non all'imitazione.
Questo vizio distruttore della pittura comincio da prima a germogliare in maestri
di onorato grido, e si radico nelle scuole, che seguirono poi; onde none credible a
raccontare quanto degenerassero non solo da Rafaello, rna da gli altri che alia
maniera diedero cominciamento. Fiorenza, che si vanta di essare madre della
pittura, e'l paese tutto di Toscana, peril suoi professori gloriosissimo, taceva gia
senza laude di pennello; e gli altri della scuola romana non alzando piu gli occhi a
tanti essempi antichi e nuovi, avevano posto in dimenticanza ogni lodevole
rrofitto ... "
20f course these masters were not universally censured. Sir Joshua Reynolds,
for example, praised Giulio Romano and looked with at least some favor on
Perino del Vaga, Rosso Fiorentino, and Parmigianino. He was silent about
Vasari's Florentine contemporaries, however, and used Vasari solely as a
literary resource. See Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, ed. by Robert R.
Wark (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 72, 81, 105, 179, 198, 219, 271
and 276.
13Heinrich Wolfflin, Die k/assisc/ze Kunst (Munich: Bruckmann, 1899), 184-187.
270

14wolfflin, Classic Art, 2nd ed., trans. by Peter and Linda Murray (London:
Phaidon Press, 1953), 202.
15Jbid., 197; 202-203. Later commentators on the contribution of Wolfflin have
tended to ignore his use of the term Mannerism in his Classic Art and to at the very
least imply that he omitted it from his considerations. See, for example, Peter
Murray's introduction to the English edition of Renaissance and Baroque (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), 1-12, and also Donald Posner's
introduction to Walter F. Friedlaender, Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian
Painting (New York: Schocken Books, 1965; rpt. of New York: Columbia
University Press, 1957), xi-x.ix, especially xii, where he comments that Wolfflin
"disregarded Mannerism and postulated an uninterrupted evolution from the
classical style of the Renaissance to the Baroque style of the seventeenth century."
Posner's statement is easily interpreted to mean that Wolfflin was unaware of
Mannerism.
16Donald Posner, introduction to Ibid. (1965), xii.
17Heinrich Wolfflin, Renaissance und Barock, here quoted from Renaissance and
Baroque, trans. by Kathrin Simon, with introduction by Peter Murray (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), 15.
18Erwin Panofsky, "The First Page, Giorgio Vasari's Libra," in Meaning in the
Visual Arts (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), 169-225, and especially 176-
177 and n. 15 and 188-189 and n. 40.
19Published as "Die Entstehung des antiklassichen Stiles in der italienischen
Malerei urn 1520," in Repertorium fur Kzlllstwissensc/zaft, XL VI (1925), 243-262,
and in English translation as Part I of Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1957), and with introduction by Donald Posner
(New York: Schocken Books, 1965 and later editions), 3-43.
20wolfflin, Classic Art, 159-160 and fig. 107; and Friedlaender, Mannerism and
Anti-Mannerism (1965), 20 and fig. 1. For another illustration, see Freedberg,
Painting in Italy 1500--1600, Plate 39.
21Friedlaender, Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism (1965), 20-21 and fig. 2. For
another illustration, see Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500--1600, Plate 71.
22Friedlaender, Mannerism and Anti-Ma111zerism (1965), 29.
23Ibid., 4-5.
24Friedlaender's essay was originally published in Vorriige der Bibliotek
Warburg VIII (1928-1929). It appeared in English translation as Part II of
Mannensm and Anti-Mannerism (1957), and with introduction by Posner (1965
and later editions), 47-83.
25Jbid. (1965), 48-49.
26Jbid., 41-42.
27/bid., 43.
28See, for example, the use of the term by Leo Schrade, "Von der 'Maniera' der
Komposition 1n der Musik des 16. Jahrhunderts," Zeitschrift fiir
Musikwissenschaft XVI (1934), 3ff.
29 Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, 2 vols. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1951). All citations and quotations are from the four-volume edition (New York:
Vintage Books, 1957), II, 97-106.
30Jbid., 100.
31Jbid., 103.
 271

321bid., 105.
33see Frederick Antal, "The Social Background of Italian Mannerism," Art
Bulletin XXX (1948), 102-103.
34There are, of course, exceptions, e.g., Smyth, Mannerism and "Maniera," (1962),
39, n. 19, and Frederick Hartt, History oj Italian Renaissance Art (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall [n.d.)), 608.
35 Arnold Hauser, Mannerism; the Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of
Modern Art (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965). See also such works as
Giuliano Briganti, La maniera italiana (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1961), and
Franzsepp Wiirtenberger, Der Manierismus: Der europiiische Stil des 16.
~ahrhunderts (Vienna: A. Schroll, 1962).
6 Pontormo to El Greco: The Age of Mannerism, exhibition [with a catalogue)
held in 1954 at the Indianapolis Institute of Art, and Le Triomplze du Maniensme
europeen, exhibition [with a catalogue) held at the Rijkamuseum in 1955.
37See, for example: Gustav Rene Hocke, Die Welt als Labyrinth: Manier und
Manie in der europiiische Kunst (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1957), and Hocke,
Manierismus in der Literatur (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959), and Riccardo Scrivano,
II Manierismo nella letteratura del Cinquecento (Padua: Liviana, 1959).
38Frederick Hartt, Giulio Romano, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1958); Andrea Emiliani, ed., II Bronzino (Busto Asizio: Bramante, 1960); Sydney J.
Freedberg, Parmigianino (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950);
and even earlier, Giuliano Briganti, II Manierismo e Pellegrino Tibaldi (Rome:
Cosmopolita, 1945).
39 A fairly complete listing of these events-within the field of art history-will
be found in Lu1sa Becherucci's article "Mannerism," in Encyclopedia of World Art
~New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959-1968) IX, cols. 476-478.
OPublished as The Renaissance and Mannerism, Studies in Western Art; Acts of
the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art, Vol. II, ed. by Millard
Meiss (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).
41Frederick Hartt, "Power and the Individual in Mannerist Art," in Ibid., 222-
238.
421bid., 222-223. The reference to "accent on the Stanza della Segnatura" is a
reference to Ernst H. Gombrich's introductory remarks to this session of the
Congress in which he cautioned that this uniquely perfect work had come in the
minds of critics to typify the High Renaissance so that, in Gombrich's words, "We
have become so used to setting the accent somewhere near the Stanza della
Segnatura that we experience any deviation from this particular solution as less
harmonious." Gombrich, "Introduction: The Historiographic Background," in Tire
Renaissance and Mannerism, Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the
History of Art, vol. II (1963), 169.
43John Shearman, "Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal," in Ibid., 200-221.
44shearman, Mannerism, 39-40, 171.
45Friedlaender, Mannerism and Anti-Ma1111erism (1965), 43. For a full
explanation of Friedlaender's interpretation of Michelangelo's relationship to
Mannerism, see especially 12-20.
46Frederick Mortimer Clapp, Jacopo Carucci Pontormo (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1916).
47Hermann Voss, Die Malerei der Spiitrenaissance in Rom und Florenz, 2 vols.
(Berlin: G. Grote, 1920).
272

48James S. Ackerman, The Architecture of Michelangelo, 2 vols. (New York:

Viking, 1961-1964), Text volume, xxii.
49John Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture, 3 vols.
(London: Phaidon, 1963).
50Egon Verheyen, The Palazzo del Te in Mantua (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1977), xv.
51 Michael Levey, High Renaissance (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1975), 45.
52Friedlaender, Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism (1965), 42-43. Friedlaender
made this statement when describing the activities of the first ~eneration of the
new style (i.e., Pontormo, Rosso, et al.) as constituting a 'general shift of
style ... which becomes the point of departure for a European movement ... this
period [is) not a mere transition, not merely a conjunction between Renaissance
and Baroque, but an independent age of style, autonomous and most meaningful."
53See n. 42 supra.
54For illustrations of a Mannerist altarpiece, see Joan Nissman, Florentine
Baroque Art from American Collections (Catalogue of an exhibition held at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1969), fi~I: 2, and for his naturalistic
illustrations, Luciano Berti, 11 Principe dello Studiolo (Horence: Edam, 1967), figs.
110, 111, 114-117, and Plates IX-XII.
55For illustrations, see Charles Avery and Anthony Radcliffe, eds., Giambologna,
1529-1608, Sculptor to the Medici (Catalogue of an exhibition organized by the
Arts Council of Great Britain. Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, 1978).
56Friedlaender, Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism (1965), 3, 20.
57 Ibid., figs. 5-10.
58Levey, High Renaissance, 50.
MANIERA AND MOVEMENT: THE FIGURA SERPENTINATA

David Summers

The term figura serpentinata appears once in Cinquecento art

theory: it was attributed to Michelangelo by G. P. Lomazzo in his
Trattato dell'Arte de la Pittura, published in 1584. Since Lomazzo
was the most compendious spokesman of mannerism and since
he associated the figura serpentinata with Michelangelo, it was
inevitable that the idea should have taken an important place in
the discussion of sixteenth-century art and theory. But its fame
was assured-and its subsequent interpretation pretty much
determined-when it was chanced upon by Hogarth, who made it
the emblem and governing idea for his Analysis of Beauty,
published in 1753. Hogarth considerably elaborated "the precept
which Michelangelo delivered so long ago in an oracle-like
manner" and spun meanings around the few cryptic words which
were far from either Lomazzo's or Michelangelo's intentions. He
illustrated the first two terms of Lomazzo's introductory phrase-
that the painter "should always make a figure pyramidal, Serpent-
like and multiplied by one two and three"-with a diminishing
helix, gotten by the slow, regular movement of a point around a
cone. Visible bodies, Hogarth believed, should be regarded as
surfaces made up of lines, of which the most beautiful was the
serpentine line this, "by its waving and winding at the same time
in different ways, leads the eye in a pleasing manner along the
continuity of its variety ... see where that sort of proportional,
winding line, or line of grace, is represented by a fine wire,
properly twisted round the elegant and varied figure of a cone."
As we shall shortly see, there is no real basis in Lomazzo's text for
this linear but three-dimensional visualization of the figura
serpentinata. Nevertheless, this interpretation has become the usual
one, and consequently the figura serpentinata has come to be used
274

almost exclusively in reference to sculpture. Such a reading has

been fortified by the association of the "continuity of the variety"
of the serpentine line in three dimensions with a second tenet of
Late Renaissance art, that a sculpture should be able to be seen
from an infinite number of points of view. Giovanni Bologna's Rape
of the Sabine Woman, carved at almost the same time Lomazzo's
treatise was published, has become the usual example of what a
serpentine composition is thought to be-Panofsky, for instance,
understood the term in this way when he made the Jigura
serpentinata the formal paradigm for what he called "manneristic
sculpture." 3 Most recently Shearman, who also regards the figura
serpentinata as one of the characteristic forms of the mannerist
style, has followed Lomazzo in crediting the form's invention to
Michelangelo, seeing Michelangelo's Victory of about 1530 as its
first example.4
Hogarth's interpretation of the serpentine figure has at least as
much to do with the eighteenth century as with the sixteenth. Karl
Birch-Hirschfeld, writing on Lomazzo about 1912, offered a
considerably different reading of Lomazzo's text. He recognized
that the figura serpentinata, although the term itself may have been
newly minted, is related to a formula for the movement of figures
which appears with some frequency in Cinquecento theory and
was everywhere evident in practice. 5 Birch-Hirschfeld's
connection of Lomazzo's figura serpentinata with a wider
theoretical tradition-which is certainly correct-requires that the
genesis and significance of the serpentine figure be reconsidered. It
will be seen that the Jigura serpentinata was not invented by
Michelangelo, although it is perfectly reasonable to suppose that
Michelangelo was the source for Lomazzo's record of it and may
have given it its name. The degree to which Lomazzo may have
embroidered his source, or mixed it with others, is difficult to
determine precisely. But we know from Condivi's biography that
 275

Michelangelo addressed himself seriously to the problem of a

theory of movement, and no Cinquecento theory of movement
would have been complete without a treatment of the figura
serpentinata. As I think will be evident from an examination of his
painting and sculpture, such an omission would have been
especially unthinkable in a treatise by Michelangelo.
Twice Lomazzo discusses the figura serpentinata at length in
the course of his book. It is first mentioned in the opening pages.
After defining the nature of painting, and establishing it to his
satisfaction as a liberal art, Lomazzo turns to the problem of
proportion, which is discussed in close connection with decorum.
He begins by fixing the limits of license, clarifying Horace's dictum
that painters and poets have equal license to do as they like, with
the condition that license cannot be based on ignorance but rather
demands learning and experience. The painter must know
proportion. "In addition to this the painter ought to use
proportionate lines with a certain mode and rule, nothing else than
that used and followed by nature herself in making her
compositions matter is presupposed first of all it is a thing
without form, without beauty, without definition into matter the
artist introduces form, which is a beautiful and definite thing." 6
Lomazzo then describes in a most interesting fashion how the
painter, beginning with a blank canvas, "embellishes" it, "forming
and polishing" the things placed upon it,
and in sum imitating with Jines the nature of the thing that he
paints, so in breadth as in length, weight and size. And because
m this place a precept of Michelangelo is most appropriate, I
will not neglect simply to refer to it, leaving the interpretation
and understanding of it to the prudent reader.

It is said that Michelangelo once gave this advice to the painter

Marco da Siena, his disciple, that he ought always to make the
figure pyramidal, serpentinate, and multiplied by one, two or
three. And in this precept it seems to me consists the whole
secret of painting, because the greatest grace and loveliness that
a figure may have is that it seem to move itself painters call this
the furia of the figure. And to represent this movement, no form is
276

more suited than a flame of fire, which, as Aristotle and all the
philosophers say, is the most active of the elements, and the form
IS the most apt of all forms to movement, because it has a cone,
and sharp point, with which it seems to want to rend the air,
and ascend to its sphere. So that when the figure will have this
form it will be most beautiful. One may go about it in two ways
one is that the point of the pyramid be located above, and the
base ... be located in the lower part, as in a flame ... it ought to
grow finer after the fashion of a pyramid, showing one shoulder
and making the other recede, and be foreshortened, so that the
body is twisted, and the one shoulder hidden, while the other is
revealed. The painted figure may also stand like a pyramid that
has the base ... turned upwards, and the point downwards so
that the figure will show breadth in the upper part, either
showing both the shoulders, or extending the arms, or showing
one leg and hiding the other, as the wise painter will judge best.
But because there are two sorts of pyramids, one straight, like
that called the pyramid of Julius Caesar, near St. Peter's in
Rome, and the other the shape of a flame of fire, which
Michelangelo calls serpentinate, the painter must couple the
pyramidal form with the serpentine form, that represents the
tortuosity of a live serpent when it moves, which is the proper
form of a flame of fire that undulates. This is to say that the
figure ought to represent the form of an upright letter S, or the
form inverted ... because then it will have beauty. And not only
in the whole ought one to observe this form but also in each of
the parts. For in the legs one muscle protrudes while the other
that responds to it, and is opposed to it by a diametrical line, is
drawn in, as is seen in the feet and legs in nature?

The close of this passage, where Lomazzo speaks of the

counter-position of parts in movement, leads directly to his
second treatment of the figura serpentinata. 8 This second treatment
is much less confusing: Lomazzo avoids the repetitiveness of the
first account and abandons the explanatory pyramid altogether
the concetto of the flame, with all its philosophical and poetic
suggestiveness, is also abandoned.9 The association of the figura
serpentinata with Michelangelo is as strongly stated in Lomazzo's
second telling as it was in the first but in the second version
Lomazzo is much more intent upon explaining what a serpentine
figure is than upon explaining what it means, and consequently
there is an important difference in emphasis.
In this second discussion, in Book VI, Chapter 4 of his treatise,
Lomazzo sets out to provide a cogent theory of movement. He
 277

begins by listing the eight kinds of movement-upwards,

downwards, right, left, away from, toward, turning and
standing-and continues immediately with a description of
classical contrapposto: "... a man will stand lfermera] with all his
weight on one foot, and that foot (I mean the instep) is always
exactly beneath the hollow of his throat, in the manner of the base
of a column. The ancient Polykleitos (following in the steps of
Nature) was the discoverer of this posture." 10 Thus contrapposto, it
is important to note, is the basis for the discussion that follows, in
which Lomazzo, in words very similar to Leonardo's notes on the
same theme, reduces all movement to the balance of opposing
weights. 11 Statement of this principle leads in turn to a long list of
possible and impossible movements (e.g., the head cannot be
turned past the line of the shoulders, a man cannot touch his navel
with his knee).12 Finally Lomazzo concludes that his
prescriptions do not cover all movements, which
are much varied among themselves, according to the qualities of
bodies for it is proper that in a figure at rest upon one foot, the
members will be nigher on the s1de upon which he rests than
upon the other. Moreover, all the aforesaid movements (moti),
with so many others that may be made, should always be
represented in such a way that the body is serpentinate, to
which Nature is easily disposed. Also it has always been used
by the ancients, and by the best moderns in all the acts that the
figure may do, the twistings (ravvolgimenti) of figures are
always seen done in such a way that if the arm thrusts forward
for the right part (or whatever attitude seems best to you) and
the other part of the body is lost (to sight], the left arm obeys the
right, and so the left leg comes forward, and the other is Iost to
sight. The same must be observed if you wish to make the left
arm thrust forward, and so the right leg, because the right arm
must obey the left, and the other side of the body must be drawn
back. This should be followed in whatever action is done, lying
as well as running, flying, fighting, standing still, kneeling, and
in short in whatever purpose to which a body may be turned. It
will never have gracefulness if it does not have this serpentine
form, as Michelangelo wished to call it.
278

There follow a few sentences on the appropriateness of fat

and thin bodies to movement. Of special interest is the statement
that old and weak bodies "serpentize" (serpenteggiano) less than
young ones.l3
It is simpler to illustrate Lomazzo's general formula than it is
to rephrase it. Of the hundreds of works that could be cited, the
statuette held by Alessandro Vittoria in Veronese's portrait in the
Metropolitan Museum may serve as an unambiguous and perhaps
academic example of the figura serpentinata (Fig. 1).
The formula for graceful movement given by Lomazzo at the
end of his discussion of movement is the most complete definition
of a figural contrapposto or, to use the term's synonym in rhetorical
theory, an antithesis.l4 All symmetrically related parts, arms and
legs-as well as parts of the body on the same side, are in
opposition to one another if this formula is followed. Now the
term contrapposto has a fairly limited meaning in current art-
historical usage: it denotes a construction of the human posture in
which the standing figure shifts its weight, departing from the
static balance of a strictly symmetrical organization of parts of
the body in order to achieve a new, dynamic balance. Following
Lomazzo's reference to Polykleitos, the Doryplwros may be taken
as an example of such a figure.
Contrapposto achieved its modern analytical usage well after
the Renaissance, and at the end of the seventeenth century it still
had a very general meaning, unconnected with figural composition
or classicizing styles. 15 Bothfigure serpentinate and what we now
call classical contrapposto would have been regarded as
contrapposti. Such equivalence suggests a close relationship of the
two forms, and in fact the figura serpentinata of the High and Late
Renaissance develops out of the revived form of this classical
contrapposto, paralleling (but not repeating) a development which
seems also to have taken place in classical sculpture itself. When
 279

the Florentine artists of the early Quattrocento reclaimed classical

contrapposto and made it a cornerstone of their own style, they
turned for the most part to the simple contrapposto exemplified by
the Doryphoros: Donatello's bronze David (Fig. 2) adheres closely
to the simple classical model. At the same time it represents the
solid beginnings of a development that was finally to produce the
ftgura serpentinata. The tendency-always within the format of
counterposition-is steadily toward greater activity in three
dimensions. If we compare Donatello's David to Leonardo's Leda
(Fig. 3) the difference is clear. Donatello maintains the strength of
the frontal plane by the location of David's shoulders along it.
Leonardo set the shoulders of the Leda along a recessive diagonal,
initiating in this way a more complex contrapposto, one which no
longer simply balances weights in a plane but resolves a system of
directions in which no single direction is dominant. Thus, although
it is evident that the two types of figures are related to one
another, the Leda is based upon radically different formal
principles. It will be useful in the discussion that follows to
maintain this difference. The David represents classical
contrapposto, the Leda is an important example of a new
Renaissance contrapposto, the ftgura serpentinata.
Contrapposto, or antithesis, was recommended as a general aid
to compositional invention by Renaissance theorists from Alberti
onwards. Leonardo, for example, wrote that "in narrative
paintings one ought to mingle direct contraries (i retti contrari) so
that they may afford a great contrast to one another, and all the
more when they are in close proximity that is, the ugly next to the
beautiful, the big to the small, the old to the young, the strong to
the weak all should be varied as much as possible and close
together." 16 The varieta Leonardo is describing is not simple
abundance of things, but a positive construction of such
abundance something similar to Alberti's distinction between
280

copiousness, which is desirable but not good in excess, and true

varieta is intended.1 7 When Paolo Pino treated the topic of
invention, he stated that paintings should be ornamented with
"figures, animals, landscapes and perspectives" but he also
added that there should be "old, young, infants, women, nude,
clothed, standing, lying down, sitting, some in violent action, some
in pain, some who rejoice, some who work, others who rest, alive
and dead." 18 These last are all coupled by antithesis and are
contrapposti. Lodovico Dolce agreed with all other Renaissance
theoretical writers in specifying the need for varieta, but he struck
a more censorious note on the particular subject of contrapposti,
which he regarded as an excessive kind of variety: "There are
some who, having painted a youth, make next to him an old man
or a child, and so, next to a girl, an old woman and similarly,
having made a face in profile they make another full face or three-
quarters."19 Later still, Comanini gathers all the strands of the
debate together, adding the words of Tasso to complete his
thoughts on the matter: "As the poet plays with antitheses, or
with contrapposti, so within a single painting the painter
counterposes the figures of men and women, of infants to the old,
the sea to the land, valleys to mountains, and other similar
contrapositions are made, from which arises more than a little
charm in painting."2° At the same time an excess of contrapposti
"diminishes the greatness and majesty of a poem," and "the
painter who always, when he has painted the image of an infant,
will place next to him an old man or next to a man, a woman or
next to a giant, a dwarf or next to a beautiful girl, an ugly old
crone ... will make an indecent and affected thing." 21 The dilemma
posed by the charms of contrapposti on the one hand and their
dangers on the other is to be solved by giudizio and sprezzatura.
The painter, according to Comanini, must be clever in the variation
 281

of his figures and "contrive to display in his works a noble

negligence, rather than a base diligence." 22
When Leonardo discussed varieta in general, he wrote, "The
painter takes pleasure in the abundance and variety of the
elements of narrative paintings, and avoids the repetition of any
part that occurs in it, so that novelty and abundance may attract
and delight the eye of the observer."23 With this in mind we may
now turn to Leonardo's theories of figural movement.
Leonardo's passionate attention to the description of process
and change of all kinds is legendary. And while his observations,
jottings and sketches of things and figures in movement are done
with the unsystematic precision of the true empiricist, what he
wrote on human movement returns again and again to a central
idea, that of equilibrium and disequilibrium. "Movement is created
by the destruction of balance, that is, of equality of weight, for
nothing can move by itself which does not leave its state of
balance and that thing moves most rapidly which is farthest from
its balance."24 Since in any human posture the arrangement of the
parts of the body could be reduced to either a stable or an
unstable balance, Leonardo's analytic formula applied equally to
figures at rest and in motion, and he used similar terms to describe
both cases. "The figure that sustains itself motionless on its feet
will automatically place equal weight on opposite sides about its
center of gravity. I say that if the motionless figure is posed on its
feet, and an arm is thrust in front of the chest, it will thrust as
much natural weight backward as it thrusts the natural and
accidental weight forward. And I say the same of each part that
projects beyond the whole more than is usual."2 5 No matter what
a man does, then, in movement or at rest, while he lives he is
incessantly in motion-a figure at rest is as much a resolution of
weights as a figure in action-and this motion necessarily assumes
the pattern of counterposition. The formula for the investigation
282

and representation of movement thus involves an important

instrument of varieta-contrapposto-and we may begin to
understand the ease with which Leonardo connected the two
ideas.
It seems probable that Leonardo did not distinguish between
his aesthetic criteria and the hypothesis he brought to his thinking
about human movement. In any case, his remarks on movement
often assume the form of compositional prescription. "Figures at
rest ought always to vary their members, that is, if one arm goes
forward the other ought to remain still, or go back and if the figure
stands upon one leg, the shoulder above one leg ought to be lower
than the other, and this is observed by men of good sense, who
always follow nature and balance a man on his feet." This
passage closely parallels the previous one, but now esthetic varieta
as well as nature is invoked: instead of saying that a figure does
balance its limbs, Leonardo says that it must vary them, and we
have passed from the empirical and descriptive to the aesthetic
and the normative.26
Other parts of Leonardo's discussion of movement make more
explicit its connection with what might be called ornate pictorial
diction-with compositional varietil generally and more
particularly with contrapposto as one aspect of this.
Never make heads straight on the shoulders, but tum them to the
right side or to the left, even though they look down, or upward,
or straight ahead, because it is necessary for them to look lively
and awake and not asleep. And do not depict the front or the
rear half of the whole person so that too much straightness is
displayed, one half above or below the other half and if you
should wish to use stiff figures, do so only in portraying old
people. Also do not repeat the movements of the arms and legs in
the same figure nor in the byst<~nders and those near at hand,
unless the needs of the situation that is represented require it.
In these precepts of painting an inquiry is made as to the best
way of persuading of the nature of movement, as the orators
persuade by words, which must never be repeated except in
exclamations but in painting such a thing does not happen,
because exclamations are made in different moments, and
replications of acts are seen in the same time.
 283

... Again, do not repeat the same movements in the parts of the
body of a figure which you represent as alone. That is, if the
figure appears to be running alone, do not paint both hands in
front, but one forward and the other behind, because otherwise
the figure could not be running, and if the right foot is forward,
the right arm should be back and the left one forward, because
unless the figure is so disposed, it cannot run well. If you depict
one who is seated, he should have one leg thrust somewhat
forward and show the other in line with the head, and the arm
above should change in position and go forward ... 27

It is interesting that Leonardo specifically cites the example of

rhetoric in the middle of the passage, and I believe that he invokes
Quintilian's famous description of Myron's Discobolos at the
beginning. In this description Quintilian speaks of departure from
the straight line, exemplified by rigid, frontal and symmetrical
archaic sculpture, as the means by which movement is created in
both rhetoric and sculpture. "The body when held bolt upright has
but little grace, for the face looks straight forward, the arms hang
by the side, the feet are joined and the whole figure is stiff from
top to toe. But that curve, I might almost call it motion, with which
we are so familiar, gives an impression of action and animation (Plexus
ille et, ut sic dixerim, motus dat actum quendam et adfectum) ... A
similar impression of grace and charm is produced by rhetorical
figures ... for they involve a certain departure from the straight line
and have the merit of variation from ordinary usage." Quintilian's
"departure from the straight line" meant departure from ordinary
usage, that is, ornate diction2 8 and as Renaissance writers were
well aware, one of the principal devices of ornate diction was the
antithesis, or contrapposto. So in a letter to Bernardo Tasso on epic
poetry, defending the premise, among others, that ornament in
poetry instructed by means of delight, G. B. Giraldi Cinzio cites
two lines of a poem by his master Celio Calcagnini on the
Discobolos: "Sunt quaedam formosa adeo, deformia si sint: Et tunc
cum multum displicuere placent:" certain things are beautiful
284

precisely because they are deformed and so, being very

unpleasant, they please.29
Quintilian's equation of contortion in sculpture and ornate
diction was well-known to the Renaissance and had a practical
critical importance that gives it a unique place in the history of the
adaptation of ancient norms to modem purposes. Baxandall has
argued that it is related closely to Alberti's centrally important
formulation of varietii. 30 Michelangelo probably meant to refer to
this critical commonplace when he described Albrecht Durer's
figures in the Four Books on Human Proportion as "stiff as stakes"
and further condemned the work as being unconcerned with the
all-important question of movement. 31 It is not possible to
understand Vasari's characterization of the sculpture of Donatello
and Verrocchio as "upright, straight and symmetrical" without
being aware of his reliance upon Quintilian's schema32 and in fact
it provided the foundation for his account of the breakthrough
that took place when, in the person of Leonardo , Italian art rose
from the seconda maniera of the Quattrocento (compared to the
archaic style, after Quintilian) to the terza maniera .33 Vasari meant
to say-and does say specifically-that the Quattrocento
established ordinary usage, the straight line. It was the historical
role of the artist of the terza maniera, not to overthrow this usage,
but to elaborate and perfect it. When Vasari praises the best
classical sculpture, the good influence of which was essential to
the winning of the true modern style, "nella lor dolcezza e neUe
loro asprezzi...con certi atti che non in tutto si storcono, rna si
vanno in certe parti movendo, e si mostrano con una graziosissima
grazia," he opens with a verbal contrapposto not simply to
embellish his prose, but to convey to his readers in fairly precise
terms both the positive qualities that he sees in classical sculpture
and, at the same time, the critical standards by which classical
sculpture itself was judged to be excellent.34
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For Leonardo , then, contrapposto was at once the structure of

movement and a fundamental article of figural and compositional
invention. This coincidence was a decisive one, which, in an
essential respect, sealed the fate of a major current of Cinquecento
art. It was the normative and not the descriptive aspects of the
formulation which were to be elaborated by later artists, long after
the formula had survived and surpassed Leonardo's personal
influence. As the formula passed through many repetitions it
underwent a kind of stylistic change all its own, finally becoming
Paolo Pino's infamous "figura tutta sforciata, misteriosa e
difficile."35 The original figura serpentinata was closer to
Lomazzo's definition, and was most various, rather than simply
complex, within the confines of a fairly strict definition. Its
ancestry began, as Birch-Hirschfeld argued, just as did the theory
of movement to which it was so integrally related, with
Leonardo. 36
As Shearman has said, contrapposto was one of the great
reconquests of classical art by Renaissance artists. 37 Its canonical
status among postures is evident from its high incidence and from
the concentrated care with which it was developed and refined in
repetition or slight modification it became one of the most
frequently used devices in Quattrocento painting and sculpture.
We may appreciate the refinement which the classical contrapposto
formula had undergone by the late Quattrocento, and the degree
to which it was relied upon in the construction of figures, if we
consider such a painting as Perugino's Sistine Chapel Presentation
of the Keys, painted in the early 1480s.
At almost the same time Leonardo da Vinci began a critical
reconsideration of the contrapposto formula that was to occupy
him for many years and was to have important consequences for
the High Renaissance style, whose components were then
beginning to form. Perhaps the clearest results of his reflections are
286

the Leda compositions from the years about the beginning of the
Cinquecento. In its most influential version (Fig. 3), the Leda seems
only a slight modification of the classical formula: Leonardo has
simply brought the arm across the torso; but, as we have seen, the
spatial differences between this and the classical model are
fundamental, and Leonardo's delightful new invention quickly took
a favored place next to the older form in the growing vocabulary of
the new style.
Birch-Hirschfeld argued that the Leda was the final precipitate
of artistic thoughts and solutions that considerably predated
Leonardo's concern with the Leda theme itself: he saw the Virgin
in the Uffizi Adoration of the Magi, of 1481, as the lineal ancestor
of the Leda and as the formative figura serpentinata. It is true that
in terms of basic contrapposto construction the two figures are the
same, even though one is seated and the other is standing; and that
the posture of the Virgin in the Adoration of the Magi was
especially interesting to Leonardo is suggested by his virtual
retracing of the same figure about twenty years later in the
Burlington House cartoon (Fig. 4), done in the years when he was
occupied also with the Leda. In the second appearance of the
seated Virgin, the three-dimensional potential of the new variation
of contrapposto is more fully developed, through the highly wrought
modeling and the much more continuous relationship of seemingly
sculptural forms. As for the composition of the Leda itself, this
seems to have been in its final form by or shortly after 1504, since
it was copied by Raphael, who came to Florence in that year. 39
The basic formula underlying the Madonnas is repeated and
clarified in the Leda studies. The knee is brought forward on one
side in contrast to the motion of the arm that crosses the chest,
and a constant torsion animates the body the flow of form is
utterly controlled and continuous in two and three dimensions.
This invention, which will subsequently be called the Leda figure,
 287

corresponds generally to Lomazzo's definition of the figura

serpentinata, of which it was in fact one of the paradigmatic
forms.
Leonardo perfected the Leda figure over many years, with
great love and diligence, as his contemporaries might have
said, and its gestation in such iconographically different
matrices as Leda and the Swan and the Adoration of the Magi
argues, as we noted, that the Leda figure had a value in itself,
beyond its being turned to use in any particular theme. But if
there may well have been a level on which Leda and the Virgin
coalesced in Leonardo's imagination and demanded similar
forms, this was not the case for artists who took up the figural
theme after him. For them the Leda figure had the canonical
status of its parent, classical contrapposto; it was clearly an ideal
figure for later artists, one whose significance lay in its
gracefulness, its complete aesthetic resolution and self-
containedness. The stylistic force of the invention is evident in
its progression through many repetitions without important
change. It could become the Christ Child in Michelangelo's
Bruges Madonna (Fig. 5), the so-called Parmenides in Raphael's
School of Athens, Galatea in his Farnesina fresco, St. John in
Andrea del Sarto's Madonna of the Harpies, St. Bartholomew in
Fra Bartolommeo's Pala Pitti (here turned through ninety
degrees), Pontormo's Virgin in the San Rufillo Altarpiece,
Dosso Dossi's Circe, Salviati's St. Andrew, and St. Bartholomew in
S. Giovanni Decollato, Apollo-David or the Risen Christ in the
hands of the later Michelangelo, and Apollo or Astronomy or
Venus in the hands of Giovanni Bologna. The Leda figure
became, in short, one of the normative inventions of the terza
maniera, a kind of stylistic signature to some of the most
representative works of Cinquecento painting and sculpture.
The Leda figure was a singularly successful fusion of the the
theoretical, half-empirical contrapposto of human movement and
the practical, aesthetic c011tmppJSto of pictorial composition. But it
288

did not by any means exhaust the possibilities for such

solutions; Leonardo himself suggested other paths to be
explored, and the themes sounded by his contrapposto studies
were immediately developed and taken in new expressive
directions by other artists, Michelangelo chief among them.
An instinctive sense of continuous form animated
Michelangelo's earliest sculpture. He had mastered the
construction of cotmterposed movement by the time he carved
the Battle of the Centaurs, about 1491, as is evident in the only
whole figure in the relief, the striding Lapith just to left of
center. This figure seems to stem directly from the splendid
constructions of movement in the Bargello battle relief by
Michelangelo's teacher Bertoldo, finished shortly before.
And Bertoldo's figures-and consequently, indirectly,
Michelangelo's figure-may in their turn stand in Leonardo's
debt. For while it is difficult to judge the impact of Leonardo's
early works and investigations on Florentine art during
the years of his absence from the city, between 1481 and 1500, a
sketch for a St. Sebastian in Hamburg (Fig. 6), dated 1480-1,
shows clearly that by the time he left Florence, Leonardo
-beginning once again with the classical contrapposto
usual for figures of St. Sebastian-had altered the
formula to the point where it agreed in all essential respects
with the High Renaissance formulation of serpentine
movement, awaiting only the magnification and greater clarity
of the later figures. 40 Michelangelo with his Battle of the
Centaurs began resolutely to explore a similar construction of
movement, whether or not Leonardo's studies were
directly responsible: the satyr behind the Bacchus of
1496-7 is a serpentine figure of about the same degree of
realization as Leonardo's St. Sebastian drawing. In
any case, by the time the two returned to Florence,
m 1500 and 1501, they had both explore problems
of movement based upon comparable premises. The
results they achieved were different in character, as
 289

were the two men, their differences culminating in the two great
competing conceptions of human violence, the battles of Anghiari
and Cascina.
Michelangelo's expressive adaptation of the new contrapposto
form first appears in a drawing of the Virgin and Child with St.
Anne, dated around 1501 (Ashmolean Museum, Fig. 7), which
has frequently been connected with Leonardo's contemporaneous
1
designs for the same theme! In Michelangelo's drawing the figure
of the Virgin, although she shares her serpentine movement with
that in Leonardo's Burlington House cartoon (Fig. 4), is reversed.
Her arm is not brought across her chest. The pronounced forward
thrust of the knee is retained, there is a countering twist of the
shoulders, and the whole is united by a slow two- and three-
dimensional S-curve. But although the essential scheme of
complete counterposition is maintained, Michelangelo's Madonna
finally takes her spatial movement from more abruptly sculptural
means than does Leonardo's, from the high relief of her opposing
shoulder and knee, each underscored by a large contrasting
shadow. There are other indications that Michelangelo watched
Leonardo closely during the opening years of the new century. A
drawing in the Casa Buonarroti, long identified as a Leda, more
recently as a Ganymede, repeats the same process of critical
reworking, displaying a fascination with the new form of
movement, but drawing it away from the languor and comparative
inwardness of Leonardo's inventions and advancing it instead
2
toward the expression of force and energy.'
It has often been remarked that Michelangelo's St. Matthew
(Fig. 5), coming as it does immediately after the David, marks an
important change in his sculpture. The furia, the psychic and
physical movement that has so awed Michelangelo's
contemporaries and modern critics alike, is first pervasively
evident in it, and this has been explained by most writers as
290

owing to the influence of classical sculpture43 one might also point

to, the precedent, near at hand and programmatically related, of
Donatello's Abraham and Isaac on the Campanile of Florence
Cathedral: not only is the same opposition utilized of boldly
thrust forward shoulder and knee, with the head strained back
across the direction of the twist of the body, but this construction
is accompanied by a comparable psychological intensity.44 In
terms of movement, however, the St. Matthew parallels the figure
of the Virgin in Michelangelo's Ashmolean drawing so closely that
the drawing might be said to record the precise transmission of
one of Leonardo's crowning achievements to Michelangelo's
rapidly crystallizing conception of ideal movement at heroic scale.
A confluence of precedents, both ancient and modern, thus
corroborated and substantially contributed to the sudden
florescence of this momentous conception. However different in
expression the works may be, Leonardo's Virgin and Child with St.
Anne, his Leda, and Michelangelo's St. Matthew are all linked by
participation in ideal contrapposto movement. They are all figure
serpentinate.
Michelangelo, then, cast his conception of figural movement
along lines that were probably suggested to him by Leonardo . In
the very reception-one might almost say perception-of
Leonardo's mature essays in contrapposto Michelangelo veered
sharply away from Leonardo's own pictorial solutions, seeking
rapprochement with the art of antiquity and the early
Quattrocento and realizing his own passion for continuous three-
dimensional movement. However strongly personal his
transformation of Leonardo's inventions (and perhaps theories)
may have been, the kernel idea was amplified rather than altered,
but in this way came to occupy a position of central importance
and significance in Michelangelo's painting and sculpture that it
had never had for Leonardo : the form became a kind of armature
 291

for the human figure that was the foundation of Michelangelo's

art. The Ignudi in the Doni Tondo and on the Sistine Ceiling, the
Times of Day in the Medici Chapel-to cite a few almost random
examples-are figure serpentinate. And while Michelangelo used
the Leda figure in his own compositions and repeatedly exploited
the connotation of grazia e maniera of the Jigura serpentinata, he
added energy-furia-to the range of meanings the form might
command and made artificial movement into ideal movement. It is
precisely in this way that Lomazzo presents the figura
serpentinata: it is clearly normative, with a significance of its own
prior to its appearance in any recognizable gesture or action. It
unifies and enhances the parts of the body in any movement
whatever: lying, fighting, standing still or kneeling, Lomazzo
wrote, a truly graceful figure will have this serpentine form.4 5
Lodovico Dolce understood the nature and intention of
Michelangelo's inventions perfectly well when he wrote that
"movement astonishes him who sees it, seeing in stone, or on
canvas, or in wood an inanimate thing that seems to move."
Marvelous though such an illusion may be, Dolce condemns
excess, continuing with a criticism unmistakably aimed at
Michelangelo: "... these movements should not be continuous and
present in all the figures because men do not always move nor so
fiercely that they seem in desperation." 46 The contradiction
between natural varietil and artificial varieta emerges clearly in this
criticism Michelangelo is ranged on the side of the artificial.
Condivi, praising the Last Judgment in much the terms Dolce had
used to condemn it, wrote that in his great fresco Michelangelo
"expresses all that art is able of the human body, omitting no act
or gesture." 47 Dolce refused to admit the absolute fusion of the
artificial and the ideal that Michelangelo's composition implied.
He could not concede him his varieta without granting him the
plane upon which his whole art was consistent and valid.
292

Michelangelo's figures all moved, and all moved in similar ways,

because, in the transcendental landscape in which his vision was
cast, they were all alive. Michelangelo's figures surpass natural
movement, touching the limit of perfection of the ideal form of
movement, achieved by art. Their posture has a kind of
emblematic value it means that they live and move in perfect
grace. Thus the tradition that began with Leonardo's definition, at
once hypothetical and tragic, that uprightness was an equilibrium
of opposing movements, that life was a struggle against gravity, is
negated. For Michelangelo life no longer necessitates movement,
but movement signifies life ideal movement is identical with
eternal essence, the forms of time thus defeating time.
If the figura serpentinata was essential to Michelangelo's art
from about 1505 onwards, and if his artistic practice is-as I
believe it clearly to be-consistent with Lomazzo's presentation of
the idea, then we may entertain Lomazzo's ascription of the idea
to Michelangelo more seriously. It will be remembered that
Michelangelo was supposed to have given the doctrine of the
serpentine figure to his disciple, Marco da Siena. This is Marco
Pino, who came to Rome in the late 1540s. He was, consequently,
in Rome during precisely the years when Michelangelo was most
concerned with writing a treatise on human anatomy and
movement. Marco Pino's own theoretical bent is indicated by his
authorship of a treatise on architecture, which was known to
Lomazzo.48 Thus, even though nothing more than circumstantial
evidence links Lomazzo, Marco Pino and Michelangelo,
Lomazzo's account of the derivation of the figura serpentinata is
not inconsistent with what little evidence there is, and Marco Pino
may well have provided a bridge across the thirty-five years
separating Lomazzo's Trattato from the period of Michelangelo's
concern with art theory in the years around 1550.
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If the doctrine of the figura serpentinata can be fairly securely

linked with Michelangelo, when did he first formulate it? This is a
more difficult question, and probably will never be simply
answered. At several times in his life Michelangelo pursued the
theme of continuous movement through three-dimensional form to
degrees of abstraction suggesting theoretical awareness. The
Laocoon, unearthed in 1506, could have suggested the name, as
well as underwritten the formula, and the Sistine Ceiling Jonah or
Moses and the Brazen Serpent pendentives of 1512 (Fig. 9) seem to
be conscious thematic developments of such movement. Again in
the late 1520s and early 1530s, when he most deeply explored the
spiritualizing visual energies of the figura serpentinata,
Michelangelo also allowed inanimate line, contours and folds of
drapery to run in utterly artificial patterns, recalling the
autonomous linear movement of Quattrocento drawing. It was
during these years that he carved the Victory, (Fig. 10). This most
serpentine sculpture is comparable in linear abstraction to the
contemporary Resurrection drawings (Fig. 11), and the intense purity
and apparently conscious development of the theme once again
suggest a concern with the formula in itself. Whenever the figura
serpentinata got its name, it is most important to realize that in its
essential form it existed as a conscious figural construction at least
from the beginning of the definition of the High Renaissance style.
As we have seen, the Quattrocento set the stage for the
invention of the figura serpentinata with the reconquest of classical
contrapposto. It also provided a notion of grace and beauty of
movement which, both in theory and practice, was the
unmistakable prelude to the kinds of significance embodied by the
High Renaissance forms. About 1435 Leon Battista Alberti,
describing the graceful movement of inanimate things, wrote that
"movements are especially pleasing in hair where part of it spirals
294

as if wishing to knot itself, waves in the air like flames, twines

around itself like a serpent, while part rises here, part there." 4 9
Alberti's sense of linear grace reflected a widespread taste amply
illustrated in Quattrocento painting and sculpture, in a tradition
to which Leonardo's studies for the head of the Leda still belong.
This definition of grace did not stop at inanimate things, and
Alberti's discussion of how one makes a body appear alive
anticipates Lomazzo's formulation of the figura serpentinata: "The
members of the dead ought to be dead even to the fingernails, and
the living ought to be alive in every part. A body is said to be alive
when of its own accord it has certain movements. It is called dead
when the members may no longer carry out the functions of life,
that is, movement and sentiment. Then the painter who wishes to
express life in things will make every part in movement. But of all
the movements that are charming and graceful, those movements
are most graceful and most lively which move upwards toward
the air." 50 With the last sentence the terms used to describe
graceful figural movement are the same as those more vivid terms
used to describe inanimate movement. Lomazzo (or his source)
paraphrased Alberti fairly exactly, fusing the two passages we
have just cited, developing certain parts and elaborating-
probably Platonically-the image of a flame of fire. 51
Alberti is most explicit in equating life and movement. A living
figure is one that has the potential for movement, much as a soul
was first of all a principle of movement, revealed by movement
itself but prior to it.52 The implications of Alberti's remarks are
that a figure made by art can be said to be alive if it appears to
move or has the form of movement-more was involved than the
photographic recording of a moment's action. But Alberti spoke of
movement in linear, two-dimensional terms, and the verb
serpenteggiare seems to have first been applied to the activity of
contours. Leonardo, writing "of pictures in outline," advised that
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"the contours of any object should be considered with the most

careful attention, observing how they twist like a serpent (il modo
de lor serpeggiare)." He also transferred this language into three
dimensions, connecting it specifically with contrapposto movement:
"Of the twisting (serpeggiare) and balance (bilico) of figures and
other animals. Whatever figure you make, remember to avoid
woodenness, [remember that they should] be counterposed or
balanced (cioe ch'elle vadino contrapesando ossia bilanciando) in such
way that they do not seem like sticks."53 Lomazzo was familiar
with both the two- and three-dimensional connotations of
serpentine movement, but for the most part he is concerned with
something discussable only in three dimensions, the continuous
torsion of a body. Nevertheless, the Jigura serpentinata maintained
the association with line, consequently with disegno, that
prescriptions for graceful movement first had in Alberti. Perhaps
this was what Giulio Camillo Delminio meant when he wrote that
it was in the depiction of movement that a painter would be most
able to display "lo stile suo."5 4 At any rate, the serpentine
movement of line is perfectly consistent with the Jigura
serpentinata, which carried the connotations of maniera, grazia and
disegno of its graphic counterpart into three dimensions.
Michelangelo's Resurrection drawings (Fig. 11) are, once again,
perhaps the profoundest essays in the spiritualizing energy of
grazia e maniera, defined in the movement of both two-dimensional
serpentine line and three-dimensional serpentine form. In them the
distinction between the artificial and the spiritual dissolves, and
maniera and grace become one.
The Jigura serpentinata was a mode of embellished pictorial
diction, a literal contrapposto, which developed in intimate
connection with a widespread theory of movement first expressed
by Leonardo. Michelangelo seized the general, normative
connotations of the device and made it the basis for a conception
296

of ideal movement. The currency of the formula that arose from

the activity of these two originators coincides more or less
precisely with the currency of the centralltalian Late Renaissance
style. But if the figura serpentinata and its more specific variant,
the Leda figure, arose from a conception of movement as
contrapposto, the idea of contrapposto was a more general one,
which, I would like to suggest, was essential to the Late
Renaissance style, and as the critical disiderata which governed
the development of the style became more and more evident in
painting, was essential to the maniera. The preeminent example of
a contrapposto surviving from Renaissance pictorial and theoretical
usage is chiaroscuro. If chiaroscuro, like the figura serpentinata, is a
contrapposto, then such paintings as Leonardo's St. John the Baptist
(Fig. 9) or the Binda Altoviti in Washington are pure examples of
embellished diction, their counterposed figural compositions
exactly paralleled by their chiaroscuro. 55
Since counterposition of the parts of the body was first of all a
formula for the movement of figures, and since this formula had
an empirical basis, it is sometimes difficult to tell where the
depiction of natural movement leaves off and artificial grace
begins. Usually the simple conspicuousness of the figure-that
kind of conspicuousness which characterized secondary but
compositionally important figures, from the servants in
Brunelleschi's competition relief onwards-is the best guide: it is in
the nature of embellished diction that the embellishment be visible.
All figure serpentinate are either isolated, placed in the foreground,
or compositionally critical. The balanced figures of Horace and
Sappho in Raphael's Parnassus are both figure serpentinate, and
Raphael used similar figures in the foreground of the
Transfiguration. In both cases these figures are as prominent as
their gestures are paradoxical. They should be seen as
compositional embellishments-by definition, then, as displays of
 297

skill-but also as embodiments of grace understood as ideal

movement. The mad boy in the Transfiguration, himself a figural
contrapposto, is perhaps counterposed on another level of meaning
to these intentionally graceful figures, recalling Leonardo's
antithesis of the beautiful and the ugly, and may afford an
example of the breadth of the contrapposto formula. 56 Or he may
simply be a portrayal of violent motion, recalling Leonardo's
dictum that such motion departs most from balance. On the other
hand Titian, to take a dissimilar example, invoked the conscious
artificiality of the ftgura serpentinata only occasionally-as a rule
his figures, although they move with grace and measure, are not
conspicuously serpentine. The figures in his destroyed Martyrdom
of St. Peter Marh;r or in the various versions of Venus and Adonis
are, I would argue, consciously serpentine. It may be that Titian-
and other artists as well-did not use such a construction of
movement by chance, but rather drew upon its clear connotations
of artificiality as themes-or patrons-demanded.
Lomazzo wrote that the figura serpentinata was used by the
ancients, and if we accept his definition there were indeed many
classical precedents for it. The Apollo Belvedere, to mention one of
the sculptures most important for the Cinquecento style, is mildly
serpentinate. The Menelaus and Patroclus, which Michelangelo knew
in the truncated but influential form of the Pasquino, is
serpentine. 57 Finally, and most important of all, the great image of
the Laocoon, which appeared at such a critical moment in the
formation of the terza maniera, must have added all the weight of
Pliny's authority to the nascent doctrine. Thus classical sculpture
was important for the invention of the serpentine figure, but we
should stress that its definition was finally made up of many
ingredients and that, to repeat an earlier remark, we are dealing as
much with the standards by which classical sculpture was praised
as with the results of its influence.
298

As might be said of the Late Renaissance style generally, the

figura serpentinata was born in Florence and matured and
flourished in Rome, principally in the art of Raphael and
Michelangelo. By 1525 it had spread from its new center of
concentrated development and elaboration to other parts of Italy,
becoming, as Shearman has written, an essential element of the
maniera. As a true element of a style, it was not the property of
any one artist and since its definition could embrace all kinds of
movement it was a more generous formula than the classical
contrapposto from which it sprang. So it allowed a great range of
expressive uses in the hands of artists as different as Pontormo
and Veronese. Figure serpentinate could embellish a rational world,
as they did Raphael's School of Athens, or generate worlds out of
their own peculiar energy and significance, as they did in
Michelangelo's Last Judgment. They could be superhuman and
violent, as they were in Tintoretto, or mild and neoclassical, as
they were in the sculpture of another Venetian, Alessandro
Vittoria (see again Fig. 1). Raphael's St. Michael (Fig. 13), the
executioners and Christ in Michelangelo's Flagellation (Fig. 14), his
Victory (Fig. 10), both Louvre Slaves, the Christ Child and the St.
John the Baptist in Parmagianino's Vision of St. Jerome, Gabriel and
the Virgin in Pontormo's Annunciation, Jean Goujon's nymphs from
the Fontaine des Innocents, the angels in Beccafumi's St. Michael,
Sansovino's Bacchus, Bronzino's Borghese St. John the Baptist,
many figures by Francesco Salviati, all the figures on Ammanati's
Fountain of Neptune, Giovanni Bologna's Mercury are figure
serpentinate. But since the formula went wherever the maniera went,
any selection of examples will necessarily be arbitrary. The figura
serpentinata remained the object of the intense concern of
Parmigianino, Beccafumi, Rosso, Perino del Vaga, Pontormo and
Michelangelo. Michelangelo, to whom Lomazzo attributed its
invention, never wavered in his devotion to the grace,
 299

indistinguishably artificial and ideal, for which the serpentine

figure stood. At the same time, its very universality made it seem
the hallmark of the terza maniera, which it in fact was. As decades
passed the figura serpentinata went more and more the way of
stylistic forms, growing increasingly elaborate, having less to do
with the improvement o.f nature by art than with art itself. By
mid-century the earlier examples of the formula had become
paradigmatic, the formula itself perfunctory or academic and, in
the hands of painters like Giorgio Vasari or Pellegrino Tibaldi, or
sculptors like Vincenzo de'Rossi, notorious.58
Like classical contrapposto, the ftgura serpentinata passed into
the general neoclassical tradition and the significance it had had
for Michelangelo and the artists of the Cinquecento was mostly
forgotten. Bernini, following the last great and full flowering of the
form in the sculpture of Giovanni Bologna, used the formula
repeatedly in his early works. Some of these sculptures are
referable to Michelangelo's sculpture and some to the classical
sculpture that nourished the original Cinquecento conception, but
its use in the Aeneas and Anchises, the David, the Neptune and
Triton, the Rape of Proserpina and the Daphne and Apollo suggests a
practical awareness of the formula. In Bernini's hands-as in the
hands of Seicento artists generally-the formula became to an
even greater extent a device for the controlled investigation and
convincing construction of movement. Bernini soon abandoned the
figura serpentinata in favor of more pictorial means. Late in his life,
however, in the Angel with the Superscription for the Ponte
Sant'Angelo, the figura serpentinata appears once again, much as it
did in Michelangelo's Resurrection drawings, and the forms of
nature and antiquity are once again shot through with the
animating and perfecting forms of complete contrapposto,
artificiality and grace, and with the highest significance of the
figura serpentinata.
300

1w. Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, London, 1753. v-vi, 38.

2[bid., 38-39.
3E. Panofsky, "The Neoplatonic Movement and Michelangelo," in Studies in
Iconology, New York, 1962, 174-178.
4J. Shearman, Mannerism, Baltimore, 1967, 81-91. The debt of this paper to
Shearman's reorientation of the question of Mannerism will become increasingly
apparent to the reader and should be acknowledge at the outset.
5K. Birch-Hirschfeld, Die Lehre von der Malerei in Cinquecento, Rome, 1912, 36-
43.
6G. P. Lomazzo, Trattato dell'Arte de Ia Pittura, Milan, 1584, 22.
7/bid., 22-24.
8Birch-Hirschfeld (Lelzre, 36) gives a list of Cinquecento authors by whom either
the movement of muscles or of parts of the body are described in terms of
contraposition. In addition to several such passages in Leonardo (see notes 24-
26 below) he cites R. Borghini, II Riposo, Florence, 1584, 152, Lomazzo, and G.B.
Armenini, De'Veri precetti della pittura (Ravenna, 1587), Pisa, 1823, 87-88. To
this list the important addition should be made of Pomponius Gauricus, De
Sculptura (Florence, 1504), ed. and trans. A. Chaste! and R. Klein, Paris, 1969,
194-195; and the less significant G. C. Delminio, Della Imitazione (Venice, 1544),
in Trattati di Poetica e Retorica de/'500, ed. B. Weinburg, Bari, 1970, 180-181.
This much abbreviated theory of movement may reflect contact with Leonardo's
manuscripts at Fontainebleau. Weinberg dates the composition of the Della
Imitazione about 1530.
9The association of the pyramid with a flame probably derives directly or
indirectly from Plato's Tzmaeus, 55-56. The pyramid is described as the most
mobile form, associated with the most mobile element, fire. "Thus in accordance
with the right account and the probable, that solid which has taken the form of a
pyramid shall be the element and seed of fire:" Plato, Timaeus, London-New York,
1961, 136-137. Many writers have noted the suitability of the pyramid formula
to the demand that a figural composition be circumscribable within a simple solid
geometrical form. However, this may be, Plato's association of the form with
movement is consistent with Lomazzo's own immediate concern. The third part of
the formula, that fig_ures should be multiplied by one, two, and three, is more
difficult. Lomazzo (Trattato, 23-24), clearly understood this to mean the basis for
a system of proportions, and he was followed by Birch-Hirschfeld (Lehre, 36),
who saw it as a simple harmonic system in which parts stood in ratios of 1:1,2:1,
3:1, 3:2, Shearman (Mannerism, 86) understands the phrase to mean that
serpentine compositions should be made up of one, two or three figures. Such a
reading is hard to discount despite Lomazzo's more contemporary interpretation,
since serpentine figures, as we shall see, lend themselves to interlaced
multiplication. Michelangelo's Victory and Giovanni Bologna's Samson and the
Philistine are two examples of many such compositions.
lOLomazzo, Trattato, 293.
11 Lomazzo's remarks on movement are often referred to Leonardo; see for
example Birch-Hirschfeld, Lelzre, 37-38; E. Battisti, "La critica di Michelangelo
dopo il Vasari," II Rinascime1zto, VII, 1956, 155-156. Lomazzo knew Leonardo's
manuscripts and may have even patched them into his chapter on movement. The
argument presented here (see also note 8 above) seems sufficient to show that
 301

Leonardo's basic theory of movement as contraposition was fairly well diffused

by the late Cinquecento, and it is not necessary to suppose that Lomazzo must
have had it from the original source. The fact that Lomazzo did know Leonardo's
manuscripts makes it all the more significant that he repeatedly and explicitly
attributes the figura serpentinata to Michelangelo. See also note 48 below. The
dependence of Leonardo's Trattato della Pittura as we know it in the Codex
Urbinas upon Alberti's De Pictura is noted by L. Heydenreich in his introduction
to Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting, ed. A. P. McMahon, Princeton, 1956, I,
xxv-xxvi; and Alberti's formulation of bodily movement (Della Pittura, ed. L.
Malle, Florence, 1950, 96: "veggiamo che ch1 sui braccio disteso sostiene uno
peso, fermando il pie quasi come ago di bilancia, tutta l'altra parte del corpo si
contra ponga a contra pesare il peso") may well have provided the kernel of
Leonardo's hypothesis. The dependence of certain parts of Lomazzo's chapter on
movement upon Alberti, as noted by E. Holt, A Documentary History of Art,
Garden City, 1958, II, 80, although literal, may not be immediate.
12Lomazzo, Trattato, 293-296. Such definitions formed a major part of treatments
of movement after Alberti (see Della Pittura, 95-97). Leonardo's connection of
movement with infinity, which found illustration in the Codex Huygens (E.
Panofsky, The Codex Huygens and Leonardo da Vinci's Art Theory, London, 1940,
122-128) is an important and original contribution to the Renaissance art-
theoretical discussion of movement, but it is by no means the central part of his
theory of movement. Leonardo understood perfectly well the limitations of
continuity. See his Treatise, 15: " ... These two sciences [geometry and arithmetic)
do not encompass anything but the investigation of continuous and discontinuous
quantity. They are not concerned with quality, the beauty of nature's creations
and the harmony of the world." Leonardo certainly believed that motion was
continuous (Treatise, 360-363) and that any movement could be regarded
quantitatively as having infinite aspects. It was when movement left this
quantitative realm and became qualitative--i.e., when it was considered in light of
its defining and differentiating characteristics (see for example Aristotle,
Metaphysics, 1020b: "'Quality' means the differentia of primary being: a man is
an animal of a certain quality (two footed) ... and a circle is a figure of a certain
quality (without angles ... ")-that it entered the realm of decorum, "of the beauty
of nature's creations and the harmony of the world." The late mannerist
conception of "qualitative proportion" is based upon precisely this distinction.
See Vincenzo Danti, Trattato aelle pcrjette proporzioni (Florence, 1567) in Trattati
d'Arte del Cinquecento, ed. P. Barocchi, Bari, 1960, I, 234: "Ia proporzione
propriamente ... none altro che un modo di comporre Je cose in guisa che I' una con
I'altra convenga, e parimente il tutto di loro insieme con quelle, m alcuna misurata
quantita, o vero qualita, od alcun predicamento, secondo il fine ache Ia cosa si
compone." A thing was proportionate when part and whole were in
correspondence to their definitions as well as in their numerical relations. Such
"higher" proportion embraced quantitative proportion. It was on the level of
decorum that Leonardo could insist that motion rt>flt>ct the states of men's minds
(Treatise, 405-413). Continuity, counterposition and expression were thus
separate and complementary aspects of Leonardo's reflections on the
r~resentation of movement.
1 Lomazzo, Trattato, 295-296. E. Holt, A Documentary History of Art, II, 81,
offers a different translation of the sentence beginning "The same must be
observed," which slightly, but significantly, alters its sense.
302

14shearman, Mannerism, 83-86, has related figure serpentinate to rhetorical

contrapposti and more generally to ornate diction without, however, arguing that
the connection is as explicit as Jt is considered to be here. Quintilian (who defines
antithesis in Institutio oratoria, IX, iii, 8r) treats it under the category of figures (IX,
i, 2-3) which, like tropes, "effect alterations in language (a view which has also
led to their being styled motions [motus dicuntur))." Figures are substitutions of
words which add "force and grace to the matter;" they involve "a departure from
the simple and straiE?,htforward method of expression coupled with a certain
rhetorical excellence.' In the sense in which a figure is a scheme "it means a
rational change in meaning or language from the ordinary and simple form, that is
to say, a change analogous to that mvolved by sitting, lying down on something or
lookmg back. Consequently when a student tends to continuous or ... excessive
use of the same cases, tenses, rhythms or even feet, we are in the habit of
instructing him to vary his figures with a view to the avoidance of monotony."
The general meaning of contrapposto as the coupling of opposites is sufficient for
the purpose of this argument and seems to correspond to the usage of Renaissance
art theorists. For the more refined terminology of related terms in rhetoric and
reference to the authors who defined them, see L.A. Sonnino, A Handbook to
Sixteenth-century Rhetoric, London, 1968, s. vv. contentio, contrapositum,
comparatio and contrarium. Augustine (De Civitate Dei, X, xviii), who called such
figures "the most decent of all elocution," refers to them as an tit/zeta, opposites and
contraposites.
15F. Baldinucci, for example, in his Vocabulariv del Disegnv (Opere, 1809, II, 144)
refers his reader from "contrapposto" to "contrapporre," which he defines simply
as "porre contra, opporre."
16Leonardo, Treatise, 271. See also L. B. Alberti, Deiia Pittura, ed. L. Malle,
Florence, 1950, 101. "Sara ivi gratia quando !'uno colore apresso molto sara dal
altro differente, che se ivi dipignerai Diana guidi il coro, sia ad questa nimpha
panni verdi, ad quella bianchi, ad l'altra rossati, al'altra crocei, et cosi ad
ciascuna diversi colori tale che sempre i chiari sieno presso ad altri obscuri. Sara
questa comparatione ivi Ia bellezza de co Iori pili chiara et pili leggiadra ... " And
B. Castiglione, II Libra del Cortegiano, Florence, 1947, 141f. "I boni pittori. .. con
l'ombra fanno apparere e mostrano i lumi de'rilevi; e cosi col lume profondano
l'ombre dei piani, e compagnano i colori diversi insieme di modo, che per quella
diversita !'uno e l'altro meglio si dimostra, e'l posar delle figure contrario !'una
all'altra le aiuta a far quell' officio che e intenzion del pit tore ... " See also note 56
below.
17See M. Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators. Humanist Observers of Painting in
Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, London, 1971, 1j6-137. The
distinction is between profusion and diversity. The terms and their connotations
are from rhetoric.
18p_ Pino, Dialogo di Pittura (Venice, 1548), in Trattati d'Arte, I, 115.
19L. Dolce, Dialogo deila Pittura (Venice, 1557), in Trattati d'Arte, I, 179. All
writers were in agreement that counterposition could become a vice, and it was
subject to the final critical authority of decorum. Leonardo (Treatise, 288), after
advising the direct contrast of opposites as a compositional principle, also
specifies (Treatise, 271; the passages are J·uxtaposed by C. Pedretti, Leonardo da
Vinci On Painting. A Lost Book [Libra A , London, 1965, 80) that the painter
should "not mix the limbs of the young with those of the old ... males ... with
 303

females ... " Consistently with this B. Daniello, Del/a Poetica (1536}, in Trattati di
Poetica, I, 250, uses contrapposto to illustrate Horatian grotteschi. "Sia dunque,
figliuoli, quella materia che di trattar intendete ... quella istessa sempre dal
cominciamento insino al fine, a non or grave, or vaga, or chiara et alta, or umile et
oscura, accio che noi non fingessimo poi un poema somigliante a quella
monstruosa e disparate figura che nel principia de11'Arte sua poetica mirabilmente
ne dipigne Orazio." Horace's words served both to define and to restrain artistic
license. On the significance of the grottesco in Renaissance art theory and
criticism, see my "Michelangelo on Architecture," in the June, 1972 Art Bul/etin.
Leonardo himself is perhaps the best known explorer of the anti-Horatian terrain
of such invention, and wrote (Treatise, 277) that "le bellezze con le bruttezze
paiono piu r.otenti l'una per l'altra." This aspect of his art is investigated by E.H.
Gombrich, Leonardo's Grotesque Heads," Leonardo Saggi e Ricerclze, Rome, 1954,
197-219.
20c. Comanini, II Figino overo del Fine della Pittura (Mantua, 1591}, in Trattati
d'Arte, III, 362.
21 Ibid., 363-364.
22Ibid., 364. It might be noted that this last phrase is itself a contrapposto.
23Leonardo, Treatise, 268.
24Ibid., 346; see also 337.
25Ibid., 330.
26 Ibid., 334. This translation differs somewhat from McMahon's. The
connection of varietil and inequality is given unambiguous statement by
Michelangelo's late disciple Vincenzo Danti in his Trattato del/e perfette
proporziom (Trattati d'Arte, I, 234). Danti wrote that "comisurazione," which he
considers to be the essence of proportion, "may be made of things equal and
unequal, although the proportion of unequal things will be more artful and will
occasion greater beauty than will the proportion of equal things. This is so
because they bear in themselves difference or varietil , more entirely than equal
things are ever able to do. This varietil is one of the principal reasons why some
compositions are of greater and rarer beauty."
27Leonardo, Treatise, 385-386.
2Bsee note 14 above. Quintilian's description of the Discubolos (lnstitutio, II, xiii,
9-11) is clearly an illustration of the same points. Quintilian forbids repetition,
but considers it necessary for purposes of amplification and emphasis (IX, ii, 3-5).
29c.B. Giraldi Cinzio, Lettere a Bernardo Tasso sui/a Poesia epica (1557), in
Trattati di Poetica, II, 458-459; his reference is to G.B. Pigna, "In statuam
discoboli," Carminum Libri Quattuor, Venice, 1553, 199-200. Giraldi Cinzio's
treatment of contrapposti is more complex than any of the others considered,
incorporating the idea that men take pleasure in the ugly when it is beautifully
imitated, and so adding paradox to cuntrappustu. This fusion had the grand
precedent of St. Augustine, who in the City of God (X, xviii) make antithesis
(contrapositum) the prime metaphor in his theodicy, arguing that just as the poet
embellished the order of his poem with antitheses, so God willed the existence of
uBliness in order that the whole might be more beautiful.
3 M. Baxandall, "Bartholomeus Facius on Painting," Joumal of tlze Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, XXVII, 1964, 95; and, by the same author, Giotto and tlze
Orators, 18-19.
304

31 A Condivi, La Vita di Michelangelo raccolta dal suo discepolo, ed. P. d'Ancona,

Milan, 1928, 176.
32G. Vasari, Le Vite de'piu eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori, ed. G.
Milanesi, Florence, 1906, IV, 8. "... e Ia misura fu universale si nella architettura
come nella scultura, fare i corpi delle figure retti, dritti, e con Je membra
organizzati parimente ... "
33See the preceding note.
34vasari, Vite, IV, 10.
35p. Pino, Dialogo, 115.
36Birch-Hirschfeld, Lehre, 37.
37shearman, Mannerism, 83.
38Birch-Hirschfeld, Lehre, 37. A.E. Popham (The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci,
New York, 1945, 14-15) notes the earliest indication of Leonardo's later
contrapposto in the studies for the Madonna with the Cat. The Christ child, worked
out separately in several of the surviving sketches, explores exactly the same
formula used in the later figures.
39G. J. Hoogewerff ("Leonardo e Raffaello," Commentari, 3, 1952, 173-183)
suggests that Raphael's drawing is later than his generally been thought, relating
it to Leonardo's last thoughts on the Leda theme during and after his period in
Rome from 1513 to 1516. It seems certain, however, that the Leda was a recurrent
concern for Leonardo, and there is no real difficulty in dating the invention
earlier. A.E. Popham and J. Wilde, The Italian Drawings at Windsor Castle. The
Italian Drawings of the XV and XVI Centuries, London, 1949, no. 789, relate
Raphael's drawing (which they place "certainly" in his Florentine period) to a
drawing by Leonardo, noting that Leonardo probably did not do a painting of the
theme in his years in Florence coinciding with Raphael's.
40 A. E. Popham, Drawings of Leonardo, 213 B.
41K. T. Parker, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum,
London, 1956, 291 recto. the drawing is generally connected with Leonardo's
cartoon on display in the SS. Annunziata when Michelangelo returned to
Florence in 1501. Although the drawing cannot, of course, be directly compared to
the lost cartoon, it seems not too great an assumption that the Burlington House
cartoon is a variant of the same composition.
42p. Barocchi, "Michelangelo e Ia sua scuola," in I Disegni di Casa Buonarroti e
dW,li Uffizi, Florence, 1962, no. 3 recto.
4 A. Grunwald, "Uber einige Werke Michelangelos in ihrem Verhaltnisse zur
Antike," Jahrbuch der Kunstfzistorisc/zen Sammlwzgen in Wien, XXVII, 1907-1909,
130-131, convincingly demonstrates the relationship of the St. Matthew to the
Pasquino. See also j. Wilde, "Eine Studie Michelangelos nach der Antike,"
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisclzen bzstituts in Florenz, IV, 1932-1934, 41-64.
For a resume of sources and discussions of arguments concerning the date of the St.
Matthew, see J. Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture,
London-New York, 1970, 310-311.
44}. Wilde, "Eine Studie Michelangelos," stresses the importance of early
Quattrocento sources (Donatello Masaccio, Jacopo della Quercia) for
Michelangelo's early formation, seeing the antique as inessential, constituting "nur
eine hochgeschatzte fremde Kunstwelt" that from time to time provided him with
 305

figural motives. Drawin~s in the British Museum that are almost universally
connected with the early htstory of the series of prophets for the Duomo G. Wilde,
Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum.
Michelangelo and his Studio, London, 1953, no. 3) and the Uffizi (P. Barocchi,
Michelangelo e Ia sua scuola, no. 1) are related by Wilde to Donatello's prophets.
It should be noted that both the drawing of a prophet in profile and the small
drawing (Barocchi, I recto b) are figure serpentinate, the latter a pure Leda figure.
45See above, note 13.
46Dolce, Dialogo, 180.
47 Condivi, Vita, 154; Condivi ends his description of the Last Judgment by
~raising the same kind of variety.
BE. Borea, "Grazia e Furia in Marco Pino," Paragone, 151, July, 1962, 47, n. 11,
cites an eighteenth-century reference to an "Architettura di Marco da Siena pittore
et architetto, M.S. in un grande volume 1560," corroborating Lomazzo, Idea del
Tempio della Pittura, Milan, 1590, 17: "Marco da Siena ... scrisse un grandissimo
volume d'Architettura." It is interesting to note that, if the eighteenth-century
reference can be believed, this "grandissimo volume" would have been written
while Michelangelo was alive.
49 Alberti, Della Pittura, 97.
50Jbid., 89-90. A. Warburg, Gesammelte Scl!riften, Berlin, 1932, I, 6-22,
discusses the Quattrocento tradition of serpentine linear movement and its
relationship to antique sculpture. A figure such as the woman seen from behind to
the left in Ghiberti's Isaac panel on the Gates of Paradise is a splendid example of
a ftgura serpentinata, and perhaps a formula for graceful three-dimensional
movement stretches back to the early Quattrocento, to Masaccio's Brancacci
Chapel Eve or to Jacopo della Quercia, who, according to Vasari, first gave
movement and grace to marble: Vasari, Vite, II, 105.
51 See note 9 above.
52Cf. for example Aristotle, De Atzima, 415b. Birch-Hirschfeld, Lehre, 39-40,
recognized that the kind of movement signified by the figura serpentinata was
"immanent" and not "momentary."
53Leonardo, Treatise, 115. See also J. P. Richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo
da Vinci, London, 1883, I, 591. Lomazzo, Trattato, 296, concludes his remarks on
movement with the admonition that "one should avoid straight lines and acute
angles; this rule ought to be observed as much as possible, as given by Buonarroti."
It will be remembered that Lomazzo began hts first discussion of the figura
serpentinata with a definition of painting as the embellishment of a two-
dimensional plane. See also ibid., 384-385.
54See note 8 above.
55See Leonardo, Treatise, 277: "Concerning white with black and black with
white, each seems stronger because of the other, and thus opposites always appear
to intensify one another;" or Treatise, 456: "You must place your dark figure
against a light background, and if your figure is light, place it against a dark
background, and if it is both light and dark, put the dark side against a light
background and the light side against a dark background." Like the notes on the
figural contrapposto, these statements seem to me clearly to hover between the
descriptive and the prescriptive. R. Longhi, '"Compriman Spagnoli della maniera
italiana," Paragone, 43, 1953, 8, notes the composition by contrapposto of the
306

heads in Berruguete's Borghese Sacra Conversazione; an even more alient

application of such structural varieta is evident in Pontormo's Carmignano
Visitation. L. Steinberg, "Picasso: Drawing as if to Possess," Artforum, October,
1971, 44-53, coins the word "serpentinatwn," by which he means to describe
figures the front and back of which are visible simultaneously, using the term as
one of the categories to describe the relationship between object and
viewer/artist in the kinds of images with which he is concerned. Such a figure is
a contrapposto, but not necessarily a figura serpentinata, bl the argument presented
here. Most of the examples he adduces depend-as hope to show in a later
study-from the Discobolos, and make up a special class of figure serpentinate,
too restricted to be equal to Lomazzo's much more inclusive formula. Another
example of conspicuous serpentine movement coupled with chiaroscuro is the copy
after Polidoro da Caravaggw, illustrated by Shearman, Mannerism, fig. 27.
561t might also be to the point to consider in this regard Michelangelo's Victory
and the psychomachic groups of which it is representative. No compositional
scheme is more typical of the numiera.
57See note 44 above. If he did not see the relationship between Leonardo and
Michelangelo quite correctly, Hogarth (Analysis of Beauty, v) at least raised the
question; he also apprehended the distinguishing importance of antique sculpture
for Michelangelo's interpretation of serpentine movement when, introducing the
topic of the serpentine line, Hogarth observed, "It is not indeed a little strange, that
the great Leonardo da Vinci (amongst the many philosophical precepts which he
hath at random laid down in his treatise on painting) should not have given the
least hint of anything tending to a system of this kind; especially, as he was
contemporary with Michel Angelo, who is said to have discovered a certain
principle in the trunk only of an antique statue (well known from this
circumstance by the name of Michel Angelo's Torso, or Back), which principles
gave his works a grandeur equal to the best antiques." On the persistent tradition
connecting Michelangelo's art and the Torso Belvedere see G. Vasari, La Vita di
Michelangelo nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568, ed. P. Barocchi, Milan, 1962, IV,
2101.
58Pellegrino Tibaldi's Adoration of the Shepherds in the Borghese is an especially
doctrinaire application of universal serpentine movement. Nearly all of Vincenzo
de'Rossi's brutal Labors of Hercules in the Salone dei Cinquecento of the Palazzo
Vecchio in Florence are academically routine figure serpentinate, and his Bargello
Dying Adonis shows us the serpentine act of expiration.
Fig. 1 Paolo Veronese, Portrait of Fig. 2 Donatello, David, c. 1
Alessandro Vittoria, 1570-75. Florence, Bargello
NY, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fig. 3 Leonardo da Vinci (Cesare da Sesto?), Fig. 4 Leonardo da Vinci, Virgin an
Leda, 1493-95. Wilton House, with St. Anne, c. 1499. Lond
Collection Pembroke National Gallery
 .._/~:
)~'
1i '1 ~ l
/ .·, \)
( -~ '"-,. )/
. \
. {) ·.' ')
., I
\ ' f )
~-"--(· )
I '·
/
/ /'
{ ' ., \
\ ' \, "'
." \ I .
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. ') I
r \,\ _,
' ~\.' ~ ~
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' .,.. ) ~

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i
)

Fig. 5 Michelangelo, Madonna and Child,

1503-5. Bruges, Cathedral of Notre Fig. 6 Leonardo da Vinci, St. Seb
Dame c. 1500. Hamburg, Kunst
 t'

Fig. 7 Michelangelo, Virgin and Child with

St. Anne, 1524-26. Fig. 8 Michelangelo, St. Matthew, 1
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum Florence, Accademia
Fig. 9 Michelangelo, The Brazen Serpent, Fig. 10 Michelangelo, Victory, 152
1508-12. Rome, Vatican, Ceiling of Florence, Palazzo Vecchio
the Sistine Chapel
Fig. 11 Michelangelo, Study for a Resurrection, Fig. 12 Leonardo da Vinci, St. fohn the B
1533. London, British Museum 1510-13. Paris, Musee du Louvr
 313

Fig. 13 Raphael, St. Michael, 1517. Paris, Musee du Louvre

Fig. 14 Michelangelo, Study for a Flagellation, c. 1530. London,

British Museum
This page intentionally left blank
 MANNERIST ART: SURVIVAL AND COLLECTION

Iris Hofmeister Cheney

In view of the strongly negative critical evaluation of mannerist

art from the mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, it
may seem surprising that so much of it survives. In fact, it was
relatively rare for an important mannerist work like the Pontormo
frescoes in the choir of S. Lorenzo to be deliberately destroyed.
Taste alone does not determine what is preserved and what is
replaced, however. The official and propagandistic nature of so
many works from the middle and later sixteenth century has
protected them, and when we consider the history of collection we
need to think in terms of individual art forms rather than of
mannerism as a monolithic entity.
The mannerist sculptures of Piazza Signoria in Florence are
icons of state, and the contemporary fresco cycles in the Palazzo
Vecchio carry the myth of Florence in its Medicean ducal
reincarnation. Later sixteenth-century decorative cycles at the
Vatican, such as those in the Sala Regia and the Galleria delle
Carte Geografiche, argue serious issues of continuing validity for
the Church: the prerogatives of the papacy in relation to the
power of secular monarchs and the Catholic vision of Christian
history in the face of Protestant redefinition. On a more private
level, the Farnese used the walls of their numerous residences to
develop and update family iconography. That many of these
works are also handsome decorative ensembles enabled them to
function as effective rooms of state after their original meaning
dimmed.
Portable works, which could be collected, survived for a
variety of reasons. So long as they remained within the family,
portraits represented someone's ancestors. The decorative arts
316

often had intrinsic value, and mannerist wit and imaginative use
of precious materials had their own appeal for the connoisseur.
The collection of drawings is a case apart. Based primarily on
taste rather than on material value or on the meaning works carry,
the consistent interest in mannerist drawings over the centuries
seems diametrically opposed to prevailing critical opinion.l
Perhaps the virtuoso stylization of a sketch was more acceptable
in a preparatory drawing than in a finished work. Individual
collectors may have been influenced by a desire for historical
coverage or by favorable prices. Whatever the case, mannerist
drawings have figured in the holdings of every major type of
private and institutional collector.
These collectors belong initially to several major categories-
artists, connoisseurs, aristocrats, the latter often assisted by
artistic advisors. The artist-collector has roots in the Renaissance
workshop practice of keeping drawings for apprentices to copy as
a standard part of their education. Giorgio Vasari (1511-74)
transformed this kind of collection into a beautifully mounted and
much more elaborate historical record which forms a visual
counterpart to his Lives of the Artists.2 Rubens (1577-1640), on
the other hand, could use the drawings of other artists more
actively as part of his own creative process. For example, a
drawing by Francesco Salviati for the heroic warrior with his dead
enemies from the Salotto of Palazzo Farnese in Rome (Angers,
Musee Pince) was reworked by Rubens and clearly influenced his
portrayal of captives and the victims of battle. 3
In the eighteenth century, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) might
criticize Parmigianino's excess of grace in his Discourses but at the
same time he kept mannerist drawings in his collection.4 Sir
Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) had notable mannerist holdings,
substantial blocks of drawings by Parmigianino, Giulio Romano
and other members of the Raphael school which figure
 317

prominently in the exhibitions and sales organized by his dealer,

Samuel Woodburn, beginning in 1835-36.5
Connoisseurs who were not themselves artists included the
Cologne banker Everard Jabach (1607 /10-95), who owned large
numbers of mannerist drawings which passed to the Cabinet du
Roi of Louis XIV of France in 1671 and eventually to the Louvre.6
In the eighteenth century in Milan, Padre Sebastiano Resta (1635-
1714) assembled important drawings which became part of the
collection of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana?
Major royal collections were forming in France and England in
the seventeenth century, though the latter was largely dispersed
and refounded in the eighteenth.s In England, the collection still
largely preserved at Chatsworth was formed by William
Cavendish, second Duke of Devonshire (1665-1729).9 And in
Florence, Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici (1617-95) was assisted
by Filippo Baldinucci (1624-96) in assembling the body of
drawings which would eventually form the nucleus of the Uffizi
Gabinetto di Disegni e Stampe .10
More recently, civic, national, and university collections, often
drawing on some of the private collections already noted, have
continued to preserve and consolidate the heritage of mannerist
drawings, and to a remarkable degree without the negative
perceptions which the history of criticism would lead us to expect.
Of course, before this succession of collectors played its part
in the survival of the mannerist heritage, the artists themselves
had an important role in the preservation or dispersal or
destruction of their own work. We know that Michelangelo
deliberately destroyed substantial quantities of his own
drawings.ll A brief survey of how the work of a few of the major
mannerist draftsmen fared suggests the number of variables
stemming from the artists' own biographies.
Jacopo Pontormo typifies the artist with a stable base
throughout his career.12 He worked almost entirely in Florence,
318

was a prolific draftsman and, according to Vasari, left a

substantial corpus of drawings in his house at his death. Early
sources indicate that a number of Florentines-Lodovico
Capponi, Andrea Pitti, Baccio Valori--owned Pontormo
drawings. A large number of his works were eventually absorbed
into the Medici collections and passed from there in a block to the
Uffizi.
Pontormo's contemporary, Rosso, led a far more peripatetic
life, with periods in Florence, Rome, central Italy, and France. His
Roman sojourn was violently interrupted by the Sack of 1527 in
which, according to Vasari, he was taken prisoner.13 There was
far more opportunity for the loss and dispersion of his drawings
than in the case of Pontormo. Relatively few Rosso drawings
survive, though these come from all phases of his career. A
number of these have come down to us under the names of other
artists, yet his work appears to have been appreciated by a wide
variety of collectors, including perhaps Rubens and certainly
Jabach, Lely, Mariette, Reynolds, and Lawrence.
Bronzino, like Pontormo, worked almost entirely in Florence,
but his patiently crafted drawings were probably not produced in
great number or prized by contemporaries.14 His drawings have
survived largely under the names of other artists, and his oeuvre
has depended on modem reconstruction.
Two Florentine draftsmen stand out in the mid-century,
Francesco Salviati and Giorgio Vasari.lS Friends and fellow
students in Florence in the 1520's, both were productive draftsmen
and shifted residence repeatedly. Vasari, especially after he
undertook the research for his Vite, developed a sense ofhistorical
documentation. Furthermore, the nature of his own work, which
involved directing teams of artists in monumental enterprises,
meant that he had to keep careful control over his drawings.
Large numbers of drawings survive for the mural projects of his
later years in particular (at the Palazzo Vecchio and Duomo in
 319

Florence and the Sala Regia at the Vatican). Jabach stands out as
an early collector of his work, accounting for the large number of
Vasari's drawings in the Louvre.
Salviati was obviously less solicitous of his own historical
record. He was not a successful collaborator, so there was less
tendency than in Vasari's case to organize drawings for the use of
his workshop. Many of Salviati's early drawings have come down
to us under the names of artists he copied or imitated-Andrea
del Sarto, Rosso, Michelangelo. The lack of a large, clear-cut body
of his work in the Uffizi suggests that he was not an artist whose
work was avidly collected by Florentines.16 That he is much
better represented in the Louvre and the British Museum indicates
considerable dispersion of his work. His early collectors included
Rubens, Lely, and Jabach.
If we turn to artists of the Raphael school, a new set of
problems emerges. All of the major figures had scattered from
Rome at or before the Sack of 1527-Giulio Romano to Mantua,
Perino del Vaga to Genoa, Polidoro da Caravaggio to Naples and
then Messina. Only Perino later returned. All of the artists
suffered from interrupted and redirected careers.17
Secondly, especially in the case of Giulio Romano, there is the
problem of confusion between the master's mature works and the
early drawings of the pupil. In Perino's case, especially during his
prolific later career in Rome, there is the further problem of
separating his work from that of associates and pupils of varying
degrees of independence. The large scale collaborative decorative
projects of the mid- and later sixteenth century always pose
problems of attribution.
Of all the mannerists, it is Parmigianino whose fame as a
draftsman appears to have been greatest and most continuous.
Although his career was divided between Emilia and Rome, which
he had to leave abruptly at the time of the Sack, his work was
obviously appreciated in Parma. Vasari mentions that Francesco
320

Baiardo, Parmagianino's patron at S. Maria della Steccata, owned

a number of his drawings which, in 1566, were in the hands of his
grandson. A 1561 inventory of this collection lists 557 drawings
already mounted in albums. Popham has raised the question of
whether Baiardo may possibly have held these as security.l8
Other early collectors of his work included the Este of Modena,
the sculptor Alessandro Vittoria and the Sanvitale family for
whom Parmagianino had worked at Fontanellato. Internationally,
many collectors followed. Thomas Howard, the Earl of Arundel,
owned thirty-four of his drawings. Reynolds and Lawrence were
among his other collectors.
I think we can conclude, then, that the adverse written
criticism of mannerism from the seventeenth century to modem
times only tells one part of the story of the style's public reception.
Dozens of mannerist works continued to function in their original
propagandistic or religious capacities without apparently being
seriously challenged on the basis of style. And mannerist
drawings, once they had served their original purpose, were
clearly prized by collectors of every type for their elegance, wit,
and invention.

1an the collection of drawings, see: J. Meder, Tlze Mastery of Drawing, translated
and revised by Winslow Ames, N.Y., 1978, ch. 17. Also: catalogues of major
collections in the Louvre, British Museum and Royal Collection at Windsor
Castle and of exhibitions of Mannerist drawings. The collection of an individual
artist's drawings is especially well treated in: A.E. Popham, Catalogue of the
Drawings of Parmigianino, New Haven and London, 1971, text, 29-37.
2otto Kurz, "Giorgio Vasari's 'Libro de' Disegni,' "Old Master Drawings, June
and Dec. 1937, 1-15, 32-44. Giorgio Vasari, Dessinateur et col/ectioneur, Paris,
Louvre, 1965. L. Collobi Ragghianti, 11 "Libro dei Disegni" del Vasari, Florence,
1974.
3A.M. Logan and E. Haverkamp-Begeman, "Dessins de Rubens, " Revue de I'art, 42
~1978), 89-99.
Reynolds notes, for example, of the Madonna dal Colla Lun:;:o that it "would not
have lost any of its excellence, if the neck, fingers and indeea the whole figure of
the Virgin, instead of being so very long and incorrect had preserved their due
proportion." (Discourses on Art wzth Selections from tlze Idler, S. 0. Mitchell, ed.,
Indianapolis and New York, 1967, Discourse 10, 149; first published 1797.)
 321

5K.T. Parker, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum,

Vol. II, Italian Schools, Oxford, 1956, xi-xv.
6R. Bacou with F. Viatte, Drawings in the Louvre, The Italian Drawings, London
and New York, 1968, 8-9.
7G. Bora, I Disegni del cod ice Resta, Bologna, 1976.
8A. E. Popham and J. Wilde, The Italian Drawings of the XV and XVI Centuries in
the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle, London, 1949, 11-16.
9J. Byam Shaw, Old Master Drawings from Chatsworth, (n.p.), 1969, 7-12.
10 A. Petrioli Tofani, "The Development of the Uffizi Graphics Collection,"
Sixteenth Century Tuscan Drawings jrom tl1e Uffizi, New York and Oxford, 1988,
xi-xv. The vast quantitr of information amassed by Baldinucci is published in his
Notizie de' professori de disegno da Cimabue in qua, Florence, 1767-74, 21 vols.
11M. Hirst, Michelangelo and His Drawings, New Haven and London, 1988, ch. 3,
"Survival and Destruction," 16-21.
12f. M. Clapp, Les dessins de Pontormo, Paris, 1914. J. Cox-Rearick, The
Drawings of Pontormo, Cambridge, MA., 1964.
13E. A. Carroll, Drawings of Rosso Fiorentino, New York, 1976; Carroll, Rosso
Fiorentino: Drawings, Prznts and Decorative Arts, Washington, D.C., 1987.
14c. H. Smyth, Bronzino as a Draughtsnum, an Introduction, Locust Valley, N.Y.,
1971.
151. H. Cheney, Francesco Salviati (1510-1563), Ann Arbor, Mich., 1963. H.
Bussmann, Vorzeichnungen Francesco Salviati. Inaugural Dissertation,
Universitiit Berlin, 1969. L. Mortari, Francesco Salviati, Rome, 1992. This last
work, while fairly complete in its listing of drawing attributions, is filled with
inaccuracies and makes no attempt to establish an oeuvre or chronology. P.
Barocchi, Vasari pittore, Florence, 1964. C. Monbeig-Goguel, Maftres toscans nes
apres 1500, morts avant 1600; Vasari et son temps, Musee du Louvre, Cabinet des
Dessins, lnventaire general des dessins ita liens, I, Paris, 1972.
16Not very many drawings seem actually to have gone directly to Uffizi
collections from Salviati. There are eight important tapestry drawings: Chariot of
the Sun, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Age of Gold, A~,>e of Iron, and Venus and
Mars and Lovers. And art historians have found other Salviati drawings among
anonymous works or works attributed to Rosso, Perino del Vaga, and Vasari.
17p_ Pouncey and J. A. Cere, Raphael and His Circle. Italian Drawings in tilt'
Department of Prints and Drawings in tlze British Museum, London, 1962. F.
Hartt, Giulio Romano, New Haven, 1958. Giulio Romano, Milan, 1989. B.
Davidson, Perino del Vaga e la sua cerclzia, Florence, 1966. E.P. Armani, Perin del
Vaga, L'anello mancante, Genoa, 1986. A. Marabottini, Polidoro da Caravaggio,
Rome, 1969.
18Popham, 30.
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 INDEX

abstraction 1, 40, 45, 71, 95, 117, 118, antique xiii, xvi, xviii, 5, 6, 13, 29, 39,
121, 146, 178, 238, 293 41, 42, 46, 70, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87,
Academies 205 88, 89, 90, 93, 96, 120, 121, 122,
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 154, 201, 251, 265
1960 229 antique-maniera 83, 84
Ackerman, James 262 antiquity 71, 76, 121, 122, 164, 215,
adherence to antiquity 145 222, 235, 290, 299
aesthetic abstraction 116, 118, 132, antithesis 121, 129, 267, 278, 279, 280,
133, 134 283
aesthetic formalism 118 Apelles 31, 76, 222
aestheticism 132, 133, 134 Apollo 30, 152, 287
Agucchi, Giovan Battista 75, 218, 221 Apollo Belvedere 297
Albani, Francesco 156 archaistic Neo-Attic works 85
Alberti, Leon Battista 293, 294, 295 architecture 15, 27, 39, 45, 49, 97, 126,
Albertinelli, Mariotto 37, 86, 161 149, 153, 160, 222, 255, 262, 292
Alexander the Great 221 Aretino, Pietro 39, 49, 82
Alexander VI 9 Aristotle 214, 215, 276
Allori, Alessandro 91, 240 Armenini 41, 78, 80, 82
Altoviti, Bindo 296 artificiality 41, 74, 78, 94, 113, 230,
Ammanati's Fountain of Neptune 298 233, 297, 299
anarchy in art 132 artistic rebellion 4, 6, 260
Annunziata 166, 254 artistic spirituality 227
Antal, Friedrich 77, 84, 228, 228 Asianism 215
anti-classical style 1, 254, 266, 267 Attic Muse 221
anti-mannerist style 92, 256 Bacchic sarcophagi 83
anticlassical xvi, 4, 6, 49, 71, 84, 95, 96, Baglione, G. 218
131, 132, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, Baldinucci, Filippo 42, 80, 317
151, 153, 154, 157, 158, 161, 164, Baldovinetti, Alesso 30
165, 169, 172, 174, 175, 176, 178, Bandinelli's Martyrdom of Saint
179, 219, 228, 233, 235, 237, 239, Lawrence 88
241 Bargello battle relief 288
338
Barocci, Federico 41
Barolsky, Paul xix
Baroque 1, 35, 44, 92, 94, 150, 151, 158,
160, 180, 227, 247, 253, 256, 258,
262, 263, 264, 268
Baroque and Rococo 263
Bassano 178, 197
Bathing Soldiers 170, 172
Beccafumi 17, 35, 71, 88, 298
Becherucci, Luisa 229
bella maniera 15, 73, 74, 76, 114, 115,
133, 248, 249, 250, 252, 256, 264,
267
Bellange's Three Marys at the Tomb 207
Bellini, Giovanni 30
Bellori, Gian Pietro 41, 42, 70, 73, 75,
85, 218, 223, 231, 250, 251, 252,
253, 265
Bernini's Daphne and Apoiio, 299
Bernini's Neptune and Triton, 299
Bernini's Rape of Proserpina, 299
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 45, 299
Birch-Hirschfeld, Karl 274, 285, 286
Blunt, Anthony xix
Bober, Phyllis 84, 87
Bologna, Giovanni 287, 299
Bolognese artists 30, 73, 218, 250
Borghini, Raffaello 41, 127
Botticelli, Sandro 86, 177
Bousquet, Jacques xviii
Brazen Serpent 155, 202
Bronzino xvi, 10, 17, 49, 72, 78, 83, 85,
88, 89, 113, 115, 155, 178, 234,
236, 237, 250, 252, 268, 298, 318
Bronzino's Martyrdom of St. Lawrence
71
Campbell, Malcolm viii, xvi, xix, xx
Cappella, Salviati of San Marco 153,
157
Capponi, Lodovico 5, 9, 88, 318
Caravaggio 41, 81, 96, 179, 216
Carracci, Annibale xv, 41, 81, 96, 156,
177, 179, 216, 218, 223, 224, 231
Casino of Pius IV 46
Castel Sant' Angelo 10
Castiglione, Baldassare 38, 39, 44, 45,
248
Cellini, Benvenuto 232
Cheney, Iris xx, xxi
Cinquecento maniera 74, 75, 82
Clapp, Frederick 70, 261
Clovio, Giulio 197
Coffin, David 83
collectors 253, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320
color in maniera 91
concept of mannerism 35, 38, 43, 69, 70,
73, 95, 193, 213, 219, 220, 227,
256, 259, 262
Condivi 274, 291
connoisseurs(ship) xv, xx, 316
content xiii, xv, xviii, xix, 6, 7, 114,
118, 123, 128, 129, 205, 222, 233,
253, 259, 261, 265

context 39, 40, 73, 78, 81, 93, 123, 133,
134, 217, 237, 238, 239, 240, 253,
254, 259, 261, 262, 265, 268
contrapposto 86, 87, 170, 277, 278,
279, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287,
288, 289, 290, 293, 295, 296, 297,
298, 299
contrast to Renaissance 174
conventions of maniera 81, 82, 89,90
Correggio, Antonio 16, 44, 70, 76, 88,
167, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178
Cosimo I, Duke of Tuscany xx. 39
Council of Trent 10
crisis in style xvii, 4
criticism of mannerism 252, 320
Cropper, Elizabeth xx
d' Arpino, Giuseppe 223
da Caravaggio, Polidoro 3, 319
da Correggio, Antonio 31
da Cortona, Pietro 41
da Fabriano, Gilio 127
da Montelupo, Raffaello 39
da Pontormo, Jacopo 143
da San Friano, Maso, 40
da Siena, Marco 275, 292
da Urbino , Raffaello 31
da Vinci, Leonardo 2, 5, 12, 16, 30, 34,
40, 44, 75, 80, 81, 144, 160, 231,
249, 279, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285,
286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 294, 295,
296, 297
da Vinci, Leonardo's St fohn the
Baptist, 296
339
da Vinci, Leonardo's, Virgin and Child
with St. Anne, 289
da Volterra, Daniele 11, 158, 168
dal Castagno, Andrea 30
David 152, 155, 279, 287, 289, 299
de' Medici, Lorenw 38, 39
de' Medici, Duke Francis I, 250
de' Rossi, Vincenzo 299
death of Raphael xv, 46, 151, 251
decorative cycles 10, 315
decorum of Properzia de' Rossi xx
define maniera 230
definition of mannerism 36, 261, 266
dei Conti, Giusto 38
del Conte, Jacopino 10, 11, 85, 115
del Ghirlandajo, Domenico, 30
del Piombo, Sebastiana 76, 89, 158
del Polliauolo, Antonio 29
del Sarto's, Marriage of St. Catherine,
160, 172
del Sarto, Andrea 5, 16, 31, 47, 143,
144, 145, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164,
165, 166, 167, 168, 172, 176, 178,
287, 319
del Vaga, Perino, 2, 10, 32, 76, 132, 251,
267, 268, 298, 319
della Francesca, Piero 30
Delminio, Giulio Camillo 295
di Cosimo, Piero, 5
Dionysius of Halicamassus 215
disegno 76, 82, 248, 249, 295
disjunction xviii, 2, 6, 121, 123
distinction 130, 131, 133, 134
340
Dolce 38, 72, 73, 74, 77, 81, 91, 95, 248,
249, 250, 256, 280, 291
Donatello 36, 48, 279, 284
Donatello's Abraham and Isaac 290
Doni tondo 44, 291
Doryphoros 278, 279
Dossi, Dosso 287
drawings xix, xx, 14, 15, 27, 28, 30, 47,
49, 80, 81, 87, 89, 90, 91, 144, 161,
162, 166, 178, 198, 201, 202, 210,
250, 288, 289, 290, 293, 295, 299,
316, 317, 318, 319, 320
Durer's, Bathhouse, 165
Durer, Albrecht 36, 89, 143, 144, 164,
165, 267, 284
Dvol"ak, Max vii, xvii, xviii, xix, xx,
77, 84, 193, 194, 219, 224, 227,
228, 233, 234
early twentieth-century prejudices 50
early mannerism 87, 96, 130, 131, 133,
174, 179, 238
El Greco vii, 71, 92, 95, 149, 163, 169,
176, 179, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198,
202, 208, 211, 227, 257, 268
Expressionism 1, 95, %, 97
figura serpentinata viii, 49, 266, 273,
274, 275, 276, 278, 279, 285, 286,
287, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296,
297, 298, 299
Fiorentino, Rosso 166, 251, 254, 255,
268
first and second mannerism 130
first and second phases xviii
first generation mannerists 17, 131,
132, 237, 254, 267,
first mannerist generation 130, 133,
134, 166
Flemish artists 178
Florence 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 44, 46, 47, 48,
70, 85, 89, 113, 144, 145, 163, 170,
174, 175, 177, 178, 219, 251, 254,
255, 256, 260, 286, 288, 290, 298,
315, 317, 318, 319
Florentine aspect of mannerism 149
Florentine High Renaissance 164, 167,
172, 178
Fontainebleau 3, 85, 234, 256, 258
form and content 1, 2, 6, 128, 129, 239,
261
formation of mannerist style 260
Fra Bartolommeo 5, 31, 37, 91, 144,
145, 159, 161, 166, 167, 217, 287
Francois de Sales, 206
Freedberg; Sydney Joseph viii, xviii,
xix, xx, 4, 6, 11, 194, 228, 236, 237,
238, 239, 242
French mannerists 206, 207
frescoes xviii, 47, 125, 143, 157, 161,
162, 166, 168, 178, 219, 254, 260,
264, 267, 287, 291, 315
Friedlaender, Walter vii, xvi, xvii,
xviii, xix, xx, 4, 69, 228, 234, 254,
255, 256, 257, 261, 263, 264, 266,
267
fundamentals of maniera 72, 95, 96
furia 275, 289, 291

Galleria delle Carte Geografiche 315
Galli, Agnolo 39, 40
Ganymede 289
germ of mannerism 44, 46
Gethsemane 163, 209
Giotto 12, 14, 28, 196, 199, 223, 249
giudizio 280
Giustiniani, Vincenzo 41
Goldschmidt, Adolf 84
Gombrich, Ernst Hans vii, xix, xx, 69,
213, 264
Gothic xix, 86, 96, 130, 149, 152, 153,
163, 164, 166, 168, 201, 207, 254,
258, 267
Goujon, Jean 230, 298
grazia 11, 38, 40, 132, 177, 284, 295
grazia and maniera 291, 295
Great Torso 30
grottoes of Bernardo Buontalenti 266
hallmark of maniera 78
Hartt, Frederick 260
High and Late Renaissance 278
High Maniera 251, 264
High Renaissance artists 86
High Renaissance in Rome and Florence
228
High Renaissance xv, xvi, xvii, xviii,
xix, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 11, 42, 44, 46, 48,
69, 71, 87, 94, 95, 114, 115, 117,
118, 120, 121, 122, 125, 126, 129,
130, 131, 132, 133, 144, 147, 148,
150, 151, 175, 179, 198, 227, 228,
236, 237, 238, 241, 251, 254, 255,
341
261, 262, 264, 265, 267, 268, 285,
288, 293
historical interpretation 233, 236, 241,
258
historiographic pattern 215, 217, 218
historiography xx, 228, 229, 259
Hocke, Gustav xvii
human figure 49, 80, 94, 144, 198, 291
humanities xxi, 224, 247
iconographic symbol124
ideal figure 75, 76, 77, 234, 287
ideal movement 290, 291, 292, 296, 297
ideal of beauty 45, 74
ideal of grazia 133
ideal of the Renaissance 149
idealized and normative 145
II Cortegiano 248
illusionistic motif 167
imitation of effects of sculpture 119
imitation of Michelangelo 155
imitation of nature 12, 146, 220, 251
influence Florentine mannerism 177
influence of classical sculpture 290
influence of modem expressionism 71
King of France, 317
la maniera 37, 38, 70, 71, 72, 73, 223
lack of agreement xix, 95
Laocoon 29
Last Judgment 151, 152, 155, 156, 157,
179, 199, 201, 291
Late Antonine 87
Late Maniera xv
342

Late Renaissance 1, 70, 97, 135, 150, 69, 72, 73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82,
274, 296, 298 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92,
late Gothic xvi, xvii, xix, 83, 149, 151, 93, 94, 95, 96, 113, 114, 115, 116,
164, 168, 170 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123,
latent mannerism 151 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130,
Laurentian Library 153, 154, 262 131, 132, 133, 134, 217, 218, 229,
Laureti, Tomaso 73 230, 231, 233, 235, 236, 237, 238,
Leda 286, 287, 289, 290, 291, 294, 296 239, 240, 242, 247, 248, 249, 250,
Leo X 9, 39, 42, 45 251, 252, 256, 260, 261, 262, 263,
Levey, Michael 262, 268 266, 284, 295, 296, 298
licenzia 75, 90, 95 maniera derogatively 72
Ligozzi, Jacopo 265 maniera greca 248
Lippi, Filippino 5 maniera modema 114
Lomazzo, G.P. 273,274, 275, 276, 277, manierato 42
278, 285, 287, 291, 292, 294, 295, manieroso 41, 49, 73, 115, 231, 250,
297, 298 252
Lotz, Wolfgang xxi manner xv, 6, 14, 16, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31,
Luther, Martin 206, 241 32, 33, 34, 38, 70, 76, 87, 94, 114,
Mahon, Denis 218,221 115, 116, 130, 133, 134, 143, 145,
Malvasia, Carlo 41, 70, 73, 75, 77, 80, 149, 152, 153, 155, 157, 158, 159,
93, 218, 250 161, 165, 166, 168, 177, 178, 207,
Maniera Conventions, 81, 88, 89, 93 214, 216, 217, 222, 223, 224, 227,
Maniera cycles 125 229, 230, 234, 235, 237, 239, 247,
Maniera decoration 126 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 263,
Maniera habit of quotation 123 264, 265, 266, 267, 273, 277, 315,
Maniera image 118, 129 316, 317, 319, 320
Maniera narratives 125 mannera:l mannerism 72
Maniera painting 81, 86, 91, 117, 119, Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism vii
121, 123, 125 Mannerism and the Maniera vii, xviii,
Maniera style 11, 15, 17, 113 xx,6
Maniera viii, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, Mannerism vii, viii, xiii, xv, xvi, xvii,
XX, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, xxii, 1, 2, 4, 6,
37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 50, 35, 36, 42, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50, 69,

70, 71, 72, 84, 94, 95, 96, 97, 130,
134, 145, 150, 152, 153, 158, 160,
174, 176, 204, 211, 213, 214, 215,
218, 219, 220, 225, 227, 229, 230,
232, 233, 236, 237, 238, 247, 249,
250, 252, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258,
259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265,
266, 267, 268, 273, 315
Mannerist architecture 235
Mannerist art xv, xviii, xix, xxi, 3, 6
Mannerist drawings xxi, 316, 317, 320
Manneristic method 158, 171
Mannerist sculptures 274, 315
Mannerist style 1, 4, 6, 7, 133, 134, 146,
150, 178, 179, 230, 252, 253, 255,
258, 259, 264, 265, 266, 267, 274
Manneristic manner 158
Mantegna, Andrea 30
Marsyas 29
mask 46, 113, 124, 130, 209
materialism 204, 210
mature Renaissance 168
Maturino 32, 76
Mazzuoli, Francesco 32
meaning of 125, 129, 133, 200, 202, 231,
237, 240
Medici Chapel153, 179, 202
Medici in Florence 29, 152, 258
Medieval xix, 88, 150, 168, 207
Menelaus and Patroclus 297
message of sarcophagi 82
methods of expression 151
methods of Maniera painting 113
343
Michelangelo and Raphael 232
Michelangelo xvi, xvii, xviii, 2, 5, 11,
12, 16, 17, 40, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 70,
71, 76, 77, 83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 90, 93,
96, 115, 120, 144, 151, 152, 153,
154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 170,
172, 173, 174,' 177, 179, 180, 195,
198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204,
216, 217, 218, 224, 230, 231, 240,
249, 250, 251, 252, 256, 261, 265,
273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 284, 287,
288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 295,
297, 298, 299, 317, 319
Michelangelo's Battle of Cascina 47
Michelangelo's Deluge 240
Michelangelo's Flagellation 298
Michelangelo's lAst Judgment 298
Michelangelo's mannerism 208
Michelangelo's Pieta 170
Michelangelo's Resurrection 295, 299
Michelangelo's St. Matthew 290
Michelangelo's Victory 274
Michelangelo's Bacchus, 152, 288
Michelangelo's Battle of Centaurs, 288
Michelangelo's Conversion of Saul, 49
Michelangelo's Ignudi 44
Michelangelo's Madonna of Bruges, 174
mid-Cinquecento maniera 86
Middle Ages xvii, 201, 205, 207, 211,
225
Mirollo, James xviii, xix
modem concepts of mannerism 69, 94
modem historiography 234
344
modernizing the Antique 86
multiplicity of meaning 122, 125
Myron's Discobolos 283
Naples Trapezophor 83
natural varieta 291
naturalism 87, 200, 219, 257, 266
neglect of ancient art 82
nineteenth century 35, 70, 72, 94, 202,
218
Niobid sarcophagus 83
normative judgments 3
nudes 14, 156, 198, 224, 240
optical and spatial elements 156
Oratory of San Giovanni Decollato 10
Oratory of the Divine Love 10
orders 10, 15
origin of mannerism 36
original sources 229
ornamental 11, 126, 127, 147, 157, 161,
167, 170
Palazzo Bindi-Sergardi 88
Palazzo della Cancelleria 10
Palazzo Medici-Riccardi 86
Palazzo Vecchio 10, 219, 230, 315, 318
Panofsky, Erwin 254, 274
papal patronage 11
paradigm of mannerism 151
Parmigianino 3, 9, 16, 35, 36, 46, 48, 49,
71, 76, 88, 132, 172, 173, 174, 175,
176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 237, 238,
239, 251, 254, 255, 256, 267, 268,
298, 316, 319, 320
Parmigianino's Madonna of the Rose 9
Parmigianino's Madonna of the Long
NeckS
Parmagianino's Vision of St. Jerome 298
Pasquino 297
Passion and maniera 44
patronage xx, 5, 10, 258
periodic distinctions 263, 268
periodization xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xx, 1
Perugino, Pietro 30, 76, 144, 168, 231,
285
Peruzzi, Baldassare 3, 11, 84, 88, 158,
174, 251
Pevsner, Nikolaus xx, xxi, 77
Phaeton sarcophagus 86
Pilon, Germain 206, 207
Pino, Marco 292
Pino, Paolo 280
pitfalls in maniera 93
Planck, Max 213
Pliny The Elder 29, 215, 297
Polykleitos 277, 278
Pontormo xvi, 3, 35, 36, 44, 47, 70, 71,
72, 81, 87, 88, 92, 95, 96, 132, 133,
143, 144, 147, 149, 159, 160, 161,
162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169,
170, 172, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178,
179, 218, 233, 235, 237, 239, 241,
251, 254, 255, 256, 261, 267, 268,
287, 298, 315, 317, 318
Pontormo's Annunciation 298
Pontormo's Certosa frescoes 36, 49
Pontormo's Christ before Pilate 69
Pontormo's Descent from the Cross 5, 9

Pontormo's Madonna and Child with
Saints in San Michele Visdomini
147
Pontormo's Martyrdom of St. Maurice
176
Pontormo's Massacre 47
Pontormo, Jacopo and Fiorentino,
Rosso 176, 177, 266, 267, 268
Pontormo, Rosso, and Parmigianino
xix, 17, 152
Pope-Hennessy, John 262
portraits 45, 87, 129, 177, 209, 315
post-classical 4, 6, 96, 130, 134, 212,
215, 216, 237, 239
post-High Renaissance xix, 262
post-Raphaelesque 132, 218
praised the modernizing of the Antique
83
pratica 72, 74, 76, 91, 223, 248, 249,
265
Pre-Raphaelitism 218
precedents for maniera 89, 126, 129
preoccupation of the Maniera 118
Primaticcio, Francesco 178, 207, 234,
238
primitivism 168
principles of style 83, 253
prints 87, 164, 178
problem of mannerism 73, 257, 259
proto-baroque 45, 85
purpose in coloring 80
qualities of pure mannerism 36
345
quattrocento 37, 38, 43, 75, 76, 83, 85,
86, 144, 148, 151, 158, 168, 235,
279, 284, 285, 290, 293, 294
quoted image xviii, 123
Raphael 2, 5, 16, 39, 41, 45, 46, 47, 48,
49, 70, 72, 76, 84, 87, 88, 90, 115,
120, 132, 144, 145, 158, 173, 174,
179, 216, 217, 218, 223, 224, 231,
249, 250, 251, 252, 260, 264, 265,
286, 296, 298, 316, 319
Raphael's school 43, 287, 298
Raphael's Parnassus 296
rebirth of antiquity in painting 97
Reformation xxi, 10, 204, 205, 257
Regola in architecture 90
regola in painting 90
rejection of mannerism 253
relation to antique relief 93
religious context 133
religious image 128
Renaissance artists 285
Renaissance contrapposto 279
Renaissance elements 160, 255
Renaissance idea 150
Renaissance und Barock 253
Renaissance view of art 201
Renaissance viii, xiii, xv, xix, 1, 9, 10,
38, 43, 80, 94, 122, 143, 146, 147,
148, 149, 150, 153, 157, 162, 163,
164, 166, 167, 169, 171, 178, 180,
201, 203, 205, 207, 208, 210, 215,
228, 233, 235, 236, 239, 247, 249,
346
250, 253, 256, 262, 263, 264, 265,
267, 278, 279, 280, 284, 296, 316
Renaissance writers 283
renascere xix, xx
repoussoir figures 165
revisionism of Mannerist xx
Riegl, A. 70, 71, 81, 82
Roman art 45, 47
Roman maniera 48
Roman sarcophagi 81, 84
Roman school113, 132, 195, 251
Romano, Giulio 3, 32, 76, 87, 158, 174,
251, 262, 267, 268, 316, 319
Rome xvi, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 39, 44, 46, 47,
48, 70, 83, 85, 88, 133, 170, 173,
174, 175, 178, 197, 198, 201, 216,
221, 223, 237, 256, 260, 276, 292,
298, 316, 318, 319
Rosselli, Cosimo 30
Rosso xvi, xix, 3, 35, 36, 42, 46, 48, 49,
71, 72, 76, 89, 132, 158, 167, 168,
169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175,
176, 178, 179, 233, 237, 256, 267,
298, 318, 319
Rosso's Moses and the Daughters of
Jethro 5
Rosso's Volterra Deposition 36
Rubens' Fall of the Angels 156
Rubens 41, 44, 45, 93, 316, 318, 319
S. Giovanni Decollato 287
sack of Rome 3, 173, 178, 257, 260
Sala di Costantino 241
Sala Paolina 10
Sala Regia 315, 319
Salotto of Palazzo Faroese 316
Salviati's Birth of the Virgin 92
Salviati's David Refrains from Killing
Saul 83
Salviati's Pace 36
Salviati's St. Andrew, and St.
Bartholomew 287
Salviati, Francesco xvi, 10, 11, 17, 36,
42, 49, 73, 83, 89, 92, 115, 231,
234, 236, 250, 268, 298, 316, 318,
319
Sansovino, Andrea Bacchus 298
Schiavone, Andrea 230
school of Fontainebleau 206
schools of Haarlem and Utrecht 230
sculpture xv, xx, xxi, 27, 28, 33, 40, 44,
70, 77, 82, 83, 84, 87, 93, 120, 121,
122, 124, 145, 179, 199, 201, 215,
262, 274, 275, 278, 283, 284, 285,
287, 288, 289, 290, 293, 294, 297,
298, 299
second generation of mannerist 256,
264
self-portrait 173, 207
serpentine movement 288,289, 295
set of values for mannerism 37
seventeenth century 70, 72, 74, 77, 81,
116, 150, 156, 158, 210, 216, 217,
227, 231, 248, 250, 262, 263, 278,
317, 320

Shearman, John viii, xvi, xix, xx, 229,
230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 236, 237,
238, 260, 261, 274, 285, 298
Signorelli, Luca 30
Sixtus IV 9
Smyth, Craig H. vii, xvi, xix, xx, 6, 120,
229, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 248
space 7, 47, 49, 81, 83, 85, 87, 92, 126,
144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 153, 154,
155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162,
163, 165, 167, 169, 171, 173, 175,
176, 177, 178, 196, 214, 235, 252,
255, 258
spiritual abstraction 157
spiritual and subjective 168, 255
spiritual crisis xviii, 95, 219
Spranger, Bartholommaeus 268
sprezzatura 38, 43, 44, 280
St. Cecilia 45
St. George 173
St. Ignatius 207
St. Matthew 289, 290
St. Maurice 149
St. Michael 45, 298
St. Sebastian 288
St. Theresa 207, 208
Stanza della Segnatura 220, 260, 264
study of nature 12, 223, 251
style of an historic period 248
stylish style xvii, xviii, xix, xv, xvi,
230, 252
stylistic unity of mannerism 237
stylization 88, 118, 120, 121, 169, 316
347
stylized context of maniera 80, 88
subjective 7, 40, 87, 95, 145, 146, 147,
149, 173, 176, 178, 179, 202, 208,
220, 257
Tasso, Bernardo 39, 257, 280, 283
term Mannerism xiii, xxi, 35, 69, 72, 96,
97, 130, 228, 237, 247, 253, 254,
259, 262, 263, 268
terribili ta 202
terza maniera 284, 287, 297, 299
teste divine 49
themes xviii, 5, 47, 288, 297
theoretical conventions xvi
theory of art xxi, 11, 218
Theotocopuli, Domenico, 197
three-dimensional space 148, 177
Tibaldi, Pellegrino 299
Tintoretto 134, 158, 178, 179, 195, 202,
203, 204, 230, 298
Titian 195, 197, 202, 297
Titian's Martyrdom of St. Peter
Martyr, 297
Toledo 10, 194, 197, 198, 202, 208, 210,
211
Transfiguration 89, 296, 297
Trattato dell'Arte de Ia Pittura 273
trompe-l'oei1119
Tuscan Mannerism 177, 268
twentieth-century critics 87, 219
Uccello 168, 218
Valori, Baccio 318
van Heemskerck, Maerten 230
van Mander, Karl 80
348

Varchi, Benedetto 84 Wolfflin, Heinrich 87, 234, 236, 251,

varieta 279, 280, 281, 282, 284, 291 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 263,
Vasari's Immaculate Conception 71 264
Vasari's Camaldoni cartoon, 47 Zerner, Henri viii, xvii, xviii, xix, xx
Vasari's Camaldoli Deposition, 85 Zeuxis 31, 76, 222
Vasari defines maniera 15 Zuccari, Federigo 43, 73
Vasari's, Giorgio Sala dei Cento
Giorni 10
Vasari, Giorgio vii, xvi, xix, xx, xxi,
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 38, 39, 40,
41, 46, 47, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78,
80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90,
91, 94, 95, 143, 144, 149, 159, 162,
163, 164, 179, 215, 216, 217, 218,
230, 231, 232, 234, 248, 249, 250,
251, 252, 253, 254, 256, 262, 263,
264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 284, 299,
316, 318, 319
Vasari, Giorgio, Le vite de' piu
ecce lien ti pit tori, scultori ed
architetti, 248
Venice 178, 197, 230
Veronese 197, 278, 298
Verrocchio, Andrea 29, 284
Vicentino, Andrea 73
victory 151, 211, 225, 230, 293, 298
Vittoria, Alessandro 278, 298, 320
vocabulary of pose and gesture 92
Voss, Herman 77, 97,261
Weisbach, W. 71, 77, 84, 258
Weise, Georg xix, 37, 38, 74,94
T he aim of this book is to focus on the origin of the
historiography of the terms Mannerism and
M aniera in paintings and drawings of the sixteenth cen-
tury in Italy. The articles herewith presented fall into
two categories. The first group explains the definition of
the terms Mannerism and Maniera, their periodicity,
and their sources as illustrated by Giorgio Vasari,John
Shearman, Craig Hugh Smyth, and Sydney Freedberg.
T he second deals with the polemic associated with the
usage of the terms and historiography and its applica-
tion as voiced by Walter Friedlaender, Max Dvorak,
E rnst Gombrich, Henri Zerner, David Summers,
M alcolm Campbell, and Iris Cheney.

Liana D e Girolami Cheney, Professor of Art History at the

University of Massachusetts Lowell, is the author and editor of
Botticelli's Neoplatonic Images; The Paintings of the Casa Vasari;
Readings in Italian Mannerism; The Symbols ofVanitas in the Arts,
Literature and Music; Pre-Raphaelitism and Medievalism in the Arts;
Self-Portraits by Women Painters; Neoplatonism and the Arts; Essays
on Women Artists: The Most Excellent and Giorgio Vasari: The Painter
ofthe "Lives." Her major articles include studies on Giorgio Vasari
and Mannerist female painters (Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia
Fontana and Barbara Longhi). Her forthcoming books are on
Edward Burne-Jones' Mythological Paintings,Giorgio Vasari's
Classical Art and Mythology and Neoplatonic Aesthetics: Music,
Literature, and the Visual Arts, co-edited with John Hendrix.

ISBN 0-8204-7063-5