Mannerism

• Introduction
• Mannerism, also known as Late Renaissance, is a style in that emerged
in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading
by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy,
when the Baroquestyle largely replaced it.
• The word, "Mannerism" derives from the Italian maniera, meaning
"style" or "manner". Like the English word "style", maniera can either
indicate a specific type of style (a beautiful style, an abrasive style).
• Giorgio Vasari used maniera in three different contexts:
• 1. to discuss an artist's manner or method of working.
• 2. to describe a personal or group style, such as the term maniera greca to
refer to the Byzantine style or simply to the maniera of Michelangelo.
• 3. and to affirm a positive judgment of artistic quality.
• Stylistically, Mannerism encompasses a variety of approaches
influenced by, and reacting to, the harmonious ideals associated with
artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and
early Michelangelo.

Where High Renaissance art emphasizes proportion, balance, and ideal

beauty, Mannerism exaggerates such qualities, often resulting in
compositions that are asymmetrical or unnaturally elegant.

The style is notable for its intellectual sophistication as well as its artificial
(as opposed to naturalistic) qualities This artistic style privileges
compositional tension and instability rather than the balance and clarity of
earlier Renaissance painting.
Mannerism in literature and music is notable for its highly florid style and
intellectual sophistication.
Origin
By the end of the High Renaissance, young artists experienced a crisis it
seemed that everything that could be achieved was already achieved. No
more difficulties, technical or otherwise, remained to be solved.
The young artists needed to find a new goal, and they sought new
approaches At this point Mannerism started to emerge. The new style
developed between 1510 and 1520 either in Florence, or in Rome, or in both
cities simultaneously.
Characteristics
• Elongation of figures: often Mannerist work featured the elongation of the
human figure – occasionally this contributed to the bizarre imagery of some
Mannerist art.
• Distortion of perspective: in paintings, the distortion
of perspective explored the ideals for creating a perfect space. However,
the idea of perfection sometimes alluded to the creation of unique imagery.
One way in which distortion was explored was through the technique
of foreshortening. At times, when extreme distortion was utilized, it
would render the image nearly impossible to decipher.
• Black backgrounds: Mannerist artists often utilized flat black backgrounds to
present a full contrast of contours in order to create dramatic scenes. Black
backgrounds also contributed to a creating sense of fantasy within the subject
matter.
• Use of darkness and light: many Mannerists were interested in capturing the
essence of the night sky through the use of intentional illumination, often
creating a sense of fanatical scenes. Notably, special attention was paid to
torch and moonlight to create dramatic scenes.
• Sculptural forms: Mannerism was greatly influenced by sculpture, which
gained popularity in the sixteenth century. As a result, Mannerist artists often
based their depictions of human bodies in reference to sculptures and prints.
This allowed Mannerist artists to focus on creating dimension.
• Clarity of line: the attention that was paid to clean outlines of figures was
prominent within Mannerism and differed largely from
the Baroque and High HYPERLINK
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issance.The outlines of figures often allowed for more attention to detail.
• Composition and space: Mannerist artists rejected the ideals of
the Renaissance, notably the technique of one-point perspective.
Instead, there was an emphasis on atmospheric effects and distortion
of perspective. The use of space in Mannerist works instead privileged
crowded compositions with various forms and figures or scant compositions
with emphasis on black backgrounds
• Mannerist movement: the interest in the study of human movement often lead
to Mannerist artists rendering a unique type of movement linked
to serpentine positions. These positions often anticipate the movements
of future positions because of their often-unstable motions figures. In
addition, this technique attributes to the artist's experimentation of form.
• Painted frames: in some Mannerist works, painted frames were utilized to
blend in with the background of paintings and at times, contribute to the
overall composition of the artwork. This is at times prevalent when there is
 special attention paid to ornate detailing.
• Atmospheric effects: many Mannerists utilized the technique of sfumato,
known as, "the rendering of soft and hazy contours or surfaces, in their
paintings for rendering the streaming of light.
• Mannerist colour: a unique aspect of Mannerism was in addition to the
experimentation of form, composition, and light, much of the same curiosity
was applied to color. Many artworks toyed with pure and intense hues of
blues, green, pinks, and yellows, which at times detract from the overall
design of artworks, and at other times, compliment it. Additionally, when
rending skin tone, artists would often concentrate on create overly creaming
and light complexions and often utilize undertones of blue.
Mature period
. Maniera art couples exaggerated elegance with exquisite attention to surface
and detail: porcelain-skinned figures recline in an even, tempered light,
acknowledging the viewer with a cool glance, if they make eye contact at all.
The Maniera subject rarely displays much emotion, and for this reason works
exemplifying this trend are often called 'cold' or 'aloof.' This is typical of the
so-called "stylish style" or Maniera in its maturity.

Key Features of Mannerist Art:

- Break with the classic style of idealized beauty.
- Retraction of figures in elongated and serpentine
shape.
- Use of colors that do not faithfully represent nature.
The colors used in much of the mannerist works are
cold, strange and artificial.
- Presence of multiple points of view, a feature widely
used in sculptures.
- Presence of profane and religious themes.
- Valorization of intellectual knowledge in the
elaboration of works of art.
 - Presence of beauty, elegance, grace and ornamental
features.
- Disregard of proportionality and perspective.
- Highlight for subjective effects and presence of
strong emotional expressions.
. Ambiguous space
Refers to compositional arrangement that lacks
"believable space" such as one-point perspective;
fore, middle and background, etc. [ Decent from the
Cross, Madonna with the Long Neck ]
. A symbolic representation or story where the meaning in
not immediately clear. [ Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time ].
Artists

• Artists
• Parmigianino
NEW ⚡ DESIGN
Parmigianino
ITALIAN PAINTER, DRAUGHTSMAN, AND PRINTMAKER

Born: January 11th, 1503

Parma, Italy
Died: August 24th, 1540
Casalmaggiore, Italy

Mannerism
 Summary of Parmigianino

Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola was born in Parma somewhere towards

the beginning of 1503. It was only retrospectively, once he had gained his
substantial reputation during the middle-period of the Italian Renaissance in
fact, did he become known as Parmigianino - "little one of Parma".
With the possible exception of his nemesis Correggio, Parmigianino was the
leading painter of Palma; an eccentric, but technically adept virtuoso who
also worked in Rome and Bologna. He ranks as one of the most compelling
artists, showing a true artistic daring in a readiness to confront the
orthodoxies of the day and a leading exponent of the
exaggerated Mannerist style. Defying the naturalistic approach of the
great masters of the High
Renaissance(namely Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael)
some have viewed the rhythmic sensuality of his figures as an effort to
translate the feeling of spiritual uncertainty that was a by-product of this most
turbulent period of Italian history. His was, however, a short career
(Parmigianino died in his thirties) but in that time he produced a substantial
body of work featuring drawings and paintings of the profane and the sacred,
often tinged with a feel for ethereal and the erotic.

• Seen as a brilliant exponent of the Mannerist style, Parmigianino's works was

notable for the freedom of his brushstrokes, his elegant decorative schemes,
and a subtle rendering of spatial incongruity and elongated human figures. He
was drawn to the idea of the super-natural, rather than the natural, but his art
managed the fine balancing act between expressive splendor and technical
control.

Works
Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Jerome
(Vision of St Jerome)
This is the only altarpiece, for the Caccialupi family chapel Parmigianino was
commissioned to make whilst in Rome. One of Parmigianino's most
accomplished religious works, it shows John the Baptist gesturing towards a
vision of the Madonna as Apocalyptic Woman, cresting from tumbling clouds
on a crescent of light. The Christ Child is oddly mature in years, large in size,
and knowing in aspect. He, like the Baptist, looks directly at the viewer.

Both Christ and the Virgin take a definitive step forward onto a slab of stone,
emphasising their position as bridge between the earthly and the divine. The
composition is framed and balanced beautifully, on the left by the Baptist's
firmly planted foot and leg, up through his slender cross, and then along the
gracefully elongated arm of the Virgin. The right-hand side of the frame is
closed nicely by the parallel lines traversed by the Baptist's pointing-arm and
the elbow of Jerome. Jerome's red robe balances the palette, gently echoed by
the Virgin's loose, translucent slip.

Madonna dal Collo Longo (Madonna with the Long

Neck)
According to Gould, this picture "is Parmigianino's most famous [and] also
his most characteristic and most extreme".

. Madonna is a stunning realization of those two words most often associated

with Parmigianino: grace and elegance. The assemblage of the various limbs
and their angles in relation to one another is as harmonious as it is erotically
charged; and as balanced as it is asymmetrical.
. The twinning of the planted right leg of the angel in the left foreground with
the monumental marble pillar collapses the painting's depth into a narrow and
immediate aperture. The elongated and stylised infant Christ stretches across
the scene, joining interior and exterior; flesh and the ether. The bottom third
of the panel meanwhile seems striped in alternate marble-white and deep-
blue, symbolising both the innocence and the royalty of the Divine Mother
and Child.
• Artists DESIGN
El Greco
GREEK-SPANISH PAINTER, SCULPTOR, AND ARCHITECT

Born: October 1, 1541

Crete, Greece
Died: April 7, 1614
Toledo, Spain

Doménikos Theotokópoulos was born in 1541 in Crete, a Greek island

that was part of the thriving Republic of Venice. Little is known of his
childhood, other than the fact that he chose to be an artist at a very
young age.

Summary of El Greco
El Greco's life and work were marked by a deep underlying devotion to God.
Compelled as a young man to become an artist, he mastered a longstanding
tradition of Byzantine icon art, yet by the time he eventually settled in Spain
his inspiration was largely drawn from the burgeoning Italian and
Spanish Renaissances. Although his early ambitions were to become a
court painter, his individual style that began to emerge in Spain quickly
catapulted him from the confines of any conventional school. He became
vastly interested in the new Mannerist movement, a group who disavowed
the mere imitation of nature in art, and instead sought to express the
underlying psychological aspects of a work beyond its mythological or
religious themes. These concepts informed a body of work that is deeply
evocative of the Divine and universally noted for manifesting the spirituality
that lay beneath all being.

Key Ideas
• El Greco is best known for his tortuously elongated figures painted in
phantasmagorical pigmentation, which almost resembled chalk with its blunt
vividness. Drawing upon Byzantine tradition while incorporating a
 Mannerist's veer from reality, these abstracted, expressionist forms
established a new visual dialogue that broke away from traditional modes of
representation in Classical art.

• The importance of imagination and intuition over subjective characterization

was a fundamental principle in El Greco's style, allowing him the freedom to
discard such classical criteria as measure and proportion. Instead, he
employed techniques such as radical foreshortening to challenge perceptions
of the norm.

• A tendency to dramatize rather than describe marks the painter's work,

articulated through bold, unreal choices in color, and the juxtaposition of
highlights next to dark, thick outlines. These jarring contrasts result in an
emotional transference from painting to viewer.
• El Greco's work has also been cited as a precursor to Expressionism for
its presentation of the emotional in ways that had not been articulated before.
He is also said to have had an influence on the Cubists, most
notably Pablo Picasso, because of the way his paintings reconsidered
form and figure beyond literal reality.

Works

The Holy Trinity (1577-1579)

The Holy Trinity, painted between 1577 and 1579, depicts God holding a dying Christ in his
arms, as they float amidst clouds in heaven, with the dove of the Holy Spirit flying over their
heads. Surrounding them are six angels in colored robes, and behind them, coming from above is
a bright golden light..

the brilliant and expressive use of color in the robes, the continuity between
forms and substance in the intertwining of the bodies of the figures, the
elongation of the figures, especially in Christ's body, and the imaginative
dream like quality that defines the overall feeling of the painting. One of his
main characteristic techniques is also already used in the work profusely,
which is the use of highlights next to dark and thick outlines to create a
profoundly dramatic effect.

A specific interpretation can be found in the colors employed, where the

gloomy aspect of the clouds can be seen to represent death, opposing the
golden rays above that symbolize the eternal; the two emphasize the duality
between life and the ever after. Overall, this is the main interpretation of the
work: an embodiment of the eternal as a reality thereby instilling a new sense
of hope and devotion in the faithful.

The Burial of the Count

(1586 - 1588)
This large painting, three and half meters wide by almost five meters high, is universally
regarded as El Greco's greatest masterpiece and most famous work
His contribution to the development of the movement is marked by visual
compositions that moved away from an idealized perfection into a world
charged with tension and emotional complexity through form, imagination,
and expression.

. The funerary scene is portrayed at the bottom of the painting, with the Count
surrounded by the two saints, followed by other noble men and clergyman of
the time in 16 century clothing, captured in a static way. It is contrasted with
th

the celestial kingdom in heaven that includes Mary, Christ, God, John the
Baptist, and the angels, who all observe the scene, depicted in a more organic
free flowing way, so as to represent the intangibility and immateriality of
spirit. The young boy at the left is said to be Jorge Manuel, the artist's son.

One possible interpretation that is in the juxtaposition of the worlds: the

physical world of earth and the spiritual world of heaven, each portrayed in
their own ways. Earth is captured in normal scale with more proportional
figures, whereas heaven is composed of swirling clouds and abstract shapes,
with a more intangible quality to the figures.

Antonio da Correggio

Antonio Allegri da Correggio

Antonio Allegri was born in Correggio, a small town near Reggio Emilia. His
date of birth is uncertain (around 1489). His father was a merchant.

In his use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, Correggio prefigured
the Reococo art of the 18th century.

By 1516, Correggio was in Parma, where he spent most of the remainder of

his career. Here, he befriended Michelangelo a prominent Mannerist painter.

From this period are the Madonna and Child with the Young Saint
John, Christ Leaving His Motherand the lost Madonna of Albinea.

Correggio's first major commission (February–September 1519) was the

ceiling decoration of a private chamber of the mother-superior (abbess
Giovanna Piacenza) of the convent of St. Paul in Parma, now known
as Camera di San Paolo.

. Coreggio’s illusionistic experiments, in which imaginary spaces replace the

natural reality, seem to prefigure many elements
of Mannerist, Baroque and Rococo stylistic approaches.

Aside from his religious output, Correggio conceived a now-famous set of

paintings depicting the Loves of Jupiter as described
in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The voluptuous series was commissioned
by Federico II Gonzaga of Mantua.

Correggio was remembered by his contemporaries as a shadowy,

melancyholic and introverted character. An enigmatic and eclectic artist, he
appears to have emerged from no major apprenticeship. In addition to the
influence of Costa, there are echoes of Mantegna's style in his work, and a
response to Leonardo da Vinci, as well. Correggio had little immediate
influence in terms of apprenticed successors, but his works are now
considered to have been revolutionary and influential on subsequent artists.

Works

Nativity (Adoration of the Shepherds)

Artist Antonio da Correggio

Year c. 1529–1530

Medium Oil on canvas

 Dimensions 256.5 cm × 188 cm (101.0 in × 74 in)

the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts
affecting a whole composition. chiaroscuro is also a technical term used by
artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achieve a
sense of volume in modelling three-dimensional objects and figures.
[1] Similar effects in cinema and photography also are called chiaroscuro.

The scene pivots around the Child, surrounded by Mary's arms, with a group
of shepherds on the left, of which the bearded figure is portrayed in the same
position of Jerome in the Madonna of St. Jerome (Correggio) (c.
1523). On the right are the traditional presepe animals and St. Joseph. The
upper left part features several angels reminiscent the ardite positions in
Correggio's dome of the Cathedral of Parma, executed in the same
years.
 Allegory of Virtues

Artist Correggio

Year between 1525 and 1530

Medium Tempera on canvas

Dimensions 148 cm × 88 cm (58 in × 35 in)

Location Louvre, Paris

As usually interpreted, the central woman is Minerva, holding a read lance
and a plumed helmet.
Glory hovers above her holding a crown, whilst a seated female figure to the
right is surrounded by symbols of the four cardinal virtues (a snake in
her hair for Prudence, a sword for Justice, reins for temperance
and Hercules's lion skin for Fortitude). Some interpret the seated black
female figure on the right as Astrology, Science or Intellectual Virtue - she
points outside the painting's space and thus (like the putto in Vice) draws the
viewer's attention from one painting to the other.

End