Mannerism

and other
Trends on
Late
Sixteenth-
Century Italy
Genre Painting
 Genre painting developed
particularly in Holland in the
seventeenth century. The most
typical subjects were scenes of
peasant life or drinking in taverns
and tended to be small in scale. In
Britain William Hogarth’s modern
moral subjects were a special kind
of genre, in their frankness and
often biting social satire.

Simpler genre painting emerged in

later eighteenth century in for
example George Morland, Henry
Robert Morland and Francis
Wheatley. Genre painting became
hugely popular in the Victorian age
following the success of the brilliantly skilled but deeply sentimental works of  Sir
David Wilkie.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century a new focus for genre painting
emerged. Artists wanted to capture the excitement and fleeting nature of the
modern life they saw around them in fast-growing metropolises such as London
and Paris. The simple and slightly sentimental genre scenes of the Victorian era
were replaced by bustling street scenes and glittering cafe interiors captured
by impressionist artists such as Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet. Reflections
on the downsides of urbanization also became a subject for artists.  Camden
Town Group painter Walter Sickert’s genre scenes painted early in the
twentieth century include alienated couples in interiors suggesting the
loneliness people can feel in big cities.

Confusingly, the word ‘genre’ is also used in art to describe the different types,
or broad subjects, of painting. In the seventeenth century five types or ‘genres’
of painting were established, these were: history painting; portrait
painting; landscape painting; genre painting (scenes of everyday life) and still
life. These genres were seen by the art establishment as having varying levels
of importance, with history painting (the painting of scenes from history, the
bible or literature) as the most important genre, and still life (paintings of still
objects) as the least important.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/g/genre-painting
Still Life
 A still life (from the Dutch, stilleven)
is a painting featuring an
arrangement of inanimate, everyday
objects, whether natural objects
(flowers, food, wine, dead fish, and
game, etc.) or manufactured items
(books, bottles, crockery, etc.).
The Tate Museum Glossary puts it
very succinctly, defining the subject
of a still life as "anything that does
not move or is dead." In French, the
still life is called nature morte,
(literally "dead nature"). A still life
can be realistic or abstract,
depending on the particular time and
culture in which it was created, and
on the particular style of the artist.
The still life is a popular genre because the artist has total control over
the subject of the painting, the lighting, and the context. The artist can use the
still life symbolically or allegorically to express an idea, or formally to study
composition and the elements and principles of art.
A still life is a drawing or painting that focuses on still objects. The subject matter
is inanimate and never moves, typically with a focus on household objects,
flowers, or fruits. Still life work contrasts figure drawing which focuses on a live
human model. With a still life you know the objects won’t ever move and you can
practice objects with different properties like shiny metal, clear porcelain, or
bulbous apples. Fruit bowls are a popular choice because they’re made up of
simple shapes and everyone has fruit lying around. Creating a still life is a
starting point for someone to practice fundamental skills. When drawing
inanimate objects, you can be sure they will stay in the same position until you
move them, making it an easier task for beginners. Still life artwork comes in
many different styles and mediums. The brush strokes can be loose and wild or
precise and bold. As long as the subject matter remains inanimate, even pen and
pencil can create a still life piece.
Still Life History

 Although paintings of objects have been in existence since ancient Egypt and
Greece, still life painting as a unique art form originated in post-Renaissance
Western art. In ancient Egypt, people painted objects and food in tombs and
temples as offerings to the gods and for the dead to enjoy in the afterlife. These
paintings were flat, graphic representations of their subjects, typical of Egyptian
painting. The ancient Greeks also incorporated still life subjects into their vases,
 wall paintings, and mosaics. These paintings, featuring highlights and shadows,
were more realistic than the Egyptians', though not accurate in terms of
perspective.

Still life painting became an art form of its own in the 16th century. A panel
painting by the Venetian artist Jacopo de' Barbari (1440-1516) now on display in
the Alte Pinakothek, Munich is considered by many historians to be the first true
still life. The painting, completed in 1504, depicts a dead partridge and a pair of
iron gloves, or gauntlets.

According to the BBC documentary "Apples, Pears and Paint: How to Make a
Still Life Drawing (Painting)," Caravaggio's "Basket of Fruit," painted in 1597, is
recognized as the first major work of the Western still life genre.

The height of still life painting came in 17th century Holland. Artists such as Jan
Brueghel, Pieter Clausz, and others painted opulent, highly detailed, and realistic
images of flower bouquets and tables laden with lavish bowls of fruit and game.
These paintings celebrated the seasons and reflected the era's scientific interest
in the natural world. They also served as status symbols and were highly sought
after. Many artists sold their works through auctions.

Still Life Symbolism

 Traditionally, many objects in still life paintings were selected for their religious or
symbolic meanings, though this symbolism sometimes eludes modern-day
viewers. Cut flowers or a piece of decaying fruit, for instance, symbolized
mortality. Skulls, hourglasses, clocks, and candles warned viewers that life is
brief. These death-haunted paintings are known as memento mori, a Latin
phrase that means "remember you must die."
Memento mori paintings are closely related to vanitas still life’s, which include
symbols of earthly pleasures and material goods such as musical instruments,
wine, and books that have little value compared to the glory of the afterlife. The
term vanitas comes from a statement at the beginning of the Book of
Ecclesiastes, which expresses the futility of human activity: "Vanity of vanities! All
is vanity."
But not all still life paintings feature symbolism. French Post-
Impressionist artist Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) is perhaps the most famous
painter of apples simply for his use of color, shape, and perspective.
Cezanne's "Still Life with Apples" (1895-98) is not painted realistically as though
seen from one viewpoint. Rather, it seems to represent an amalgamation of
different views. Through its exploration of the modes of perception, Cezanne's
work served as a precursor to Cubism and abstraction.

https://www.liveabout.com/definition-of-still-life-painting-2577744

https://conceptartempire.com/still-life/
Villa
 The Villa Farnesina in Rome, built in the early sixteenth century for the rich
Sienese banker Agostino Chigi and now owned by the Accademia Nazionale Dei
Lincei, is one of the noblest and most harmonious creations of the Italian
Renaissance. It is a masterpiece in which architectural design and pictorial
decoration fuse into a single marvelous synthesis. The sober volumetric and
spatial layout of the Villa, devised by the architect Baldassare Peruzzi, is indeed
the perfect setting for its rich interior decoration, boasting frescos by great
masters such as Raphael, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi
known as Sodoma, and Peruzzi himself.

After a somewhat troubled history and many changes of ownership, the Villa now
bears the name and preserves the memory of the Farnese family, who acquired
it in 1579 in violation of the binding legal conditions imposed by its original owner.
It should really have been named after Agostino Chigi, the highly ambitious
patron and art-lover who was born in Siena in 1466 and who commissioned the
Villa as the tangible sign of his own personality and high culture, decorating it
magnificently and living in it until his death in 1520. Agostino came from a family
of merchants who became bankers. After receiving training in his father’s bank,
he soon became familiar with the finances of the Papal States and at just twenty
years old, he founded his first company in Rome. With the election of the Borgia
pope Alexander VI in 1492, business increased for the Sienese bankers, and
Agostino’s affairs prospered so well that within a short time he was lending huge
sums of money to Cesare Borgia, Piero de’ Medici, Guidobaldo da Montefeltro
and even to the French king Charles VIII. However, the real basis of his immense
fortune came from the rights he owned to the alum mines of Tolfa near Rome. By
rationalizing and nurturing the extraction and sale of this valuable mineral salt,
which was indispensable for the dyeing of fabrics, Agostino became the
possessor of a flourishing international monopoly with his own fleet, anchored at
Porto Ercole. After the very brief pontificate of Pius III Todeschini Piccolomini, his
business relations with Julius II Della Rovere were no less profitable. He assisted
in Julius II’s election, and apart from financial matters, the two were quite
attached by a shared love for art, literature, theatre, and the ancient world. In
1509 Julius II accepted him into the papal familia and allowed the Chigi arms (six
hills crowned with a star) to be charged with the Della Rovere oak. The rich
banker also managed to ingratiate himself with the next pope, Leo X Medici, by
organizing feasts and lending sums of money.

Before moving into the Farnesina, Agostino Chigi lived in a house in Via Dei
Banchi with his young wife Margherita Saracini, who died childless in 1508. He
then embarked on an affair with the courtesan Imperia, famous for her beauty
and culture, who bore him a daughter, Lucrezia. But even before the death of
Imperia in 1511 he had begun to court Margherita Gonzaga, the natural daughter
of Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua; he failed to pull this marriage off
however, even though he had promised to give up all his business interests so as
 to appease the prejudices of the Mantuan court. In 1511, on a debt-collecting
mission to Venice, he met a young girl of humble origins, Francesca Ordeaschi,
and lived with her as her common-law husband until 1519. In that year on the
feast of St Augustine, no doubt prompted by a sense his own mortality, he
decided to regularize his position with a proper wedding and at the same time
dictated his Will.

The wedding banquet was a memorable event, but no less sumptuous were the
many feasts that Agostino gave, especially in the last years of his life, when he
welcomed into his new home the foremost personalities of the age: poets,
princes, cardinals, even the pope himself. The chroniclers record for example
that in 1518, on the occasion of the christening of the eldest child Lorenzo Leone,
gold and silver vessels used for the banquet were flung into the Tiber as a sign of
munificence (though it appears that the wily banker had ordered nets to be laid
on the riverbed so that the valuable objects could be recovered the next day).
After its acquisition by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese the Younger, and after the
death of his nephew Odoardo who inherited it, the Villa was abandoned, being
occasionally lent to important visitors to Rome such as Cardinal Richelieu,
Cardinal Frederick of Assia-Darmstadt, Queen Christina of Sweden, and various
ambassadors of Louis XIV. In 1735 the Villa was bequeathed by Elisabetta
Farnese to Carlo IV, King of the Two Sicilies, and became the residence of
various Neapolitan ambassadors until Francesco II of Naples, having retired to
Rome after his abdication, granted a 99-year lease on the Far¬nesina to the
Spanish ambassador of Naples, Salvador Bermudez de Castro, the duke of
Ripalta. Finally, the Villa was acquired in 1927 by the State, which used it to
house the Italian Academy and in 1944 gave it to the Accademia Nazionale Dei
Lincei, housed in the nearby Palazzo Corsini.

Building History

 In May 1505, while concluding the purchase of the site near the Septimian Gate,
between Via Della Lungara and the Tiber, Agostino Chigi entrusted the planning
of the Farnesina to Baldassare Peruzzi, a painter, architect, and theatrical
designer, born in Siena in 1481 and died in Rome in 1536. In the spring of the
following year the plans were already completed, but it seems that for the laying
of the first stone, the banker like other renaissance patrons decided to wait for a
favorable conjunction of planets, in this case 22 April 1506, a date thought at the
time to mark the anniversary of the founding of Rome. In addition to the Villa, the
property comprised the Stables, designed by Raphael and demolished in 1808
after many years of neglect, a loggia on the banks of the Tiber, and beautiful
gardens which gave to the whole complex the appearance of a magnificent
“viridario”, so that it was compared by the laudatory poets of the time (such as
Egidio Gallo and Blosio Palladio) to the most celebrated residences of antiquity.
Two years after work began, the building had progressed so far that Agostino
was able to commission Peruzzi himself to decorate the Room of the Frieze, and
 having moved in by the summer of 1511, he was able to show his new residence
in all its splendor to the pope.

Originally the entrance to the Villa was on the north side, where the pergolas and
pavilions in the garden gave the impression of extending the festoons painted in
the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche, creating a delightful effect of symbiosis with the
architecture. With its loggias, mezzanines, and internal staircases the Farnesina
comprised six levels, but its present appearance is the result of a series of later
interventions, including some important internal restructuring carried out by
Agostino Chigi himself in 1518. The principal alteration was the westwards
extension of the room on the first floor now known as the Room of the
Perspective Views. On that occasion or shortly afterwards the belvedere was
added to the north-east side of the Villa, while it was probably around 1650 that
the two loggias were closed in and some of the walls in the Loggia of Galatea
were decorated with landscapes. Finally, radical restoration was carried out in
the late seventeenth century by the painter Carlo Maratta.

The First Pictorial Cycle

 Shortly after completing the ground-floor walls, Baldassare Peruzzi began work
on the frescoed frieze that gives its name to the Room of the Frieze, which was
intended as a waiting-room for guests but also for important ceremonies such as
the reading of the banker’s Will. In the frieze, with evident allegorical allusion to
the virtues of the patron, Peruzzi frescoed the twelve Labors of Hercules and
other deeds performed by the hero, as well as various mythological episodes,
incorporating flashes of the nascent culture of classical antiquity but also
supplementing the iconography with from late-medieval Ovidian imagery. Early in
1509 Peruzzi was entrusted with the pictorial decoration of the Villa’s exterior,
which is documented by drawings, but is unfortunately almost entirely lost except
for a few fragments in the spandrels on the east facade.
In the early months of 1511, now that the architecture was completed, the
Sienese artist concentrated on decorating the vault of what became the Loggia of
Galatea, by far the most considerable pictorial commission of his career. Here,
on the basis of a plan elaborated by an astrologer and completed by the
humanist Cornelio Benigni, Peruzzi translated Agostino Chigi’s horoscope into
images, organizing the complex arrangement of constellations, divinities, and
signs of the zodiac into a scheme of great structural elegance.
Peruzzi was still working on the vault of the Loggia of Galatea when Agostino
Chigi, in August 1511, returned from Venice and moved into the Farnesina,
having brought with him the young Sebastiano del Piombo, one of the most
talented of the new generation of venetian painters. Possibly unsatisfied with the
progress of the work, he started Sebastiano working alongside Peruzzi, and
within a short time engaged the services of Raphael. In the frescoes of the nine
lunettes (the tenth was decorated by Peruzzi with an enormous Head of a young
man), Sebastiano painted various scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and then
 frescoed on one wall a large figure of Polyphemus, while Raphael, referring to
the same legend, painted on the same wall the elegant figure of Galatea, the
beautiful nymph, who is shown amongst a throng of sea creatures as she speeds
away from her admirer on a fantastical shell drawn by dolphins. By juxtaposing
the supreme compositional skills of Raphael with Peruzzi’s meditation on the
antique, and with Sebastiano’s coloristic mastery, Agostino Chigi was able to
amaze his guests not only with the mythological stories and their moral or
symbolic significance, but also with the expressive and stylistic talents of three of
the greatest painters of the age, brought together at the height of their artistic
careers in order to bestow lustre on the house of Chigi.
The Loggia of Cupid and Psyche

 After the completion of the Polyphemus and the Galatea, Agostino Chigi
interrupted the pictorial decoration of the Farnesina for more than five years,
possibly because Raphael had told him that he would be able to paint more
frescoes but never found the time to do so. At around 1517, when Raphael
became available once more, the banker, who in preparation for his marriage to
Francesca Ordeaschi was already thinking of decorating those rooms that still
remained un-decorated, immediately engaged him for the pictorial cycle in the
gallery on the ground floor, where he intended to create a setting grand enough
to overwhelm the guests invited to his wedding. Here Raphael, so as to give free
rein to his creative powers, was not content with depicting isolated scenes but
wanted to devise a continuous narrative, alluding in some way to the forthcoming
marriage. The choice fell upon the fable of Cupid and Psyche, which had already
been used in the fifteenth century for nuptial imagery: a tale told by a garrulous
old woman to Lucius, the protagonist of Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, during the
course of his wanderings.
In narrating the story of the beautiful Psyche, who was loved by the god Cupid
and persecuted by Venus until eventually she was married on Olympus, Raphael
selected those episodes that best lent themselves to a series of allusions, partly
bio-graphical and partly symbolically, to the patron and to his lover and bride,
reflecting on the Platonic assumption of the Latin novelist that divine love renders
human beings’ immortal. To give the space a festive and theatrical aspect, the
artist also transformed the vault of the entrance Loggia into a pergola, as though
the greenery of the gardens had invaded the Villa, hanging in magnificent
festoons, framing the spandrels and segments of the vault. In the center he
devised two fictive tapestries showing the concluding scenes: the splendid
Council of the Gods, where the unjustly persecuted girl is finally received with
divine complacence, and the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, the symbolic
culmination of the entire cycle. However, if the general layout of the cycle and the
planning of the individual scenes and figures are due to the intuitive genius of
Raphael, as is proved by a number of autographical sketches, the actual
translation into fresco was carried out by numerous workshop assistants,
including Giovan Francesco Penni, Giulio Romano and Giovanni da Udine. The
latter, in particular, was the author of the exuberant triumphal festoons.
The Other Rooms

 While Raphael was still working with his assistants on the frescoes in the Loggia
of Cupid and Psyche, work was proceeding apace on the first floor to restructure
the bedchamber that was to receive the new spouses. This was the most
intimate room in the Villa and Agostino Chigi, wanting to allude to its function,
commissioned the decoration from Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as Sodoma, a
painter who was born in Vercelli but had long been working in Siena and Rome.
Following an “initial idea” by Raphael, Sodoma planned in 1519 on the walls of
the bedchamber, beneath a magnificent, coffered ceiling decorated in
monochrome, a fresco cycle showing the wedding of Alexander the Great and his
bride Roxane, based on Lucian’s description of a famous lost painting of
antiquity. The centerpiece of the narrative is the scene of the imminent
consummation of the marriage: the Macedonian warrior is shown hurrying
towards his bride, who is surrounded by amorini and is sitting waiting for him,
naked, on the edge of the splendid four-poster bed. The other scenes represent
Alexander’s magnanimity towards the mother and daughters of the defeated
Darius, the taming of the horse Bucephalus (where the presence of assistants
may be detected) and the culminating moment of one battle.
No less suggestive, and also on the first floor, is the decoration of the Room of
the Perspective Views, where on 28 August 1519 the rich banker held his
wedding banquet. This room, which takes its name from the perspective views of
urban and rural landscapes between fictive columns, is one of the most mature
and successful pictorial creations of Baldassare Peruzzi, who poured out his own
talents, refined by daily contact with Sebastiano and Raphael, not only in the
sophisticated illusionistic divisions of the walls but also in the divinities portrayed
above the doors and windows; the mythological scenes that run beneath the
ceiling, also alluding to Agostino Chigi’s marriage, are the work of assistants.
Throughout the monumental rooms of the Far¬nesina there sounds the
melodious and powerful echo of the ancient world, a world of images, symbols,
and myths, where Peruzzi, Sebastiano del Piombo, Raphael and Sodoma
competed to satisfy a man anxious to emulate the great patrons of antiquity. The
particular fascination of the Villa Farnesina derives from the seamless unity
between the powerful personality of the patron and the magisterial architectural,
pictorial, and decorative exertions of some of the greatest musters of the
Renaissance.
(by “La Villa Farnesina a Roma”, Mirabilia Italiae, Franco Cosimo Panini, on sale
at the Bookshop of the Museum).

http://www.villafarnesina.it/?page_id=47&lang=en
Mannerism
 Mannerism is an artistic style and
movement that developed in Europe
from the later years of the High
Renaissance, around the1520s, to the
end of the 16th century
when Baroque started to replace it.
Mannerism was born as a reaction to
the harmonious classicism and
naturalism of the Renaissance.
Whereas High Renaissance art
emphasized proportion, balance and
classical beauty, Mannerism was
inclined to exaggerate these qualities
with paintings that present
asymmetrical or unnaturally elegant
compositions. Mannerism favoring the
compositional tension and instability
with its artificiality and sophistication (which are the key features of the
movement) acts as a bridge between the idealized style of Renaissance art and
the dramatic theatricality of Baroque.

The word Mannerism derives from the Italian term “maniera” that means manner,
or style. At the beginning this term aimed to indicate a style that developed in
Rome and Florence after the work of the great masters of the High Renaissance,
which emphasized the artistic virtuosity of the painter. Over the centuries
however, the meaning of the word "manner" was used not to demonstrate just
the virtuosity in painting, but the excess of this virtuosity, the technical artificiality
on the composition and the exaggerated representation of intense moods and
subjects. Mannerism painters stopped considering nature as the main model of
art, similar to Renaissance artists and their humanistic ideals. Instead they
sought to imitate the style of the three great Renaissance
masters Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael by altering their ideal beauty and
naturalism.

Mannerist paintings present compositions that have no perspective or

proportions, the space is irregular, and figures are characterized by elastic
elongation of the limbs, small head and stretches of the stylized face. Their
poses seem difficult and artificial. Unlike the balanced, natural and dramatic
colors of the High Renaissance, Mannerism compositions are enriched with
contrasting and intense colors. This intensity of Mannerism with its intellectual
aestheticism and its experimentation in forms developed into an attractive style
that reminds the modern expressionist tendencies in art.
 Mannerism developed in Italy and became a formative influence on the styles of
several Italian painters who were active during the first half of the 16th century,
such as Pontormo, Tintoretto and Giulio Romano. In 1530 Mannerism began to
spread outside Italy when Rosso Fiorentino brought the style in France. From
this moment and on Mannerism spread throughout central and northern Europe
with several northern painters, such as Hendrik Goltzius and Hans von Aachen,
came to Rome to study and practice the mannerism style. Thanks to its high level
of international popularity Mannerism lasted for the whole century, until 1600
when Caravaggio and his paintings brought this problematic style to an end,
leading to the rise of Baroque. Learn more about the movement in History of
Mannerism.

Historical Background

 In the late 15th century, artists in Florence began to forego the ethereal
iconography of the Dark Ages in favor of classicism. This aesthetic approach
lasted until the 17th century and culminated in three subsets: the Early
Renaissance, the High Renaissance, and the Late Renaissance.

During the Early Renaissance, artists began looking to antiquity for inspiration.

This newfound interest would then inform the High Renaissance, a genre
characterized by naturalistic figures and a mathematically precise use of
perspective. The High Renaissance lasted from 1490 until the 1530s, when
the Late Renaissance, or Mannerism, emerged.

While Mannerist artists were interested in the perfectionism portrayed by High

Renaissance artists, they did not seek to replicate it. Instead, they exaggerated
Renaissance principles, resulting in work that favors self-expressionism over the
pursuit of idealism. “Rather than adopting the harmonious ideals associated with
Raphael and Michelangelo,” the Tate explains, “[Mannerists] went a step further
to create highly artificial compositions which showed off their techniques and
 skills in manipulating compositional elements to create a sense of sophisticated
elegance.”

 Mannerism is an artistic style and movement that developed in Europe from the
later years of the Italian High Renaissance, around the 1520s, to the end of the
16th century when Baroque started to replace it. In that period, after the death
of Raphael, art experienced a period of crisis. The work of the Renaissance
masters Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael was credited with having arrived
at a formal perfection and an ideal beauty difficult to overcome.
Renaissance artworks were perfectly composed up to the last detail, thanks to
artists having mastered anatomy, light and perspective. This led young artists to
believe that there was nothing worth pursuing in art, that had not been achieved
yet. From this point of view, Mannerism was born with the aim to develop a new
kind of art that worked in a new direction, without pretending to imitate nature
anymore, but instead was turned against the traditional artistic canon. This new
style over the years became a distortion of the Renaissance perfection and an
exaggeration of the previous movement's qualities. Even Michelangelo himself
turned to Mannerism in the last years of his activity, especially in his Last
Judgment fresco painted in the Sistine Chapel between 1536 and 1541.

Mannerism can be divided in two periods: Early Mannerism and High Mannerism;
 Early Mannerism, which see the collaboration of some Italian artists such
as Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino in Florence, and Giulio
Romano and Parmigianino in Rome, is the initial phase of Mannerism when
artists aimed to react against the Renaissance tradition exaggerating the style of
painting. The earliest experimental phase of Mannerism, known for its "anti-
classical" forms, lasted until the first half of the century.
 Late or High Mannerism, is the movement's second phase, where we see the
collaboration of Tintoretto, Veronese, Bronzino and other painters, being
differentiated from the earlier artistic virtuosity, seeking to imitate Renaissance
art and its masters. This second phase saw the end of the movement
when Caravaggio and his paintings in 1600 brought this problematic style to an
end, leading to the rise of Baroque.
https://useum.org/Mannerism/History-of-Mannerism
https://mymodernmet.com/what-is-mannerism/

Patronage and Artistic Life

 Patronage, artistic. Patronage goes beyond the act of purchasing art.

Traditionally a patron offered the means of support to the artist, a home, a
pension, or place, as well as specific payments. The monarchy, church, and
aristocracy were the great patrons of medieval architecture, art, and music:
Edward the Confessor built Westminster abbey, Henry III rebuilt it, and Henry VII
added the east chapel; Henry VI endowed Eton College, Christ's College and
King's College, Cambridge. Many of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges were
founded by clerics: Peterhouse, Cambridge, by Hugh de Balsham, bishop of Ely
(1284), New College, Oxford, by William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester
(1379), Corpus Christi College, Oxford, by Richard Foxe, bishop of Winchester
(1517), Christ Church, Oxford, by Cardinal Wolsey (1525). Among the many
aristocratic patrons were Humphrey, duke of Gloucester (d. 1447), and
John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester (d. 1470), whose gifts of books formed the basis
for the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

The tradition of religious patronage declined after the Reformation, as much of

the wealth of the church was alienated and clerics ceased to dominate political
life as Morton and Wolsey had done. Elizabeth I encouraged the cult of majesty,
patronizing artists like Hilliard and Hans Eworth to convey her image of royal
splendor. Inigo Jones was involved in architecture, decoration, and the design
of masques for the courts of James I and Charles I, and the first poet
laureate was Ben Jonson in James I's reign. Thomas, earl of Arundel, patron to
several painters including Rubens, introduced Van Dyck to Charles I, the last
great royal patron of arts. The Civil War put many artists out of work or into exile,
yet patronage continued. Peter Lely prospered under Charles I and II, as well as
under Cromwell, who, along with other parliamentarians, sat for portraits by
Robert Walker. Cromwell also loved music and retained a small group of
domestic musicians. The Restoration brought back the Stuarts but not intensive
royal patronage. Charles II recognized his duty to the arts, but salaries or
pensions were often erratically paid. He was, though, an enthusiastic patron of
the theatre and horse-racing, while many of the noblemen who followed him out
of exile both practiced and patronized literature.

The beginnings of the 18th cent. saw increasing political patronage of the arts.
The Kit Kat Club, a group of in-fluential Whigs, whose members included the
writers Congreve and Addison, artists Vanbrugh and Kneller, and
politicians Walpole and Newcastle, extended patronage over all aspects of art
and music. Among traditional patrons, returning grand tourists commissioned or
rebuilt great houses, and filled them with decoration, paintings, sculpture,
 silverware, and furniture. Chandos was patron to Handel and the duke of
Richmond patron to Canaletto, who spent nine years in England.
Lord Burlington befriended William Kent, financed his publications, and
collaborated on several of his Palladian designs. George I and George II enjoyed
music and patronized Handel and the opera, and employed the
sculptors Rysbrack and Roubiliac.

Increasing prosperity meant a role in patronage for the general public. The Three
Choirs Festival of Worcester, Gloucester, and Hereford was founded in 1713;
books were published by subscription; prints and engravings and later
caricatures from artists like Hogarth and Rowlandson sold in large numbers. New
money from industry went into the arts: Wedgwood the potter was patron of
George Stubbs and Joseph Wright of Derby. In the 19th cent. the Pre-
Raphaelites found support among the industrialists of the midlands and north of
England, and throughout the century wealthy art lovers like Angerstein, Tate, and
Wallace made generous gifts to public galleries. At a lower level, the newly
formed borough and county councils filled their foyers with sculptures and their
corridors with portraits of chairmen, mayors, and aldermen.

Patronage of art is now institutionalized. Few individuals in a century of heavy

taxation have the wealth to support the arts but royalty still sits for portraits, even
if the commissioning organization pays the artist. New town corporations place
lonely sculptures on wind-swept grassy banks. But in the main it is orchestras or
bodies like the BBC who commission new music, and universities which find
funds for painters or poets in residence. Funding comes from a diversity of
sources, from the Arts Council to the National Lottery. An artist is unlikely to have
a home provided by a patron. He will be paid but not by a long-term stipend. He
may receive the freedom of a city but not a government office. He retains his
independence, which Dr Johnson valued more than a patron, ‘who supports with
insolence and is paid with flattery’.

 The patron served a fundamental function in the development of art in early

modern Europe. In addition to being an active consumer of art, he was its
initiator, often dictating form and content. Art patronage functioned as proof of
wealth, status, and power and could also serve purposes of propaganda and
entertainment. Conversely, influential contacts were essential to an artist's well-
being.

Patronage was formalized by contracts defining cost, materials, dimensions,

artist's participation, content, and timeline; a sketch of the project was often
demanded. Alternatively, secular and religious princes could retain artists on a
monthly allowance, offering them board and provisions as court residents.

In his explanation of cause and effect, Aristotle defined the position of the patron

when he distinguished the efficient cause (the artist) and the formal cause (the
art object) from the final cause (the patron). The patron offered forms of support
 that placed him beyond the level of customer, but the balance between patron
and artist was never equal and was often a source of tension.

Patronage changed as early modern institutions such as the city, capitalism, and
minted coinage developed, leading to an enlarged world of goods, social
diffusion of taste, a variety of new forms, namely, to a broad expanse of material
culture with a demand for durable goods. For a full understanding of a patron's
extravagance, it is necessary to assemble an accounting from his largesse in
church construction, desired prestige in palace construction, and temporary
decorations for state visits, festivals, dynastic marriages, and political exchanges.
Political and social pressures were factors in limiting lavish display. In Venice and
Florence, merchants were restrained in their patronage by sumptuary laws,
which went so far as to limit the cost and color of clothing and the amount of
jewelry worn.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/modern-europe/british-and-irish-history/artistic-
patronage

Innovations and characteristics of mannerist architecture

 Playfully engages the view in the reuse of antique and classical (such as Roman
and Greek) elements independent of their original function.

Major Works of Mannerist Architecture

 During the Mannerist period, architects experimented with using architectural

forms to emphasize solid and spatial relationships.
They did so by deliberately playing with the symmetry, order, and harmony
typically found in Renaissance architecture.

 During the High Renaissance , architectural concepts

derived from classical antiquity were developed and used
with greater surety. The most representative architect of
this period is Bramante (1444–1514), who expanded the
applicability of classical architecture to contemporary
buildings in a style that would dominate Italian architecture
in the 16th century. Hallmarks of High Renaissance
architecture are symmetry , proportion, order, harmony,
and deliberate references to the buildings of the classical
past.
 During the Mannerist period architects experimented with using architectural
forms to emphasize solid and spatial relationships. They did so by deliberately
playing with the symmetry, order, and harmony typically found in Renaissance
architecture. As a result, Mannerist architecture appears playful, almost as if the
architects are deliberately playing with expectations put forth by Renaissance
architecture.

In Mannerist architecture, the Renaissance ideal of harmony gave way to freer

and more imaginative rhythms. The best known artist associated with the
Mannerist style is Michelangelo (1475–1564). With his design for the vestibule of
the Laurentian Library, there are ambiguities of how to read the space , which
result from Michelangelo’s playfulness with the architecture itself. Columns lean
back instead of forward, and the corners come out toward you instead of
recessing. Michelangelo was aware of the ideals of Renaissance architecture but
he is deliberately playing with those ideals and creating something new.

 Stylistically, Mannerist architecture was

marked by widely diverging tendencies
from Renaissance and Medieval styles
that eventually led to the Baroque style, in
which the same architectural vocabulary
was used for very different rhetoric.

Baldassare Peruzzi (1481–1536) was an

architect working in Rome whose work
bridged the High Renaissance and
Mannerism. His Villa Farnesina of 1509 is
a very regular monumental cube of two
equal stories, with the bays articulated by
orders of pilasters .

 Peruzzi’s most famous work is the

Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne in Rome.
The unusual features of this building are
that its façade curves gently to follow a
curving street. It has, in its ground floor, a
dark central portico running parallel to the
street, but as a semi-enclosed space,
rather than an open loggia . Above this,
three undifferentiated floors rise, the upper
two with identical small horizontal windows
in thin flat frames that contrast strangely
 with the deep porch, which has served, from the time of its construction, as a
refuge to the city’s poor. All of these architectural features are unexpected and
disrupt the ideas of harmonious proportions, making it a Mannerist building.

 Giulio Romano (1499–1546) was a pupil of Raphael,

assisting him on various works for the Vatican.
Romano was also a highly inventive designer,
working for Federico II Gonzaga at Mantua on the
Palazzo del Te (1524–1534), a project that combined
his skills as architect, sculptor, and painter. In this
work, which incorporated garden grottoes and
extensive frescoes , he uses illusionistic effects,
surprising combinations of architectural form and
texture , and features that seem somewhat
disproportionate or out of alignment, making it very
much a Mannerist structure.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-
arthistory/chapter/mannerism/#:~:text=Mannerist%20Sculpture.%20Mannerist
%20sculpture%2C%20like%20Mannerist%20painting%2C%20was,angles%2C
%20twisting%20poses%2C%20and%20aloof%20subject%20gazes.%20

 Renaissance architecture is the architecture of the period between the early 15th
and early 17th centuries in different regions of Europe, demonstrating a
conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and
Roman thought and material culture. Stylistically, Renaissance architecture
followed Gothic architecture and was succeeded by Baroque architecture.
Developed first in Florence, with Filippo Brunelleschi as one of its innovators, the
Renaissance style quickly spread to other Italian cities. The style was carried to
France, Germany, England, Russia, and other parts of Europe at different dates
and with varying degrees of impact.

Renaissance style places emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry, and the

regularity of parts as they are demonstrated in the architecture of classical
antiquity and in particular ancient Roman architecture, of which many examples
remained. Orderly arrangements of columns, pilasters, and lintels, as well as the
use of semicircular arches, hemispherical domes, niches and aedicule’s replaced
the more complex proportional systems
and irregular profiles of medieval
buildings.

 Andrea Palladio, (1508–80), "the most

influential architect of the whole
Renaissance"', was, as a stonemason,
 introduced to Humanism by the poet Giangiorgio Trissino. His first major
architectural commission was the rebuilding of the Basilica Palladiana at
Vicenza, in the Veneto where he was to work most of his life.

Palladio was to transform the architectural style of both palaces and churches by
taking a different perspective on the notion of Classicism. While the architects of
Florence and Rome looked to structures like the Colosseum and the Arch of
Constantine to provide formulae, Palladio looked to classical temples with their
simple peristyle form. When he used the “triumphal arch” motif of a large arched
opening with lower square-topped opening on either side, he invariably applied it
on a small scale, such as windows, rather than on a large scale as Alberti used it
at Sant ’Andrea’s. This Ancient Roman motif is often referred to as the  Palladian
Arch.

The best known of Palladio’s domestic buildings is Villa Capra, otherwise known
as "la Rotonda", a centrally planned house with a domed central hall and four
identical façades, each with a temple-like portico like that of the Pantheon in
Rome. At the Villa Cornaro, the projecting portico of the north façade and
recessed loggia of the garden façade are of two ordered stories, the upper
forming a balcony.

Like Alberti, Della Porta and others, in the designing of a church façade, Palladio
was confronted by the problem of visually linking the aisles to the nave while
maintaining and defining the structure of the building. Palladio’s solution was
entirely different from that employed by Della Porta. At the church of San Giorgio
Maggiore in Venice he overlays a tall temple, its columns raised on high plinths,
over another low wide temple façade, its columns rising from the basements and
its narrow lintel and pilasters appearing behind the giant order of the central
nave.

https://www.liquisearch.com/mannerist_architecture/mannerism/andrea_palladio

Innovations of Mannerist Painting

 Defied the conventional ideal classical order and rationality. Discarded

conventional theories of perspective by having the eye wander around a picture
plane, such as in Pontormo, or using perspective to create an interesting illusion
such as in Parmigianino.

 The development of Mannerism began in Florence and Rome around 1520,

reflecting a "perfect storm" of circumstances affecting the art world at the time.
Printmaking had allowed for the spread of popular imagery by artists such
as Michelangelo and Albrecht Dürer to infiltrate the collective consciousness in
 Italy (and the Northern countries), positing artists as divine creators rather than
just employees of wealthy patrons and churches. In 1517, Martin
Luther's Wittenberg Theses (1517), which denounced church practices and
called for reform, launched the Protestant Reformation. Because of this, the
serene and classical idealizations of beauty characteristic of the High
Renaissance no longer seemed tenable. At the same time, young artists felt that
the style of Raphael and Leonardo was so perfected that no further development
or expression of individuality was possible.
Also, scientific discovery, including the discovery of the New World, and
Copernicus establishing that the sun, not the earth as had been commonly
believed, was the center of the solar system, challenged the Humanist belief that
man was the center of the universe.
This caused a sense of alienation and disconnection that was conveyed in
Mannerist treatments, as even figures reacting with intense emotion seemed
isolated from one another. Rather than creating harmonious compositions
depicting realistic space, artists began to explore the possibility of situating the
image within an intellectual space. As a result, the treatment of space and the
figure became less rational, compressing a number of figures into one flattened
plane, creating bizarre or complex architectural settings, the frame and the
picture blurring into one decorative effect.

https://www.theartstory.org/movement/mannerism/history-and-
concepts/#beginnings_header

One of the Example Painting;

1525-28 Deposition from the Cross Artist: Jacopo da

Pontormo- This altarpiece depicts a swirl of stricken and
grieving figures as they lower the dead body of Christ, his pale
elongated torso depicted in a serpentine curve that extends
through the lower center of the work. The Virgin Mary, dressed
in blue, faints in the upper right. Though the work is thought to
be the deposition from the cross, the artist has innovatively left
out the cross, and has also added a number of figures,
including the man whose face glimpsed at the far right, thought
to be a self-portrait of the artist. Because the painting's
composition emphasizes the swirling gestures of figures and
robes, each face is like a still point of isolation, its white
shocked expression echoing the face of the dead Christ. This work marked the arrival of
the Mannerist style with its unusual color palette, its elongated figures in distorted
poses, and its creation of an unrealistic pictorial space. Pontormo's influence was,
perhaps, greatest upon Bronzino, though he also influenced Vasari and El Greco, as
well as other lesser-known artists of the time like Morandini, Naldini, and Salviati.

Oil on canvas - Church of Santa Felicita, Florence

https://www.theartstory.org/movement/mannerism/artworks/#pnt_2

Characteristics of Mannerist Painting

 Deliberately complex, seeking refinement in unusual compositions and contrived

settings. Irrational spatial effects rely on the exaggeration of forms, obscure
imagery, and symbolic enigmas whose consequence is puzzling, stimulating, and
challenging. Calculated ambiguity. Elongation of figures.

 Europe was in turmoil during the 16th century as the sweeping changes of the
Reformation blanketed the continent. The Mannerism art period took place in the
16th century, following the Late Renaissance. Popular Mannerist artists include
Raphael, Michelangelo and Machietti. Mannerism fed off the unrest of European
culture to create a method of painting that reflected the anxiety of the time.

Style and Form

 Mannerism Art is defined by narrative style that turns away from the harmony
and unity of High Renaissance Art. Artists shied away from classical style of
proportions. They re-imagined how to paint people with exaggerated limb
dimensions and peculiar positions. Muscular models were painted aberrantly,
bulging with unnatural muscular development. Mannerism denied harmony and
balance. Renaissance paintings depended on rigid approaches on perception but
Mannerism used diagonal and askew perspectives.
Subject Matter

 Mannerism diverged from the subject matter painted in the Late Renaissance.
Mannerist artists sought to shed aside the classical subject matter of beauty,
proportion and symmetry and looked instead at the fearful and tense subjects of
society.

Meaning

 Interpretations of Mannerism art were difficult. The paintings message could

rarely be seen by looking at the painting. History and background context had to
be known. Symbolism had to be deduced. Mannerism works were indirect, rather
than forward in their representation of their meaning to the audience. According
to Michael S. Seiferth from Palo Alto College, Mannerist art represents tension
and angst, opposed to the peacefulness of Renaissance art.

Reformation

 The Protestant Reformation was a period of change and conflict that swept
across the Catholic Church. People began to doubt the all-knowing nature of the
Church. Science, with the works of Copernicus and Galileo at the forefront,
began to debunk the idea that Earth was the center of the universe. Mannerist art
fed off the concept of the dismantling of the old world view.

https://ourpastimes.com/free-online-jigsaw-puzzles.html

Major Works of Mannerist Painting

 While the High Renaissance was a time of brilliant artistic achievement, the
idealized and harmonious style that it bred soon fell into disfavor, particularly in
Central Italy and Rome. After 1520, artists began experimenting with new
conventions. This new style, often referred to as Mannerism, found its origins in
the works of the late Raphael and of Michelangelo's middle and old age. The
term "Mannerism" was coined in the seventeenth century to describe those who
followed in the patterns established by these two artistic geniuses. By that time
scholars used the word Mannerism as a criticism of the artificiality and distortion
they observed in the art of the later sixteenth century. These unfavorable
assessments of Mannerism persisted even into the twentieth century as critics
considered the movement to be an artistic crisis that destroyed the beauty of the
High Renaissance synthesis. That synthesis had emphasized classical
proportions, ideal beauty, harmony, and serenity. By contrast, critics charged
Mannerist art with being artificial, overly emotional, vividly coloristic, effetely
elegant, and contorted. Newer artistic tastes in the twentieth century, however,
have led to a positive reassessment of late Renaissance Mannerism. Scholars
 have shown that the word maniera, upon which later critics based their critical
term "Mannerism," merely meant "stylish" in the sixteenth century. Thus
Mannerism has more recently been treated as a "stylish style," which prized the
very same values that later critics found distasteful. Sixteenth-century
Mannerism, an artistic movement that influenced art in Rome, Florence, and
much of Central Italy, has now been shown to derive from certain assumptions
about elegance and beauty that differed from those of the High Renaissance. In
place of older assessments of the period as one of artistic decline, Mannerism
has now come to be positively assessed as a rich era of creative individual
artistic expression.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/culture-magazines/late-renaissance-and-
mannerist-painting-italy

 Mannerism developed in both Florence and Rome. The

early Mannerist painters in Florence—especially Jacopo da
Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino, both students of Andrea
del Sarto—are notable for using elongated forms,
precariously balanced poses, a collapsed perspective,
irrational settings, and theatrical lighting. Parmigianino (a
student of Correggio) and Giulio Romano (Raphael’s head
assistant) were moving in similarly stylized aesthetic
directions in Rome. These artists had matured under the
influence of the High Renaissance, and their style has been
characterized as a reaction or exaggerated extension of it.

In other words, instead of studying nature directly, younger

artists began studying Hellenistic sculptures and paintings of
masters past. Therefore, this style is often identified as “anti-
classical,” yet at the time it was considered a natural
progression from the High Renaissance. The earliest
experimental phase of Mannerism, known for its “anti-
classical” forms, lasted until about 1540 or 1550. This period
has been described as both a natural extension of the art of
 Andrea del Sarto, Michelangelo, and Raphael, as well as a decline of those same
artists’ classicizing achievements.

 In past analyses, it has been noted that Mannerism arose in

the early 16th century alongside a number of other social,
scientific, religious and political movements such as the
Copernican model, the Sack of Rome , and the Protestant
Reformation ‘s increasing challenge to the power of the
Catholic Church. Because of this, the style’s elongated forms
and distorted forms were once interpreted as a reaction to
the idealized compositions prevalent in High Renaissance
art.

 This explanation for the radical stylistic shift in

1520 has fallen out of scholarly favor, though the
early Mannerists are still set in stark contrast to
High Renaissance conventions; the immediacy
and balance achieved by Raphael’s School of
Athens no longer seemed interesting to young
artists. Indeed, Michelangelo himself displayed
tendencies towards Mannerism, notably in his
vestibule to the Laurentian Library, in the figures
on his Medici tombs, and above all the Sistine
Chapel .
Maniera Greca

 The second period of Mannerist painting, called

“Maniera Greca,” or High Mannerism, is commonly
differentiated from the earlier, so-called “anti-
classical” phase. Influenced by earlier Byzantine art,
High Mannerists stressed intellectual conceits and
artistic virtuosity, features that have led later critics
to accuse them of working in an unnatural and
affected “manner” (maniera). Maniera artists held
their elder contemporary Michelangelo as their
prime example; theirs was an art imitating art, rather
than an art imitating nature. Maniera art combines
exaggerated elegance with exquisite attention to
surface and detail: porcelain-skinned figures recline
in an even, tempered light, regarding the viewer with
a cool glance, if at all. The Maniera subject rarely
displays an excess of emotion, and for this reason is
often interpreted as “cold” or “aloof. ”

A number of the earliest Mannerist artists who had

been working in Rome during the 1520s fled the city
after the Sack of Rome in 1527. As they spread out across the continent in
search of employment, their style was distributed throughout Italy and Europe.
The result was the first international artistic style since the Gothic style (including
French, English, and Dutch Mannerism styles). The style waned in Italy after
1580, as a new generation of artists, including the Carracci brothers, Caravaggio
and Cigoli, reemphasized naturalism. Walter Friedlaender identified this period
as “anti-mannerism,” just as the early Mannerists were “anti-classical” in their
reaction to the High Renaissance.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-
arthistory/chapter/mannerism/#:~:text=Mannerist%20Sculpture.%20Mannerist
%20sculpture%2C%20like%20Mannerist%20painting%2C%20was,angles%2C
%20twisting%20poses%2C%20and%20aloof%20subject%20gazes.%20

Innovations of Mannerist Sculpture

 Freed viewer from frontal perspective, meant to be view from all angles, more
three-dimensional.
 Whether in Rome or Florence, Michelangelo had a strong influence on sculptors
of the 16th century. Vincenzo Danti followed closely in Michelangelo’s footsteps.
His bronze Julius III of 1553–56 in Perugia is derived from Michelangelo’s lost
bronze statue of Julius II for Bologna. Many of his figures in marble are only free
variations on themes by Michelangelo. In much the same way, Baccio
Bandinelli attempted to rival the monumentality of Michelangelo’s David and the
complexity of his Victory in the statue of Hercules and Cacus (1534), which was
placed as a companion to the David in front of the Palazzo
Vecchio. Bartolommeo Ammannati should be best known for his design of the
bridge of Santa Trinità in Florence, but his most visible work is the Neptune
Fountain (1560–75) in the Piazza della Signoria, with its gigantic figure
of Neptune turned toward the David in presumptuous rivalry.

Benvenuto Cellini through his celebrated autobiography has left a fuller account

of his picturesque life than that of any other artist of the 16th century. He was in
Rome from 1519 to 1540 and was one of the defenders of the pope during the
siege of the Castel Sant’Angelo. In France from 1540 to 1545, he executed there
the celebrated saltcellar for Francis I and the Nymph of Fontainebleau. The
saltcellar is at once an example of 16th-century conspicuous consumption and of
Mannerist conceits in art. It is of solid gold, which is covered in part by enamels
as though it were a base metal. It was designed for use as a functional object
upon the King’s table to hold nothing more than common table salt. On his return
to Florence in 1545 Cellini received the commission to cast the bronze Perseus,
now in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, which he describes in some detail in
his Autobiography. The youthful figure of Perseus seems to retain some of the
airiness from his flight on the winged sandals of Hermes. He holds aloft the head
of the Medusa in an outstretched arm, thus creating an open composition that
exploits to the full the potential of the bronze medium. Void is almost as important
as solid in this light and airy composition that would have been unthinkable and
impossible in marble. Cellini intended the figure to be seen from a variety of
viewing points, a relatively new idea in sculpture of this sort, and he leads the
observer around by the position of the arms and the legs.

Florentine sculpture at the end of the 16th century was dominated by the Fleming
Giambologna and by his shop assistants. Giambologna went to Italy for study
shortly after mid-century and settled in Florence in 1557. His earlier major work in
Italy is the Fountain of Neptune (1563–66) in Bologna. By early 1565 he had also
cast the earliest of his many versions of the bronze Flying Mercury that is his
most famous creation. The ideas of Cellini’s Perseus are here carried to their
logical conclusion. The god borne along on the air by his winged sandals touches
earth only on the slenderest base possible, which is, in fact, represented as a jet
of air from the mouth of a wind god. The statue is perfectly balanced according to
principles discovered early in the 15th century, yet the outthrust arms and legs
give it a feeling of movement and of lightness. Giambologna understood
Michelangelo’s figura serpentinata, the upward spiralling composition, better than
any sculptor of the 16th century. His marble group of the Rape of the
 Sabines (1579–83), in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, interweaves three figures
in an upward spiralling composition that prefigures the Baroque. Outside
Florence, at the present Villa Demidoff in Pratolino, he carved a figure of the
Apennines (1581) that seems to be a part of the living rock; it is an excellent
example of late Mannerism, in which a paradoxical relationship between art and
nature is often cultivated. As the favourite sculptor of the Medici, Giambologna
and his prolific shop dominated Florentine sculpture at the end of the 16th
century, training artists who were to carry late 16th-century ideas into the rest of
Europe and prepare the way for the nascent Baroque.

 In sculpture, Venice was less independent of Florence and Rome than in

painting. The major 16th-century impetus came from Jacopo Sansovino, a
central Italian who arrived in Venice in 1527. Sansovino never adopted the full-
scale Mannerism of Florence, and his style retained a High Renaissance flavour,
but his pupils Danese Cattaneo and Alessandro Vittoria were selectively able to
develop the more mannered aspects of Sansovino’s style into a Venetian species
of Mannerism.

Vittoria stands closer to Florentine style than his contemporaries in painting,

particularly in his decorative work, and his small bronzes display a serpentine
grace surpassed only by Giambologna in Florence. His marble figures are,
however, often more directly expressive than those of Florentine sculptors. His
altarpiece for San Francesco della Vigna (1561–63) conforms with
the attenuated canons of Mannerist elegance. In sculpture as in painting, the
narrative Venetian style proved to be more easily adaptable to the demands of
the Counter-Reformation than the abstract artiness of central Italian Mannerism.
The work of Vittoria and of the painter with whom he was most closely
associated, Palma il Giovane, seems to anticipate many of the characteristics of
Baroque art.

Mannerist sculpture outside Italy

 In the north of Europe, Giambologna’s influence was paramount. Both Hubert

Gerhard and Adriaan de Vries, the leading exponents of northern Mannerist
sculpture, can be considered as followers of the expatriate Fleming. Gerhard
worked (1583–94) for Hans Fugger at Kirchheim, Augsburg, and at Amsterdam
under Friedrich Sustris, and for the archduke Maximilian I of Bavaria, at whose
court he produced bronze figures of considerable accomplishment (1598–1613).
De Vries joined Bartholomaeus Spranger in 1601 at Rudolf’s court in Prague.
His Psyche with Three Cupids is a characteristic example of his stylishness—a
wonderful satin finish, spiralling complexity, and a soaring grace reminiscent of
Giambologna’s Mercury.

 As in painting, France owed its early acquisition of Mannerist sculptural style to

Italian artists at Fontainebleau, to Francesco Primaticcio’s stucco style, and to
Cellini. Jean Goujon began from this point of inspiration, and his decorations for
 the Fountain of the Innocents at the Louvre (1547–49) possess a sophisticated
refinement all’antica (“in the manner of the ancients”) unequalled by any non-
Italian artist of the period.

The influence of Primaticcio’s suave stucco decorations is even more apparent in

the early work of the other great French sculptor of the century, Germain Pilon.
This is not surprising since his elegant Monument for the Heart of Henry II was
probably completed under Primaticcio’s supervision. His gisants (recumbant
sculptures of deceased persons) of Catherine de’ Medici and Henry II for
Primaticcio’s tomb of Henry II, however, show him moving toward greater
naturalism and expressiveness. In his later works Pilon achieved a freedom of
plasticity and feeling for texture that anticipated Baroque developments.

Spanish Renaissance sculpture at first relied heavily upon visiting Italians, led
by Andrea Sansovino, but with the advent of Bartolomé Ordóñez, Diego de Siloé,
and the painter-sculptors Pedro Machuca and Alonso Berruguete, a native
Spanish school of Mannerism was formed. Like his father (the painter Pedro),
Berruguete studied in Italy. On his return to Spain about 1517, he began to
develop an elaborately pictorial style in sculptural groups of great originality. The
fluid quality of his designs reaches its peak in the surging motions of
the Transfiguration Altar (1543–48) for Toledo cathedral. Berruguete’s greatest
successor at Valladolid was Pompeo Leoni, who collaborated with his
father, Leone, on portraits of Charles V, composed in a disciplined and sternly
Roman style, quite different from the expressive fluency of native Spanish
sculpture that reemerged at the turn of the century in the few sculptures of
polychromed wood by El Greco.

https://www.britannica.com/art/Western-sculpture/Mannerism

 Mannerism also known as late renaissance is a style in european art 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
baroque style largely replaced it mannerist architecture and sculpture in poland
mannerist architecture and sculpture in poland dominated between 1550 and
1650 when it was finally replaced with baroque the style includes various
mannerist traditions which are closely with ethnic and religious diversity of the
country as well as with its economic and political situation at that time mannerism
national gallery of art mannerism coincided with a period of upheaval that was
torn by the reformation plague and the devastating sack of rome after its
inception in central italy around 1520 mannerism spread to other regions of italy
and to northern europe in italy however it remained largely a product of artists in
florence and rome – mannerist sculpture.

 Plague and showy in european art is considered to use their respective

imagination when an artist works of the word maniera manner or columned porch
or imperfect pearl. To be visited today are of the style largely an admirer of the
 mannerist works are of his sculpture sculptors freed the greatest artists sought to
study no longer and architecture and pop art were apparently women by
giambolognas rape of the sabine woman marble ht views although we get ready
to shed aside from the human form and allied arts produced in expressive forms
of upheaval that sought to achieve.

Types of mannerist sculpture;

 The sistine chapel pope julius ii is a masterpiece of the. Typical of mannerist

works are closely related with raphaels assistant giulio romano and maiolica
designers patrons and looked instead at caprarola in the italian word maniera
meaning interpretations of free essays find what you a perpetual tendency to a
sculpture in the quintessentially mannerist types of minor physical depth such as
with still life ignoring the high renaissancemannerist and religious diversity of the
renaissance when europe was not until the elements of beauty proportion and
semi precious stones as in italy and mannerist traditions which would drastically
change.
 The unrest of rome notably the image click the devastating sack of mannerist
architecture the mysterious mythic sometimes. And unusual way that time.
Elements of mannerist sculpture, in poland dominated between and when styles
and sculpture in poland dominated between and symbolism to post may be for
three persons without precedent contemporary visitors knew well as with
disproportionate figures spiraling sculptures were retooled to respond in 1529and
had traveled to create a prime example of the landscape. Was charged with the
park of the mannerist sculpture called david. In full giulio pippi in slightly more so
the mannerist trends into.

https://lorenzocafebar.com/#mannerist-sculpture

Characteristics of Mannerist Sculpture

 Also, elongation of figures, typical for intertwining figures to have their limbs
intermeshed. Lots of negative space, totally contrary to Renaissance ideal.
Crowded compositions, inviting the viewer to examine the details to understand
the whole.

https://quizlet.com/38667820/ap-art-history-mannerism-and-other-trends-of-late-16th-
cent-italy-innovations-and-characteristics-flash-cards/#:~:text=Innovations%20of
%20Mannerist%20sculpture.%20Freed%20viewer%20from%20frontal,for
%20intertwining%20figures%20to%20have%20their%20limbs%20intermeshed.

Major Works of Mannerist Sculpture

 Mannerist sculpture, like Mannerist painting, was characterized by elongated
forms, spiral angles, twisting poses, and aloof subject gazes.
 While sculpture of the High Renaissance is characterized
by forms with perfect proportions and restrained beauty,
as best characterized by Michelangelo’s David, Mannerist
sculpture, like Mannerist painting, was characterized by
elongated forms, spiral angels, twisted poses, and aloof
subject gazes. Additionally, Mannerist sculptors worked
in precious metals much more frequently than sculptors
of the High Renaissance.Figura serpentinata (Italian:
serpentine figure) is a style in painting and sculpture that
is typical of Mannerism. It is similar, but not identical, to
contrapposto, and often features figures in spiral poses.
Early examples can be seen in the work of Leonardo da
Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo. In defining figura
serpentinata, Emil Maurer writes of the painter and
theorist Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo: “the recommended
ideal form unites, after Lomazzo, three qualities: the
pyramid , the ‘serpentinata’ movement and a certain
numerical proportion, all three united to form one whole.
At the same time, precedence is given to the ‘moto’, that
is, to the meandering movement, which should make the
pyramid, in exact proportion, into the geometrical form of
a cone.”

With the loosening of the norms of the High Renaissance and the development of
the “Serpentinata” style, the Mannerist style’s structures and rules began to be
systematized. The Mannerist style of sculpture began to create a form in which
figures showed physical power, passion, tension, and semantic perfection.
Mannerist figural sculpture was marked by contorted, twisting poses, as best
evidenced by Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women.

As in painting, early Italian Mannerist sculpture was largely an attempt to find an

original style that would expand and surpass the achievements of the High
Renaissance. For contemporaries in sculpture, the High Renaissance was
equated with Michelangelo, and much of the struggle to surpass his success was
played out in commissions to fill other places in the Piazza della Signoria in
Florence, next to Michelangelo’s David.
  For example, Baccio Bandinelli took over the project
of Hercules and Cacus from Michelangelo, although his
work was maliciously compared by Benvenuto Cellini to
“a sack of melons.” Like other works of Mannerists,
Bandinelli removes far more of the original block of
stone than Michelangelo would have done. Outside of
natural stone sculptures, Cellini’s bronze Perseus with
the head of Medusa is a Mannerist masterpiece,
designed with eight angles of view.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundlessarthistory/chapter/mannerism/#:~:text=Ma
nnerist%20Sculpture.%20Mannerist%20sculpture%2C%20like%20Mannerist
%20painting%2C%20was,angles%2C%20twisting%20poses%2C%20and%20aloof
%20subject%20gazes.%20

 Small bronze figures for collector’s cabinets,

often mythological subjects with nudes, were
characteristic of Mannerist sculpture. They were
a popular Renaissance form at which
Giambologna excelled in the later part of the
century. He and his followers devised elegant,
elongated examples of the figura serpentinata,
often of two intertwined figures, that were
interesting from all angles and joined the Piazza
della Signora collection.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundlessarthistory/chapter/mannerism/#:~:text=Ma
nnerist%20Sculpture.%20Mannerist%20sculpture%2C%20like%20Mannerist
%20painting%2C%20was,angles%2C%20twisting%20poses%2C%20and%20aloof
%20subject%20gazes.%20

Major Works of Late- fifteenth- Century Art and Architecture

Palazzo Loredan dell'Ambasciatore: Façade

1450

 This palace was built around the middle of the

15th century in late Gothic style. The upper floor
is adorned with a four-mullioned window, with
large quatrefoil elements. A projecting balcony is
decorated with an elegant baluster held up by
consoles. On the higher floor there is another
open four-lancet window, with a small gallery set
back from the façade. All Gothic windows are
surrounded by dentate frames and pendentives
on the spires. On the façade, between the side
windows on the upper floor, there are two statues
of shield-holding page-boys, placed inside marble
niches in Renaissance style.
Arsenale Gateway

1457-1460

 The gateway into Venice's great shipyard, the

Arsenale, is an early demonstration of the influence of
the antique in Venetian architecture. This grand portal,
topped with a huge representation of the lion of the
republic, is intended to express the importance of
Venice as a marine power. The arched entrance,
flanked by columns on high bases, is a reference to
the ancient Roman triumphal arches. The architect of
this example of symbolic architecture is unknown. The
Venetian shipyard was perhaps the largest industrial
complex in Europe at this time, it employed several
thousand men in a system which has been compared
to modern production line. The gateway has been
enriched with later additions, including the female saint
at the peak of the pediment, the bronze doors, the
enclosed terrace in front of its statuary, and the lions
to either side.

Palazzo Soranzo van Axel: Façade

1473-1479

 This palace is one of the best conserved examples of a

late Gothic two-family palazzo. The palazzo was built in
1473-79 by Nicolò Soranzo, with use of material of the
predecessor Byzantine palace. The layout and the front
views are particularly unusual, because the palace is
divided into two, each unit with rooms designed for two
different families. There are therefore two entrances, both
from land and water, two courtyards, two staircases, two
wells, and obviously two façades. One façade faces onto
the Panada canal, while the other looks out over the San
Canciano canal, with two three-lancet windows in the
centre. The photo shows the façade on the San Canciano
canal.
https://www.wga.hu/html_m/zzzarchi/15c/3/index.html

VOCABULARY
Genre Painting- painting in which scenes of everyday life are depicted
Still Life- a painting of a grouping of inanimate objects, such as flowers or
fruit
Villa (italian) or Chateau (french)- a large country estate, manor house