The Carrying to the Grave, 1525,

Cappella Capponi, Santa Felicità

Florence, Italy

Jacopo Pontormo (1494 - 1557)

Oil on Panel
 Eccentric (unconventional and
slightly strange), reclusive artist
novel (unusual) manners,
vivid colors,
elongated gures and complex
postures,
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 Mannerism 1520 - 1610

breaking many of the classical conventions,

a reaction against the classical harmony,
distortion or re nement of late renaissance ideals,
emotional, decadent,
tension and drama,
exaggerated poses,
dramatic distortion of scale and perspective,
bold colors and lighting,

Art, The Definitive Visual Guide

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 Long and Tall

Distort and transform the natural

anatomy to accentuate extreme elegance

Exaggeration of the ideal beauty

willful complication of the body

use of gestures to dramatize the

composition for its own sake

ailing reaction against the strictures of

the High Renaissance
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“a highly commendable work
… full of grace and beauty.”

Georgio Vasari, 1511 -1574

 Madonna of the Long Neck, 1534 -1540
Galleria degli U zi,
Florence, Italy

Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, a.k.a.

Parmigianino (1494 - 1557)
Oil on Panel
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Artists of the High Renaissance felt they had perfected the portrayal of
reality, and Mannerists sought counter-realist forms of expression.

30,000 Years of Art, Phaidon

Mannerism, an absolute quality of fashion
The Feast in the House of Levi, 1573,
Galleria dell’ Academia, Venice

Paolo Veronese (1528 - 1588)

Oil on Canvas
dwelling in the pleasure of painting gures,
liberty with the subjects chosen to adorn the composition,
against common interest bu oons, drunkards, Germans, dwarves and
other like fooleries adorning the last supper

depicting the contemporary cosmopolitan Venice in the 1500s, which

was an intersection, a place where the world meets

the real chaos of Venice

the artist was called in for a tribunal for his blasphemy

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Allegory with Venus and Cupid, 1540-50

Agnolo di Cosimo, Bronzino (1503- 1572)

Oil on Panel
National Gallery, London
 embrace, Venus and Cupid,
surrounded by the gures of folly, deceit and
jealousy, complex meaning still to be understood,
time veiling/preventing the oblivion,

Excerpts fr , Art, The Definitive Visual Guide

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Rape of the Sabines, 1581, Florence

Giambologna (1529 - 1608)

Marble
Galleria dell’ Accademia, Florence
 tightly arranged gures, twisting upwards in a strong
vertical spiral,

‘ gura serpentina', to be viewed from all angles, no

single vantage point, no front or back

an exercise in self publicity demonstrating the artist’s

ability,

legend has it that in order to increase the population

of his city, Romulus, the founder of Rome, invited his
neighboring Sabines to a festival to which the nubile
Sabine women were abducted and raped.
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 Saltceller, 1542, France

Benvenuto Cellini (1500 - 1571)

Gold, enamel and ebony
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Mannerist taste of abundance and ingenuity
Rich and sensuous

Goddess Ceres’ temple holding pepper -

God Neptune’s cornucopia holding salt

The niches of the base containing gures of

Morning, Day Evening and Night,
the four winds
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 Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Children’s Games, 1560

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, 1559

The wedding Dance, 1566

The Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559

The Parable of the Blind, 1568

The Misanthrope, 1568

Peasant Bruegel

Mannerism of the Flanders

The wedding Dance Netherlandish Proverbs

Sophisticated, Sophisticated,

Lively peasant scenes, crowded obvious/ encyclopedic

sympathetic observation of over hundred di erent

everyday peasant life adages and expressions

voyeurism, codpieces, depicting absurdity of

human behavior
dancing disapproved of, by the
authorities and the church

a critique and comic depiction of a

stereotypical
oversexed, overindulgent, peasant
class of the times.
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The Parable of the Blind
‘And if the blind lead the blind,
both shall fall into the ditch’,
a terrible image of fatality, not
only of the blind men, but of all
those who are blind to dogmas
of religion
The Misanthrope
A new pessimism
an old man mourns the faithless
world, represented by the thief in
the globe, while the blue coat
symbolizes his own self-deceit.
The Burial of the Count Orgaz, 1586, Spain

El Greco (1494 - 1557)

Oil on Canvas
Santo Tomé, Toledo, Spain
expression of a personal style,
contrast of the mortal and the spiritual,
visionary and other- worldly atmosphere,
two halves of the painting distinctly
separated by the heads,
 Laocoön, 1610

El Greco (1494 - 1557)

Oil on Canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.
stylistic composite heads

whimsical, quirky

incredible variety of nature’s wonders

composed into portraits

Capricci, for amusement and

entertainment

still life was not yet a genre during this

time

he wasn't considered a true artist by the

Italian culture of the 16th century
 Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Summer Autumn Winter Spring

1563 - 1573, Milan, Italy

Water, Arcimboldo, 1566, Vienna, Austria