Introduction to Mannerism in Art

GROUP 7
REPORTERS: DARREN LOUIS S. UYANGURIN AND VINCE LEONARD P. DAACA
 Mannerism in Art Appreciation

 Mannerism is an art movement that emerged in Italy during the late

Renaissance period, between the years 1520 and lasted until the end
of the 16th century. It is characterized by a departure from the
classical ideals of proportion, balance, and harmony, and instead
emphasizes a more subjective and emotional approach to art.
 Artists of the Mannerist movement often used elongated figures,
exaggerated poses, and distorted perspectives to create a sense of
drama and tension in their work, which was intended to elicit an
emotional response from the viewer.
 Mannerism was also characterized by a heightened sense of emotion
and expressiveness. Artists used vibrant colors, strong contrasts, and
bold patterns to convey a sense of drama and intensity.
 Mannerism in Art Appreciation

 Mannerism was a reaction to the classical ideals of beauty and balance that
had been prominent in Renaissance art. Artists began to experiment with new
techniques and styles that emphasized the individuality of the artist and his
own unique style. This led to a shift away from the realism and naturalism of
Renaissance art towards a more subjective and stylized approach.
 Mannerist artists often used elongated figures, contorted poses, and
exaggerated movements to create a sense of drama and tension in their works.
They also employed complex and intricate compositions, often featuring
crowded and busy scenes with multiple figures and objects.
 Overall, mannerism was a highly stylized and decorative style of art that
emphasized the individuality of the artist and his unique approach to
composition and form.
 Historical Context

 Mannerism emerged in Italy in the early 16th century, during the High Renaissance
period, which was marked by a renewed interest in classical art and humanism.
 However, by the 1520s, Italy was undergoing political and social upheavals, including
the sack of Rome in 1527, which marked the end of the High Renaissance.
 This period of uncertainty and instability led artists to experiment with new styles and
techniques, resulting in the emergence of Mannerism.
 Mannerism was also influenced by the Counter-Reformation, a movement within the
Catholic Church aimed at reviving religious fervor in response to the Protestant
Reformation.
 Mannerist artists sought to create art that was more emotional and expressive, and that
conveyed the teachings of the Church through vivid and dramatic imagery.
 However, Mannerism was also criticized for being too complex and artificial, and for
deviating from the classical ideals of beauty and harmony that had characterized
Renaissance art.
 Major Characteristics of Mannerism

 Mannerism is a style of art that emerged in Italy in the early 16th century, during the period of political and social
upheavals that followed the High Renaissance.
 Mannerist artists sought to break away from the classical ideals of beauty and balance that had characterized
Renaissance art, and instead emphasized individuality and the unique style of the artist.
 This resulted in a shift away from the realism and naturalism of Renaissance art, towards a more subjective and
stylized approach.
 Mannerist art is characterized by exaggerated poses and forms, elongated figures, and contorted movements that
create a sense of drama and tension.
 Mannerist artists often used complex and intricate compositions, featuring crowded and busy scenes with multiple
figures and objects.
 The style of Mannerism is often described as ornate and decorative, with a focus on intricate details and artificiality.
 MANNERISM ART EXAMPLES

Madonna with the Long Neck Eleanor of Toledo The Deposition from the Cross Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time Rape of the Sabine Women
 MANNERISM ART MOVEMENT
 This work focuses on the Madonna, whose extenuated limbs and monumental scale fill the center of the canvas. A
Madonna with the Long Neck
Artist: Parmigianino
nude infant Jesus reclines on his mother's lap while angels crowd around them. His pale form, limp arms, and
closed eyes create a disconcerting effect reminiscent of a woeful Pietà. Mary's expression is also nontraditional. As
she holds elegant but overly long fingers to her heart, looking down with a slight smile, she seems bemused and
distanced. A dissonance results between the haunting religious image and its portrait of what could be a
fashionable but emotionally disconnected aristocrat. The angels are much more animated, but evoke the curiosity
and liveliness of ordinary children more than a divine presence. The architectural setting, while conveying a
'classical' effect, is not classically rendered with linear perspective, and an unsettling ambiguity results. To the right
of the column, the very small figure of St. Jerome, his limbs elongated, holds out a scroll while looking back over
his shoulder.
The work was popularly titled "Madonna with the Long Neck," as Mary's graceful linearity evokes a swan. In 1534
this work was commissioned for Francesco Tagliaferri's funerary chapel in Parma but left incomplete in 1540 when
the artist died. Perhaps, no other work has so come to characterize the Mannerist approach, as the artist pulled out
all the stops in creating an unorthodox treatment of space and the figure. As E. H. Gombrich wrote, "Instead of
distributing his figures in equal pairs on both sides of the Madonna, he crammed a jostling crowd of angels into a
narrow corner, and left the other side wide open to show the tall figure of the prophet, so reduced in size through
the distance that he hardly reaches the Madonna's knee. There can be no doubt, then, that if this be madness there
is method in it." The Madonna's right foot seems to extend beyond the pictorial plane, as if into the viewer's space,
and suggest that the artist's intent was to innovatively involve the viewer in its riddle of relationship and meaning.
 MANNERISM ART MOVEMENT

 This portrait shows Eleanor of Toledo, the Spanish wife of Cosimo I de' Medici, then the Grand Duke of Tuscany,
and one of their sons on her right. Scholars debate which of the couple's three sons is depicted, though most hold
that, according to the painting's date, it must be their middle son, Giovanni. Eleanor's hand rests on her son's
shoulder, and the gesture, combined with her wearing a dress with a pomegranate motif symbolizing motherhood,
refers to her role as a kind of secular Madonna.

This portrait was part of a pair, the other being Bronzino's portrait of Cosimo I. The painting was intended to be
an idealized portrait, reflecting the stability of the ruler, the wealth and dignity of his family, but the overall effect
is of an inscrutable distance, as the artist, a noted poet, wrote, "steel inside and ice without." Eleanor's expression
is unreadable, her appearance, a mask creating an impenetrable social presence. As art critic James Hall noted, in
the work, "Naturalism is reined in by quasi-heraldic colors, contours, patterns and shapes. His power-dressed
women both seduce and awe."

A great deal of emphasis is given to the expensive silk dress, brocaded with black arabesques and gold weft loops,
leading some critics to argue that the work was also, in effect, a pioneering use of product placement, advocating
for the Florentine silk industry which Cosimo I had revived. Art critic Roderick Conway Morris wrote, "Most
famous is the majestic, Madonna-like picture of Cosimo's consort, Eleonora of Toledo, in which her gorgeous,
minutely observed brocade dress, in monetary terms worth scores of paintings, is as much a protagonist as the
Eleanor of Toledo Duchess herself."
Artist: Bronzino
The portrait influenced 20th century artists, as seen in Frida Kahlo's Portrait of Alicia Galant (1927).
 MANNERISM ART MOVEMENT
 This altarpiece depicts a swirl of stricken and grieving figures as they lower the dead
The Deposition from the Cross
Artist: Jacopo Da Pontormo
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.
 MANNERISM ART MOVEMENT

 This allegorical but mysterious painting depicts Venus in the center, her pose contorted to turn her alabaster-
smooth torso toward the viewer. A nude Cupid, who is her son from an adulterous affair with Mars, embraces her
as his right hand caresses her breast and his left turns her head toward him for a kiss. Cupid universally represents
desire, and the artist has shockingly depicted the two as lovers, though the work also seems like a theatrical
staging with its two masks, similar to those symbolizing tragedy and comedy, lying discarded on the lower right.
Adding to the mystery, to Cupid's left a grimacing haggard figure clutches her head, while, above, a face floats in
profile, her hands unfolding the blue swirling cloth of the background. On the right holding a bouquet of bright
pink flowers in his uplifted hands, a gleeful putto strides forward. Behind him a chimera combining a girl's face
with a disjointed body that seems part animal and part bird, a scorpion's barb on her back, holds out a honeycomb.
The meaning of the figures has been much debated, as some scholars identify the chimera with Pleasure and
Fraud, the figure on the left tearing its hair with Jealousy, and the putto as Folly. The wrathful man whose head
looms at the top right, his arm reaching out as if to tear away the veiling blue cloth, while an hour glass can be
seen behind him, seems to be Time. The work presents an erotic riddle, implicating the viewer.

Later critics like John Ruskin and Bernard Berenson specifically condemned the work for its artificiality and
perversion. However, artists like Jacques-Louis David, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Giorgio de Chirico,
An Allegory with Venus and Cupid
Artist: Bronzino
were later inspired by "the master of the mannerist erotic scene," as Morris described Bronzino. The painting has
also been a cultural presence, referenced in novels by Iris Murdoch and Robertson Davies, in Yasuko Aoike's
manga From Eroica with Love (1976-2010), and Lina Wertmüller's film Seven Beauties (1975).
 MANNERISM ART MOVEMENT

 This famous and influential Mannerist sculpture depicts the violent struggle between three nude
figures: a Roman man, his veined back denoting his strength, a nude woman who he seizes as she
twists backward, trying to escape, and an older man crouching beneath the Roman in fear. For all its
classical treatment that combines a refined finish with anatomical naturalism, the work powerfully
conveys sexual aggression through its Mannerist emphasis on the figura serpentinata and expression
of terror and helplessness.

The figures create a spiraling vortex with the result that the perspective of the work changes
continually as the viewer walks around it. This multiplicity of view, lacking one central frontal view,
was a radical innovation.

Rape of the Sabine Women
Artist: Giambologna
In 1579 Francesco I, the son of Cosimo I de' Medici, gave Giambologna a large marble block to sculpt
a work with a complex group of figures. The sculptor originally intended to create two figures but,
subsequently, added a third. The title of the work, only assigned later upon installation in the Loggia
dei Lanzi, depicts a mythological account from Roman history when the Romans, then new arrivals in
Italy, sought wives from the native Sabine tribes. The Sabines refused, so the Romans staged a festival
to honor the god Neptune and invited the tribe in order to abduct the women.