Mannerism (pronounced man-uh-riz-uhm)
(1) A habitual or characteristic manner, mode, or way of doing something; distinctive quality or style, as in behavior or speech; a distinctive and individual gesture or trait; idiosyncrasy.
(2) Marked or excessive adherence to an unusual or a particular manner, especially if affected; adherence to a distinctive or affected manner, especially in art or literature.
(3) A style in art, a principally Italian movement in art and architecture between the High Renaissance and Baroque periods (1520–1600) that sought to represent an ideal of beauty rather than natural images of it, characterized by a complex perspectival system, elongation of forms, strained gestures or poses of figures, and intense, often strident color (usually initial capital letter).
1795–1805: A compound word manner + -ism. Manner was from the Middle English maner, a borrowing from the Anglo-Norman manere, from the Old French maniere, from the Vulgar Latin manāria (feminine form of manuarius (belonging to the hand)), from manus (hand). In Romance languages, there was also the French manière, the Italian mannaia (ax, axe), the Portuguese maneira and maneiro (handy, portable), the Romanian mâner (handle), and the Spanish manera (way). The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done). It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc). Mannerism & mannerist are nouns, manneristic & manneristical are adjectives and manneristically is an adverb; the most commonly use noun plural is mannerists.
After the Renaissance
Historians of art use (sometimes a little loosely) the term Mannerism to refer to a style of painting, sculpture and even architecture which developed in Florence and Rome in the first two decades of the sixteenth century, the later years of the High Renaissance and although it’s a bit of a cliché, mannerism can be thought of as the transition between the idealized style of Renaissance art and the dramatic theatricality of the Baroque. Early Mannerism (circa 1510-1535) tends to be known for what it was not: it was “anti-Renaissance” or “anti-classical” and a reaction against what had evolved to be a formal and prescriptive style while High Mannerism (circa 1535-1580) adopted a formalism of its own, intricate, self-referential and a visual language which focused on technique and an appeal to the sophisticated critics and patrons of the age. A deliberate retreat or advance depending on one’s view) from the naturalistic traditions of Renaissance painting the artificiality became the an exaggerated idiom associated with the era and was applied to the strained poses, elongated human figures, distortions of scale, tricks of lighting or perspective which were often depicted in vivid, contrasting colors. More than anything, it was an attempt to find a way in which the attributes of the emotions could be depicted by technique alone. Because Mannerism is now so associated with its distinctive markers such as the wan-like necks and facial expressions suggesting something between bemusement and constipation, it’s often forgotten artists as diverse as Correggio (1489-1534), noted for his sentimental narrative paintings, Federico Barocci (1526-1612) the devoutly religious painter of sacred images and Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) known for his monumentally bizarre portraits which were collages of fruit and vegetable (still popular as posters) were all significant figures in the mannerist tradition. The best remembered of course remains Michelangelo (1475-1564) who influenced for centuries the portrayal of the Christ child by showing light radiating from the infant, his Sistine Chapel frescoes such as The Last Judgement (1536-1541) a landmark of the movement.
High Mannerism: El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz (The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586) oil on canvas by El Greco (Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos, 1541-1614)
Mannerism
did not develop merely as an artistic novelty.
The idealized works of the High Renaissance were an expression of stability
in society which had by the sixteenth century evolved into what at the time
seemed to many not only the highest level of civilization ever achieved but the
highest that was possible to achieve.
That didn’t last and the turmoil which followed in the wake of the religious
war of the Reformation against the Catholic Church shattered the certainties of
centuries, something exacerbated by what was discovered and uncovered by
science; not only was it clear that Europe was not the centre of a flat Earth,
but the Earth itself was not something around which all the universe revolved. The ordered harmony of the world explained by
the church was crumbling and the adventurism of Mannerism was there to reflects
the new uncertainties.
Vista de Toledo (View of Toledo, circa 1599), oil on canvas by El Greco. Although most associated with depictions of the human form, Mannerism also spawned a school of landscape painting. Vista de Toledo is the best known of El Greco's surviving landscapes, a portrayal of the city in which he lived and worked in for most of his life. Mannerist depictions of the built environment actually belonged to the long tradition of emblematic rather than faithful documentary descriptions of city views and here, there's also a bit of artistic licence; viewed looking north-east, the artist has shifted the cathedral to the left of the Alcázar (the royal palace), just to provide the desired compositional balance. The ancient Alcántara Bridge and the Castle of San Servando are both faithfully represented.
Some
historians have argued that although Mannerism wasn’t at any time inevitable, something
was because the artistic forms of the Renaissance had been perfected by Old
Masters like Raphael and Leonardo who had refined their techniques to the point
where their ability to render the natural and realistic transcended the two-dimensional
space in which they often worked; at what they did, they couldn’t be improved
upon. This wasn’t an attractive thing
for younger artists who wished to be more than just imitative and foreshadowing
the iconoclastic movements which centuries later would remake what art could be
thought to be, the mannerists formed a new pictorial language, one which was individualistic
and mapped symbolism onto a visual structure in which the symmetry and balance
so prized by the Old Masters were replaced by a dynamism so challenging that a
viewer might be uncertain where their gaze should be focused. It was a confident and exaggerated
artificiality.
Nozze di Cana (The Wedding Feast at Cana, 1562–1563), oil on canvas by Paolo Veronese (Paolo Caliari, 1528–1588). Nozze di Cana is sometime used in fine art studies, lecturers asking students to identify the elements associated with the High Renaissance and those then exclusive to mannerism.
From Mannerism can be traced the path which led via almost a dozen different movements to the art of post-modernism in which the real & unreal, the spiritual world and the perceptible world, can not necessarily be distinguished, a notion which the masters of the High Renaissance would have thought absurd but just as Mannerism was once a disrupter, it became an orthodoxy so of course there were those who wanted to create their own unique things and the school begat “High Mannerism” which in the seventeenth century became “the Baroque” and, in a nice twist, the style (which at its core was illusionist) was with alacrity embraced by the Church which understood what needed to be done to make faith attractive. It was at the Council of Trent (1562) when the framework for the strategy of the Counter-Reformation was first thrashed out that it was decided the mystical and supernatural would become a prominent part of the religious experience: Baroque art could do that like none other.
The mannerist tradition: Lindsay (2019) by Sam McKinniss (b 1985) (left), from a reference photograph taken 22 July 2012, leaving the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, LA (right).
A distinctive feature of Mannerism was the use of figurative serpentinata (serpentine figure) in the depiction of the human body with extended limbs and the elongation of forms, the figures presented an otherworldliness that departed from classical renditions and many Mannerist works presented individuals or scenes in non-naturalistic settings, oftentimes without any contextual basis, inviting the viewer to regard the work as something beyond the literal renditions of the Renaissance.
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