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Mannerism: High Renaissance
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Taking Vasari's quality of maniera as the key to Mannerism, it is possible to outline some of its hallmarks. In figure style, the standard of formal complexity had been set by Michelangelo and that of idealized beauty by Raphael. In the art of their followers, obsession with style in figure composition often outweighed the importance of the subject matter. The highest value was placed upon the apparently effortless solution of considerable artistic problems, such as the portrayal of the nude figure in complex poses. Specifically, the finished work was not supposed to betray signs of the labour that lay behind it.
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Mannerism covered both the Renaissance and Baroque time periods, but many pieces did not fit with the characteristics of either of these two movements, and ... Mannerism was created to describe them. Art took on a darker tone, and the realism of the Renaissance style was replaced by something more fantastic. El Greco's work defines Mannerist styles. Elongated figures, strange composition, vivid color, and a sense of fantasy create the power of emotion in Mannerist art. Some artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo, who are defined as artists of the High Renaissance painted with many characteristics of mannerism.
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Referred to as the "stylish style", Mannerism is characterized by compositional, emotional, and narrative elements that shift from the balance of harmony and equilibrium articulated by the art of the High Renaissance. In order to emphasize torsos and limbs, Mannerist artists often violated classical canons of perfect proportions. Figures were not only nude, but elongated and elaborate in a near vertiginous fashion, indicating the artists’ mastery of anatomy. In some cases the figures were nearly grotesque in their depiction of exaggerated musculature indebted to Michelangelo and his followers, as exemplified particularly with the work of Goltzius. Likewise, the physical distortions underscored the violence, drama, and cruelty of the narrative, though grace, elegance, and wit were important features of the Mannerist aesthetic as reflected in their choice of mythological and allegorical subjects such as the three fates, the five senses, and the seven cardinal virtues.
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Endeavours to depict the spiritual were equally characteristic of Mannerism, especially in the field of painting. Medieval artists set weightless figures against a space less gold ground to suggest the realm of the Divine; in the Renaissance an interest in naturalistic description and anatomy subordinated the depiction of the transcendental. In Renaissance art the 'miracle is a process like any other earthly event' (Frey). For example, in Raphael's Disputa the heavenly and earthly spheres are bound together by being represented with equal reality. Mannerism... developed new means of distinguishing between the earthly and the divine, and in Mannerist art 'the world beyond intrudes into the world below' (Frey). The High Renaissance had paved the way for this process: Raphael, for instance, suggested the miraculous in the Liberation of St Peter (1514; Rome, Vatican, Stanza di Eliodoro) through the representation of light.
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By the time European artists arrived in the Americas in large numbers, Mannerism, a style characterized by artificiality and a self-conscious cultivation of elegance, had usurped the Renaissance style in popularity. The Spanish-trained painter Baltasar de Echave Orio established a dynasty of painters in Mexico that controlled official commissions there for three generations.
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The multitude of opposing tendencies in 16th-century art makes it difficult to categorize by a single term, a difficulty increased by the importance Mannerism placed on conflict and diversity. Giorgio Vasari first applied the word 'maniera' to the visual arts in 1550. He used the words 'maniera greca' to describe the Byzantine style of medieval artists, which yielded to the naturalism of the early Renaissance, and he wrote of the 'maniera' of Michelangelo, which deeply influenced later 16th-century art. This gave rise to the modern concept of Mannerism as a description for the style of the 16th century. Although in 18th- and 19th-century art theory Mannerism was regarded as marking a decline from the High Renaissance, in the early 20th century critics recognized its affinities with contemporary artistic movements, and Mannerist art was highly esteemed. At the same time its importance in leading to the Baroque was appreciated, as were those aspects that opposed the classical stability of the High Renaissance.
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