Mannerism

Question 1

Mannerism

Answer 1

In the next generation of painters, after the Renaissance, the old sense of harmony and order disappeared, and was replaced by almost nightmarish visions

These artists were called Mannerists (maniera: mannered; artificial)

Question 2

Mannerist Style

Answer 2

• Elevated a personal, eccentric, art above the realism and classical harmony or the renaissance
• Essence of mannerism is exaggeration used to express a personal vision, to emphasize emotion

Question 3

Answer 3

Rosso Fiorentino (the redheaded Florentine)

-The Descent from the Cross, 1521, by Rosso

Theatrical lighting, twisted human forms, lurid colors; lit as if by a flash of lightning against a dark sky

Question 4

Answer 4

Jacopo Pontormo

-Florence’s leading artist after Michelangelo left the city

Increasingly eccentric and solitary, haunted by a private anguish

The Deposition, 1526-8

Crowded, gesturing figures that seem insubstantial and wraithlike

Swirling host of tormented figures with moody faces and odd, half-completed gestures

Question 5

Answer 5

Bronzino

An Allegory, 1545

Detached, sinuously elongated forms

• Pontormo’s pupil
• Bronzino created even less real creatures

Question 6

Answer 6

El Greco

• Charged mannerist conventions with spiritual drama
• Lacoön, 1610

Lacoön was priest of Apollo who angered the gods by warning the Trojans about the Greek’s wooden horse. He and his son were set upon by sea serpents

Troy is a loosely brushed composite of the skyline of the artist’s adopted Spanish home, Toledo, which spreads across stark hills under a storm-torn sky