Styles & Periods

Mannerism

Mannerism developed in Florence in the later half of the 16th century, in part as a development of the work of Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo. However, this period between the High Renaissance and the Baroque was in fact a departure from the High Renaissance in that the artists embodied a purely aesthetic ideal, and strove for refined expression that created newly abstract images. Content and harmony, cornerstones of the High Renaissance, were forfeited for grace, display of technique and construed subject. Jacopo da Pontormo’s work displays the strange, dissonant color palettes and elongated forms of Mannerist works. His paintings are not built on rational interpretations, but are rather seemingly impulsive, individual responses of his own invention. Agnolo Bronzino painted in the later part of Mannerism, and as a result took Mannerism even further. His cool, technically impressive style is not as rooted in personal sensibilities as Pontormo’s is, but shows an intense pursuit of formal beauty. Above all, sensuality ruled in the obscure art of the Mannerists.