Mannerist Painting in Italy and Venice

"Mannerism" is a term that has been used in such varying senses through the centuries that it would seem best, in the interest of clarity, to abandon it altogether. However, it has becomes part of the language of the history of art, and is unavoidable.

Italy
Audrea
Pontormo
Rosso
Braccafumi
Venice
Tintoretto

Audrea's masterpieces, such as "The Madonna of the Harpies", 1517, may at first glance compel comparison with Raphael's Madonnas --not only for their classicism but also in sheer quality--yet his handling of light, mysterious instead of clam and even, is emotive as Raphael's never was.

"The Madonna of the Harpies", 1517

The attendant saints glance up at the onlooker, as if no barrier exists between their world and his.

Pontormo

Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo's (1494-1557) later works are almost hallucinatory. In his Desposition in Florence, the colors are high in key and clear, with little light and shade; the draperies seem to have an independent life of their own; the bodies are elongated--in some cases.

The Deposition, c. 1526-28

Pontormo resolves the conflict between form and content: the emotion is at a high pitch without detracting from the beauty and grace of the whole.

Rosso

Pontormo's friend and contemporary Geovanni Masttista Rosso Fiorentino (1495-1540) also painted a Deposition, some years earlier than Lontormo's, in 1521, and no less extraordinary. Cross and ladders from an almost geometric framework, across which the figures, with strange grimaces and emphatic gestures, are arranged in a bizarre conjunction of nakedness and independent draperies.

The Deposition, 1521

The scene is lit as if by a flash of lightning, fiercely delineating the hard-edged forms which characterize Rosso's work throughout his career.

Mannerism had its effect elsewhere in Italy, most singularly in Siena, on Domenica Beccafumi (c. 1468-1551). His religious paintings have a high-keyed emotional quality, and often flame-bright colors in which something of the earlier Sienese colorist tradition persists.

The birth of the , c. 1543

The light is lively, the colors are rich but somber; the Mannerism of this late work is less strident, and more intimate in mood.

Tintoretto is reputed to have had written up on his studio wall: "Titian's color, Michelangelo's line". Venetian color, Mannerist line might be an accurate description f his sources, but his own accurate description of his sources, but his own synthesis has not much to do with either Titian or Michelangelo. He evolved his own compositional technique, dependent not only on a large repertoire of study drawings but also on preliminary studies of figures modeled in wax: these he arranged experimentally in special boxes until he found the most dramatic viewpoint and the most effective lighting. He tended to use the somber ground colors on his canvas for the darks in his painting, working the design over them in lighter colors in broad strokes, "tuning" the whole finally with highlights--a technique that often gives his work an incandescent, unearthly radiance.

St Mark frees as Christian slave, 1548

As the slave's bonds fall away, astonishment at the miracle ripples outwards in shots and glimmers of color along the rhythmic line of arrested gestures.

St Mark frees as Christian slave, 1548

Here the color is muted, the funeral chiaroscuro flickers with livid light, the setting is eccentric.

The Last Supper, 1592-94

A turbulent atmosphere moves like heavy incense through the huge canvas, submerging the gestures of figures in movement or conversation; the heads gleam like spiritual coals.