The Mannerist School (1530 - 1600)

In its description of the subject of its exhibition Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice, the National Gallery of Art states "With Titian and Veronese, Tintoretto (c. 1519 - 1594) was one of the three great painters of the golden age of Venetian art, a bold innovator whose works overwhelmed and sometimes outraged his peers." His contemporary (and chronicler of the lives of the great artists) Giorgi Vasari described him as "swift, resolute, fantastic, and extravagant, and the most extraordinary brain that painting has ever produced." Henry James, considered among the greatest English-language novelists, called Tintoretto "The biggest genius who ever wielded a brush."

Venice born and bred, Tintoretto painted according to the precepts of the Mannerist school. Before discussing the artist, and the aforementioned exhibition, I provide an overview of Mannerism.

Mannerism, as described herein, is distinctly different from the Antwerp Mannerism that I have previously described. It emerged at the end of the High Renaissance and manifested as a "stylized twist" on Renaissance classicism. The name derives from the Italian word maniera which translates as "style" or "manner." Mannerism is viewed as a bridge between High Renaissance and Baroque. The chart below shows both the context and geographic distribution of the Mannerist school.

As stated by the Tate Museum,

Rather than adopting the harmonious ideals associated with Raphael and Michelangelo, Mannerists went a step further to create highly artificial compositions which showed off their techniques and skills in manipulating compositional elements to create a sense of sophisticated elegance.

Characteristics
The characteristics of Mannerism are as follows (mymodernmuseum.com, visual-arts-cork.com):

• Exaggerated figures -- this school rejected realistic proportions and, instead, rendered figures with impossibly elongated limbs and oddly positioned bodies. Two examples are shown below. Note the extended neck of Parmigianino's Madonna and some of the unnatural contortions in Tintoretto's The Last Supper.

Madonna of the Long Neck
Parmigianino, 1530 - 33

The Last Supper
Tintoretto, c. 1563/1564

• Elaborate decoration wherein the canvas is covered in an overwhelming abundance of decorative elements

Vertumnus
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, c. 1590 - 91

• Artificial color -- some of the mannerists abandoned the naturalistic colors of the high Renaissance painters and employed garish tones. See below, for example, Pontormi's Deposition from the Cross.

The Deposition from the Cross
Jacopo Pontormi, 1525 - 28

• Pictorial space filled by foreground figures (see Pontormi's Deposition above)
• The use of light from a single source sometimes abandoned in favor of contrasting effects of light and dark

Origins
The figure above (Mannerism in Context) shows a Florentine origin for the school and associates some of the greatest masters with Mannerism. The figure below shows examples of works by Raphael (The Transfiguration) and Michelangelo (The Last Judgment) which are considered Mannerist or Mannerist-leaning. The accompanying Fiorentino effort (Descent from the Cross) is clearly Mannerist and was also created in Florence. Note the similarities between Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Origins figure and Tintoretto's oil sketch for his Paradiso painting that immediately follows.

Paradise
Tintoretto, c. 1583

But it was in Rome that Mannerism truly blossomed with Parmigianino and many of Raphael's students collaborating to push the genre forward. The success of the movement in Rome led to later Florentine painters such as Vasari (with limited success) and Salviati (much more so) adapting the style. The Rome school also inspired Mannerism's adoption in many major European cities.

Mannerism never conquered the art space in the way that the Renaissance did. Rather, many artists continued to paint in the High Renaissance style alongside the Mannerist painters. Further, Mannerism was viewed with a jaundiced eye by the Catholic Church which was in the midst of the Counter Reformation battle and did not view the style as advancing its goals. In that the Catholic Church was the leading fine-art patron, its skepticism eventually led to the demise of the school.

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