Mannerism Art and Paintings

In art, Mannerism means the elegant, artificial style that followed the High Renaissance in Italy from about 1520 to 1600. Tate describes it as the style of the followers of Raphael and Michelangelo, marked by artificiality, elegance and sensuous distortion of the human figure: rather than adopting the harmony of those masters, they built highly artificial compositions that showed off their skill. The Getty's art vocabulary adds a sense of fantasy, experiments with color and a new human form of elongated, pallid, exaggerated elegance.

Sources: Tate: Mannerist · Getty AAT: Mannerist

Mannerist paintings have elongated, often twisting figures, crowded or ambiguous space and strong, unusual colors, as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, sums the style up. The National Gallery in London adds a highly finished, self-consciously stylized look, figures idealized after the example of Michelangelo, unnatural color used for decoration and expression, and intentionally complex and witty compositions. It sees all of this in Bronzino's Allegory, with its enamel-like surface, marble-like limbs and almost no depth.

Sources: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Google Arts & Culture) · National Gallery: Mannerist (glossary) · National Gallery London

The Mannerist period ran from about 1520 to 1600, between the High Renaissance and the Baroque. Tate dates it from around 1520 to 1600 and the Getty's art vocabulary from the 1520s to about 1590, after the High Renaissance peak of about 1500–1530. Around 1600 Annibale Carracci came to be seen as rescuing Italian art from the excesses of Mannerism, the National Gallery in London says, but some painters kept the style longer: El Greco worked in Toledo until his death in 1614, and Joachim Wtewael was one of the main Mannerists in Holland in the early 17th century.

Sources: Tate: Mannerist · Getty AAT: Mannerist · Tate: Renaissance · National Gallery: Annibale Carracci · Metropolitan Museum of Art · National Gallery: Joachim Wtewael

Mannerism started in Italy, in Florence and Rome, and then spread across Europe. The Getty's art vocabulary says it developed chiefly in Rome, and the National Gallery in London says it was first produced in Italy and then exported to the rest of the continent. Its first painters were Florentines, Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. After the Sack of Rome in 1527, Rosso moved north and in 1530 went to France to work on the royal château at Fontainebleau; El Greco took the style to Toledo in Spain; and Bartholomeus Spranger, court painter to Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, shaped the Mannerists of Haarlem.

Sources: Getty AAT: Mannerist · National Gallery: Mannerist (glossary) · National Gallery: Rosso Fiorentino · National Gallery: El Greco · National Gallery: Joachim Wtewael

The main Mannerist painters were Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Parmigianino and Bronzino in Italy, Tintoretto in Venice and El Greco in Spain. The National Gallery in London calls Pontormo the main exponent of an early, expressive Mannerism, Rosso a pioneer of it, Parmigianino one of its originators and leading exponents, and Bronzino, Pontormo's pupil, the leading painter of mid-16th-century Florence. It says Tintoretto is usually described as a Mannerist and that El Greco developed his intense, colorful Mannerist style in Venice. In the north, Cornelis van Haarlem, Hendrick Goltzius and Karel van Mander led the Haarlem Mannerists.

Sources: National Gallery: Pontormo · National Gallery: Rosso Fiorentino · National Gallery: Parmigianino · National Gallery: Bronzino · National Gallery: Jacopo Tintoretto · National Gallery: El Greco · National Gallery: Cornelis van Haarlem

Well-known examples of Mannerist art include Parmigianino's Madonna with the Long Neck, Bronzino's Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time and his portrait of Eleonora di Toledo with her son, Pontormo's Deposition in Santa Felicita, Rosso Fiorentino's The Dead Christ with Angels, Arcimboldo's Vertumnus and El Greco's The Burial of the Count of Orgaz. The National Gallery in London says the Allegory epitomizes the erudite, courtly art of Mannerism; the Uffizi files the Madonna with the Long Neck and Eleonora under Mannerism; Skokloster Castle tags Vertumnus as Mannerism; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, calls Rosso one of the style's primary practitioners.

Sources: National Gallery London · Uffizi Gallery: Madonna with the Long Neck (Google Arts & Culture) · Uffizi Gallery (Google Arts & Culture) · Skokloster Castle: Vertumnus (Google Arts & Culture) · Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Google Arts & Culture) · Friends of Florence: Pontormo, Deposition from the Cross

El Greco's style is an intense, colorful Mannerism with elongated figures, unnatural color and visionary light. The National Gallery in London says he was born in Crete and deeply influenced by Byzantine art there, trained in Venice under Titian, learned from Tintoretto and the Bassano family, studied Michelangelo and Raphael in Rome in 1570, and had settled in Toledo by 1577. In his late Laocoön, the National Gallery of Art in Washington sees writhing line, lurid color and illogically conceived space, with figures that seem incorporeal.

Sources: National Gallery: El Greco · National Gallery of Art, Washington: Laocoön (Google Arts & Culture)

Michelangelo is usually counted as a master of the High Renaissance, but his work was the main source of Mannerism. The National Gallery in London calls him the hero of the High Renaissance and says his Sistine Chapel ceiling, with its innumerable figures in complex, twisting poses and its exuberant color, is the chief source of the Mannerist style. Tate defines Mannerism as the style of the followers of Raphael and Michelangelo from around 1520 to 1600, the years in which Michelangelo himself painted the Last Judgment on the chapel's altar wall, in 1536-1541.

Sources: National Gallery: Michelangelo · Tate: Mannerist · Vatican Museums: Sistine Chapel

Renaissance painting aimed at harmony, balance and natural-looking figures; Mannerism, which followed from about 1520, made them deliberately artificial, elongated and complex. Tate says the Mannerists, rather than adopting the harmonious ideals of Raphael and Michelangelo, went a step further to create highly artificial compositions. The National Gallery in London says Mannerist art reacted against the High Renaissance ideals of harmony, proportion and naturalism, and stressed intellectual sophistication, unnatural elegance, artifice and instability.

Sources: Tate: Mannerist · National Gallery London · Getty AAT: Mannerist

Mannerist painters used smooth, highly finished surfaces, strong artificial light and shifting, unnatural colors. In Bronzino's Allegory, the National Gallery in London points to brushstrokes blended away into an almost enamel-like surface, bright white artificial lighting on clearly outlined, marble-like limbs, a shallow composition like a relief sculpture with no real background, ultramarine blue made from lapis lazuli, and cangiante colors that change like shot silk. The Getty's art vocabulary also notes experiments with color and materials.

Sources: National Gallery London · Getty AAT: Mannerist

Mannerism spread across Europe and kept returning in later art. Tate says the elegant artificiality of Elizabethan court painting in Britain can be seen as an echo of it, and that it influenced later artists such as Henry Fuseli. The National Gallery in London says Parmigianino's widely circulated etchings carried his manner throughout Europe. In Toledo, the parish of Santo Tomé notes that Goya, and after him Picasso, saw in El Greco the first Impressionist.

Sources: Tate: Mannerist · National Gallery: Parmigianino · Church of Santo Tomé, Toledo: El Greco (Spanish)

Northern Mannerism is the Mannerist style as it developed in the Netherlands and at the imperial court in Prague in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The National Gallery in London says the Haarlem Mannerists, led by Cornelis van Haarlem, Hendrick Goltzius and Karel van Mander, took their style from the artists at the court of Rudolf II, where the Antwerp-born Bartholomeus Spranger was court painter, and that Joachim Wtewael in Utrecht first met the style at Fontainebleau. The Rijksmuseum calls Spranger's tall, slender figures with small heads characteristic of his work.

Sources: National Gallery: Cornelis van Haarlem · National Gallery: Joachim Wtewael · Rijksmuseum: Spranger, Venus and Adonis

Florence has many of them: the Uffizi holds Parmigianino's Madonna with the Long Neck, Rosso Fiorentino's Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro, Bronzino's Eleonora di Toledo with her son, and Pontormo's Deposition is still in the church of Santa Felicita. In London, the National Gallery has Bronzino's Allegory and works by Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino and Parmigianino. In Toledo, El Greco's The Burial of the Count of Orgaz still hangs in the Church of Santo Tomé and The Disrobing of Christ in the cathedral; his View of Toledo is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Sources: Uffizi Gallery: Madonna with the Long Neck (Google Arts & Culture) · Uffizi Gallery · Uffizi Gallery (Google Arts & Culture) · Friends of Florence: Pontormo, Deposition from the Cross · National Gallery London · National Gallery: Pontormo · National Gallery: Rosso Fiorentino · National Gallery: Parmigianino · Church of Santo Tomé, Toledo: El Greco (Spanish) · Toledo Cathedral: Places of interest (Spanish) · Metropolitan Museum of Art

Yes. Every painter on this page died by 1638, so their paintings are in the public domain in the United States and in countries where copyright ends 70 years after the artist's death. You can download them free and use them for anything, including commercial projects. A few countries have their own rules on photographs of artworks, so check them if you publish outside the U.S.

Sources: Cornell University Library: Copyright Term and the Public Domain