GRGR(30): More on Mannerism

[David Morris]

http://www.tam.itesm.mx/~jdorante/art/manerismo/imanie01.htm

Contemporary with the crisis of religious ideas, Mannerism appears during 
the 16th century ( the Reform begins in 1517).

Without opposing classical Renaissance, Mannerism breaks appart from the 
formal principles established during this period.  Michael Angelo, with his 
tormented figures, seems to have shown the road.  Symmetry desappears in 
favor of diagonal compositions; balance and measure give room to movement 
and expression. The games played by light and shadow become as dramatic as 
the faces.

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/6/0,5716,119566+1+110517,00.html

Mannerism is the term applied to certain aspects of artistic style, mainly 
Italian, in the period between the High Renaissance of the early 16th 
century and the beginnings of Baroque art in the early 17th. From the third 
decade of the 16th century, political and religious tensions erupted 
violently in Italy, particularly in Rome, which was sacked in 1527 by the 
imperial troops of Charles V. The school of Bramante and Raphael, which had 
produced the High Renaissance style, was dispersed throughout Italy as the 
artists fled from devastated Rome. Mannerism appeared and prevailed in some 
regions until the end of the 16th century, when the Baroque style developed. 
Mannerism was antithetical to many of the principles of the High 
Renaissance. In place of harmony, clarity, and repose it was characterized 
by extreme sophistication, complexity, and novelty. Mannerist architects 
were no less interested in ancient classical architecture than were their 
predecessors, but they found other qualities in ancient Roman architecture 
to exploit. In fact, they often displayed an even greater knowledge of 
antiquity than did earlier artists.

For Vasari, as a practicing Mannerist architect, the same criteria of 
stylishness in design could be applied to a building as to a work of 
painting or sculpture. Vasari designed and built for an educated elite, one 
that would appreciate both his understanding of the rules of Roman 
architecture and the ingenious liberties that he took with these rules. 
Florentine and Roman 16th-century architecture is characterized by a secular 
cleverness--a building was judged on elegance, ingenuity, and variety of 
form.

After the resolved classical order and measured harmony of Bramante's High 
Renaissance buildings, two main, though interwoven, directions of Mannerist 
development become apparent. One of these, emanating largely from Peruzzi, 
relied upon a detailed study of antique decorative motifs--grotesques, 
classical gems, coins, and the like--which were used in a pictorial fashion 
to decorate the plane of the facade. This tendency was crystallized in 
Raphael's Palazzo Branconio dell'Aquila (destroyed) at Rome, where the 
regular logic of a Bramante facade was abandoned in favour of complex, 
out-of-step rhythms and encrusted surface decorations of medallions and 
swags. The detailed archaizing elements of this manner were taken up later 
by Pirro Ligorio, by the architects of the Palazzo Spada in Rome, and by 
Giovanni Antonio Dosio.

The second trend exploited the calculated breaking of rules, the taking of 
sophisticated liberties with classical architectural vocabulary. Two very 
different buildings of the 1520s were responsible for initiating this taste, 
Michelangelo's Laurentian Library in Florence and the Palazzo del Te by 
Giulio Romano in Mantua. Michelangelo's composition relies upon a novel 
reassembly of classical motifs for plastically expressive purposes, while 
Giulio's weird distortion of classical forms is of a more consciously 
bizarre and entertaining kind. The various exterior aspects of the Palazzo 
del Te provide a succession of changing moods, which are contrived so as to 
retain the surprised attention of the spectator rather than to present him 
with a building that can be comprehended at a glance. In the courtyard the 
oddly fractured cornice sections create an air of ponderous tension, whereas 
the loggia is lightly elegant. Similarly, the illusionistic decoration of 
the interior runs the full gamut from heavy (if self-parodying) tragedy to 
pretty delicacy. Giulio also created a series of contrived vistas, through 
arches and doors, much like that later projected by Michelangelo for the 
Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Such management of scenic effects became one of the 
hallmarks of later Mannerist architecture.

Increasingly, architecture, sculpture, and walled gardens came to be 
regarded as part of a complex (but not unified) whole. In the Villa Giulia 
(c. 1550-55), the most significant secular project of its time, Vasari 
appears to have been in charge of the scenic integration of the various 
elements; Giacomo da Vignola designed part of the actual building, while the 
Mannerist sculptor Bartolommeo Ammanati was largely responsible for the 
sculptural decoration. In spite of the continuous stepped vista, the 
building makes its impact through a succession of diverse effects rather 
than by mounting up to a unified climax. There, and in Vasari's design for 
the Uffizi Palace (1560), the vista seems to have been based upon the 
supposed style of antique stage sets, as interpreted by Peruzzi. It is not 
surprising that the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio came closest to 
achieving a fully Mannerist style in his Teatro Olimpico at Vicenza, where 
the receding vistas and rich sculptural details create an effect of 
extraordinary complexity. Similarly, it is not surprising that the greatest 
of the later Mannerist architects in Florence, Bernardo Buontalenti, should 
have been an acknowledged master of stage design. He was employed at the 
Medici court as a designer of grandly fantastic ephemera--mock river battles 
and stage intermezzi (interval entertainments) in which elaborate stage 
machinery effected miraculous transformations, figures descending from the 
clouds to slay dragons that spouted realistic blood, followed by music and 
dance all'antica. As a garden designer, Buontalenti enriched the traditional 
formal schemes with entertaining diversions, in which water often played a 
prominent role--either in fountains or in wetting booby traps for the 
strolling visitor. Buontalenti's buildings possess much of this capricious 
spirit in addition to his brilliantly inventive command of fluently plastic 
detailing.

In their treatment of detail, 16th-century Florentine architects inevitably 
looked toward Michelangelo as their example of innovative genius. 
Michelangelo's Medici Chapel in San Lorenzo was executed, in Vasari's 
opinion, "in a style more varied and novel than that of any other master," 
and "thus all artists are under a great and eternal obligation to 
Michelangelo, seeing that he broke the fetters and chains that had earlier 
confined them to the creation of traditional forms." By Vasari's time the 
Mannerist quest for novelty had reached a thoroughly self-conscious level.



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