Universal Principles of Art

49 MANNERISM

TRADING BEAUTY AND REPOSE FOR EXCITEMENT AND MOVEMENT

Mannerism is a style that emerged immediately after the High Renaissance in Italy and lasted from about 1520 to 1580. It might best be thought of as both a reaction to, and an extension of, the perfection and repose of the High Renaissance style exemplified by Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo. In the work of those masters, clarity of form, classical repose, and a balance of naturalism and idealism had reached a pitch that was hard to improve. With Raphael’s death in 1520, a younger generation of artists began to make works that dramatized aspects of classicism in ways that were sometimes surprising and disturbing. Compositions became more disorganized, oppositions of forms ...