Art: TRIUMPH OF MANNERISM

FOR centuries “Mannerism” has been a dirty word in the art historian’s book, meaning “in the manner of” —or something akin to copycat. Renaissance enthusiasts use it to describe the painters who, in the century from 1520 to 1,620, tried to ape the much-admired manner of Michelangelo and Raphael, but, in missing the essence, turned out clumsy, valueless paintings. But art critics are now making an abrupt about-face. The long-despised Mannerists have at last been rescued from the dustbin and brushed off, to become Europe’s latest vogue.

High point for this new Mannerist revival is the current, three-month-long exhibition assembled by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. To show for the first time the full extent of Mannerist accomplishment, art objects ranging from bronze sculpture and oil paintings to glassware, furniture and sword hilts have been assembled from 155 museums and collectors. The show, though more a hit with critics and art-museum professionals than with the public, has already drawn 35,000 visitors. More significant, it has redefined the Mannerist century as an era rich in independent art style and as a seedbed for future art movements ranging from baroque and French classicism to yesterday’s surrealism.

And, ironically, the very elements that so long kept the Mannerists in disgrace have been key factors in their reevaluation. As modern critics were quick to note, the outstanding Mannerist trademarks—distorted space and human figures, a desire to shock, obscurity and a withdrawal from nature in favor of recording an inner and often highly intellectualized vision—are major currents in 20th century modern art.

For a Feverish Age. The abruptness which marked the end of the Renaissance’s Golden Age shocked even the men who lived through it. When the art-loving Medici Pope. Leo X, bowed his head in sorrow at Raphael’s death on Good Friday, 1520, he was unknowingly mourning the death of Renaissance Man. Within seven years, Rome, the symbol of Europe’s stability, lay smoking and sacked by German and Spanish troops.

In art, the feverish, distraught age turned for a touchstone to the final great works of the aging Michelangelo.

But as the Mannerist artists sensed the full impact of the world in crisis, they began to warp reality to meet the mounting tension of their inner vision.

To hold the attention of his patrons, Tintoretto heightened the drama of his work, wrenching perspective and (Continued on page 83) filling his canvas with staring, hysterical figures. Parmigianino, following the new Mannerist dictum that form springs ready born from the artist’s imagination, created a new kind of beauty, slender women with exquisitely enigmatic faces atop long, Modigliani-like necks. Courtiers, modeling themselves on Machiavelli’s precepts, flocked to Bronzino for portraits that showed their faces expressionless masks, only a clutching hand or startled stare betraying their tension.

For a Roving Eye. As the century gathered momentum, no excess in art or in the search for salvation became too violent. At one extreme, the lusty court of France’s François I plunged into headlong forgetfulness by cultivating an extravagant taste for involved classical allegory which made abundant use of nude figures.

Even royal mistresses, such as Henri IV’s Gabrielle d’Estrees (see color page), posed to show their full, solid voluptuousness revealed under the thinnest of gossamer veils. To hold a king’s roving eye, Painter François Bunel the Younger needed all his Mannerist tricks: he shifted the focus endlessly within the frame, from head and face to breasts to Gabrielle’s arched, elegant hand holding a ring, then to maidservant, and finally to Gabrielle’s mirrored profile, which disobeys all known laws of reflection.

At the other Mannerist extreme stood El Greco, who in his Toledo paintings finally dissolved the too, too solid flesh from his saints, painted them with bodies soaring upward, elongated and weightless, with fingers no more than mere ribbons of flesh. When El Greco died in 1614, the Age of Mannerism was already drawing to a close. But before El Greco died, he had validated the Mannerists’ extreme contention, that the laws of perspective and proportion must give way before man’s inner vision, which not so much mocks nature as triumphs over it.