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Pontormo,
Joseph in Egypt, 1515-18, Oil on wood, 96 x 109 cm, National Gallery,
London.
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Mannerism is a style of art that was out of favour for
centuries; but with the appearance of movements like German Expression and the
avant-garde of the early twentieth-century, mannerism was deemed to be
relevant, with its rehabilitation following. The Italian word “maniera” means style
in English, though it is difficult to tie it down to a specific definition.[1]
Though mannerism was a movement that spread across Europe, its origins can be
found in Florence, especially in the art of Pontormo and Rosso. In his
indispensable survey of sixteenth-century Italian painting, Sydney Freedberg divided
Florentine mannerism into a number of component parts. Firstly he identified a
radical style practiced by Pontormo and Rosso, who though thoroughly aware of
the classical tradition, sought to subvert it for their own artistic ends. This
is the “first maniera” or “post- classical experiment” that follows on from
Michelangelo, thought by some to be the instigator of mannerism. According to
Freedberg, Pontormo and Rosso “inverted the accepted sense of classical form or
warped it to their new ends, and made new inventions of aesthetic devices or
borrowed them from sources that were geographically or chronologically outside
the sphere of reference of classicism.”[2]
Later in the century, Freedberg argued for a formation of what he called the
“high maniera”, the blossoming of the early phase in the work of such artists
as Bronzino, Salviati, and Vasari, in the time of Cosimo di Medici who founded
the Florentine Academy. The end game of Florentine mannerism is played out in a
time of religious reform, and Freedberg includes “Florentine reformers” such as
Santi di Tito who rejected the mannerist style of Bronzino in favour of
naturalism and what Freedberg called “Late Counter-Maniera”
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