The main features of mannerism are: Sophistication of art. Exaggerated, oblique and asymmetrical stylization. Use of intriguing spirals, proportions, volumes and perspectives.
Explanation:
Mannerism is employed by modern critics to designate artistic production, especially Italian, which takes place between 1520 and 1600, that is, between the end of the High Renaissance and the beginning of the Baroque. The recovery of the notion as a historical category, referring to a specific style - observed in the interwar period, especially in the 1920s - should not obscure its tortuous trajectory, marked by inaccuracies and a series of negative connotations. The term is popularized by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) - himself an artist of the period - who speaks of maniera as synonymous with grace, lightness and sophistication. In the later writings of Giovanni Pietro Bellori (1613-1696) and Luigi Lanzi (1732-1810), the notion appears to be linked to artificial elegance and excessive virtuosity. This critical reading key, which reverberates in several later studies, associates mannerism with the decay of classical perfection represented by the works of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) and Raphael (1483-1520). According to this critical lineage, mannerism appears as a superficial and distorted imitation of the great masters of the previous period, as an abandonment of the balance, proportion, and rationality cultivated by classicism. "Vacuum between two ridges", "moment of tiredness and inertia that followed fatally, almost in reaction to the splendid heyday of the arts in the first half of the 16th century", or "crisis phase", the history of mannerism, points out critic Giulio Carlo Argan is inseparable from the negative evaluations surrounding the notion
