Mannerism and the late Renaissance
After the harmony of the High Renaissance, artists sought out the sophisticated, the restless and the surprising.
When Raphael died in 1520 and Michelangelo had shown what was possible, younger artists asked themselves what was left to do. Their answer was an art that deliberately broke with harmony. Bodies grew elongated, colours sharp, and spaces cramped and hard to read. The style is called Mannerism, after the Italian word maniera, meaning style or manner. For a long time the term was derogatory, but today the period is seen as one of the most experimental in the history of art. Artists wanted to display a style of their own.
The period was marked by crisis. Rome was sacked in 1527 by the emperor's soldiers, the Reformation split the Church across Europe, and the Catholic Church responded with the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent. Art was now expected to be clear and devout, and nudity in churches was viewed with suspicion. At the same time, court art flourished in Florence, Mantua and other princely cities, where educated patrons prized enigmatic allegories and elegant virtuosity. Artists moved between these worlds. The same painter might produce a severe altarpiece for a church and a sensual myth for a duke.
In Venice, Titian went on painting into the 1570s, while Tintoretto and Veronese filled churches and palaces with large, luminous and dramatic paintings. The architect Andrea Palladio built villas and churches on ancient models, and his book on architecture spread around the world. Giorgio Vasari wrote the first biographies of artists and founded an academy in Florence. Art had become something people wrote about, taught and collected. This laid the foundations of modern art history.