This next video is about Mannerism
in painting and in sculpture, and a little bit of architecture,
and then moving into the Counter-Reformation, and how art changes as
a reaction against Mannerism.
So, first off, starting with Mannerism [in painting], Mannerism is often seen
as a reaction to the High Renaissance style. So the High Renaissance style is seen
as beautiful and harmonious,
colors that work well together. Well, Mannerism is seen as a little bit
different than that. We see a concentration on the nude: lots of
fleshy figures, lots of bodies all over the place,
lots of different positions with bizarre and convoluted poses, exaggerated muscular
development,
possibly as a way of building on some of the
bodies and types that are being put forth by Michelangelo.
the subject matter either becomes deliberately obscure or treated so that
it becomes difficult to understand,
so it's not all about clarity -- what we saw in the High Renaissance,
and even in some cases in the early Renaissance. It was all about making things
easy and clear to understand -- making narrative
clear, helping the viewer along. With Mannerism things become a little bit
more complicated.
There are extremes of perspective, distorted proportions or scale,
vivid color schemes and discord contrasts, so
colors that aren't really very natural or colors that don't work well together,
and really bright, vivid ways. So,
"maniera" means style, so
is kind of this very stylish style. It's this very exaggerated style.
So, we'll focus on a few paintings, then we'll get into sculpture, and a
little
architecture, but mostly it's seen
as working against some of the main principles of the High Renaissance.
So, if we look at this example by Parmigianino -- this is the Madonna of
the Long Neck, where we see some of these exaggerated proportions her
large lower body, which is distracting; the extremely elongated Christ
who extends across her lap; of course, her long neck
for which the painting is named; her extremely long
fingers; her very small upper body;
the Virgin, of course, is huge which speaks to her
importance, but then there's this tiny, little men off to the side.
This isn't a completed painting. You can that it's not quite done yet.
You can see there's some kind of temple being constructed -- this kind of endless row of columns
with a man, who kind of looks like an architect off to the side,
classical style costume.
So, it's just painting that doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense
at first view demonstrating a move away from the clarity
the High Renaissance and the idea of perfect proportions
or harmonious proportions that are pleasing to the eye.
In this case, we are really not seeing that. The Virgin was often seen as a vessel
for Christ. We have this angel figure holding out a vessel -- the idea that
she's the vessel of the body of Christ. But we also see some
sexy elements -- these erotic elements that sometimes come into
these mannerist
paintings. So this angel is exposing the leg here
in a very fleshy kind of way. The body of the Virgin is being revealed
under the drapery. We can see here her belly button.
So, just a few usually elements that speak to the prominence of the nude and
the body. Probably the most famous
better painting is this example, so it's "Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time" or
"The Allegory of Lust".
Is this an exposure incest, where we see mother and son
together, or is Venus just disarming
Cupid in a very strategic way. So, here we see
Venus with her body pushed forward into the foreground, pale,
and looking very sculptural, and then the body
of Cupid -- who is not a little baby here. He is more of an
adolescent and his bottom is pointing towards us,
whereas Venus' front is facing towards us. We know it's Venus. She's wearing a crown,
but also she's holding on to the Golden Apple, which was her
reward for the Judgment of Paris for being the most beautiful of the
goddesses.
And we see she's removing an arrow from Cupid. And then we see a lot of figures around
that are very complex. So we see Folly here, who is about to
throw rose petals on them. A figure who represents Fraud --
who is a very sweet, beautiful young girl holding honey comb,
sweet, sweet, sweet! And then she has this
monstrous body behind her. We see
a figure of Time possibly revealing the scene.
A figure of Jealousy tearing out her hair, or possibly
representative of syphilis, which was a
sexually transmitted disease that was really ravaging
Italy and France during this period.
So it's a very, again, a complex scene, an emphasis on fleshy,
nude bodies, an emphasis on sensuality.
And so this is all very common in mannerism. It was given to Francis I,
probably by Cosimo
I [primo] de'Medici, who became Duke of Florence [and Grand Duke of Tuscany],
and so what we see here is a gift from one ruler to another.
Clearly, both would have been very educated, and would have wanted this kind of complex
subject matter --
and Francis seemed have preferred this kind of erotic subject matter,
as well. So, another artist that worked for
Cosimo I de'Medici was Cellini. Benvenuto Cellini who wrote
his own autobiography. One of the pieces that was featured
was his "Perseus and Medusa", so Perseus is a great hero who
killed Medusa, and we him here after the
moment where he's cut off her head, and he's holding up. And this
is s sculpture that demonstrates some mannerist tendencies in fact that you need to walk
all the way around it.
We'll see this in some Baroque sculptures as well, but idea that
interact with it multiple angles. In this case, you would walk
on this side and see Perseus with his muscular, contrapposto stance,
but as you walked around, you could see the headless body
Medusa with the blood -- the appearance or blood -- pouring out at you.
Another thing to notice is that this is just a really impressive bronze
sculpture
due to the fact that is has so much detail. And Cellini
was very proud of it due to the fact that when he did the pour -- when the bronze was poured into the
mold, it was able to get all of the small details
that are included on this image.
So, Mannerism in sculpture: a Mannerist statue must be walked all around and
all of its angles of view are equally important.
We see this, too, with another work by Cellni which thankfully was never
melted down. It is made out of gold. It was a very expensive work,
and it was also a gift to Francis I [actually it was a commission], just like the Bronzino
work that we just saw.
It, too, is very sensual. We see a figure representing this
sea, and looking similar to Poseidon, gesturing with
trident in kind of a phallic way, and we also see
the figure here, representing the land, a touching her breast and
with their feet intertwined -- the way the sea and the land
might meet at the shore, and this is actually a very fancy
basically salt and pepper holder. And so you would have your salt over in this boat
here. You would have
pepper held in the triumphal arch, and so this
it very, very luxurious type of element that would put to adorn your table
and what we see during the Renaissance is very, very fancy types
of table adornment. And this one done in a particularly
Mannerist style by Cellini. As we move into
Mannerism in architecture, what we're seeing here is a pleasure palace for
Federico II Gonzaga,
and he was duke of
Mantua, son of Isabella d'Este. We see here are a few things that are a little
bit unexpected:
things like triglyphs falling, things like
keystones that are too large, so Mannerist architecture just does a few things that
you might not traditionally expect of architecture.
Architecture tends to follow very strict rules, and in Mannerist
architecture you see some of
these rules up played around with. The most inventive group inside the
Palazzo del Te
is the "Room of the Giants." What we see here is a battle between the Olympian
gods
and the Giants -- the very famous battle up that's been retold in many
movies and stories. And what we see here is a group that essentially been turned
into a
dome with this churning floor,
and the allusion here is that there's almost an earthquake happening as this
battle is raging.
So, we see the Giants down below. You can see here's one about to be crushed by
these stones, and you see these columns about to collapse,
and then the Olympian gods are featured up in the ceiling,
and what Giulio Romano is doing -- Giulio Romano was a student of
Raphael -- is he's come to the city of Mantua, where Andrea Mantegna had worked
and painted rooms [like the Camera Picta],
and he's trying to create a room that will really interact with the viewer,
where the viewer will be
really impressed, where it looks like the group almost collapsing in on itself,
so that the idea with this room. It's very hard to see in a photograph, but
when you see it in person, you get the sense
of this room collapsing in on itself. So as we move towards the
Reformation and Counter Reformation -- just a few historical events. So
Martin Luther very important of course in the Protestant Reformation.
In 1517, he posts his 95 theses against
indulgences, which were being sold by the church
and against the corruption of the clergy. Raphael dies in 1520,
which is essentially seen as the end of the High Renaissance, more or less.
We have Pope Leo X Medici, who dies in 1521.
He had essentially ignored the Protestant Reformation going on --
the Protestant protests, essentially. You have another Medici
elected, and eventually while he is ruling, Rome will be sacked by the troops
of
the emperor Charles V, which really shows that Rome
as a Catholic center, and as center that had been respected,
is really losing its importance,
its centrality in Europe and is no longer as respected.
So, one of the reasons the church was selling so many indulgences, and why
Martin Luther was so upset about them was the large project of the rebuilding
of St.
Peter's, which was the important church of the Vatican, right next to the papal
palace.
And so Michelangelo's suggestion was to make more of a central plan,
eventually, they'll extend the nave to
fit more people in the Counter Reformation, but his focus is on
a beautiful dome -- a beautiful segmented dome, indicating his Florentine
heritage, so they will create his dome. It will become a little bit more
elongated. But you can see his contributions in the apse
and in the dome, where he's really turning architecture into sculpture;
he's carving out areas; he adding decoration that isn't typically
part of architecture -- almost in a Mannerist style, adding
little curving elements, little boxes look like windows, but aren't
even functioning as windows. So, the idea here is to carve out the space in a very
elaborate fashion.
But, it also demonstrates just how large this project was,
and also how expensive it would have been, and how they would have had to sell
so many indulgences in order to fund this project,
leading to the Reformation and eventually then eventually the Counter Reformation
on the Catholic side. So, thinking about the Counter Reformation,
which was the Catholics church's response
to the Protestant concerns. So the Catholic Church realizes it has to make
reforms, and this includes in the production of its art.
If we think about that Mannerist art, with all its fleshy bodies and
eroticism, we think about how the church needed to make some changes.
So, the Catholic stand on art came in the Council of Trent -- it came
near the end of the Council of Trent. And what were these recommendations? so, here
are a few of them.
So, first off, images of the divine should not be
worshiped as divine -- so images of Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints
shouldn't be worshiped as idols. The images should be used to teach
true doctrines of the Catholic faith -- nothing invented by the artist.
And then it should avoid superstition, lasciviousness,
seductive charm, boisterous festivities or drunkenness,
and that there should be decency and clarity, and that figure should not be confusedly
arranged.
So this last section really indicate that this is coming after the style of
Mannerism and trying to fix it. So,
one of the paintings where we saw quite a bit of trouble --
the artists Veronese, who was from the north [of Italy] got in trouble when he
named this painting "The Last Supper" or created a Last Supper for
the refectory -- the area where the monks would eat in
San Giovanni e Paolo [San Zanipolo], which was a church in Venice,
so it's a large refectory. He needed to fill a lot of space, so he takes the Last
Supper, and he
essentially turns it into an elaborate party.
The Inquisition has some problems with this, eventually he renames it.
They have issues with the drunkenness. There are
Germans in there! And the the Germans are ones that are protesting [in the Protestant Reformation].
Dwarfs are mentioned -- a man with a bloody nose.
There are just too many figures that are distracting
from the religious subject matter. So what we see here
is an occasion where an artist gets in trouble
for at pushing the subject matter a little bit too far, using
his artistic license, and what Veronses refers to
as a way to try to get out of it [out of trouble, that is]. He actually refers to Michelangelo's
"Last judgment." which was something that Michelangelo painted in the Sistine
Chapel
a number years after he completed
his first painting of the ceiling. So he actually goes back
a little over 20 years later and creates this image of the "Last Judgment,"
and these figures are nude and fleshy and very much in that Mannerist style.
We see Christ as judge at center with the Virgin next to him,
and we see that he's pushing figures down into the Hellfires,
and then certain figures are being saved. It's a very dramatic scene
but mostly these figures are just very, very nude and
fleshy, and so Veronese discuss that in his defense. He says [and I'm paraphrasing] "but what about
Michelangelo's painting with all those nude figures,
and that people in the Inquisition say, well, you know in the Last Judgment
everyone's going to be nude. What's interesting is a few years later, they
actually send someone in to add little
britches and little coverings on these nude
figures, so that they are covered up,
and the genitals are no longer revealed in this very
holy chapel. So, what see during the Counter Reformation
is a response to Mannerism and
a reaction against some of its stylistic features.