The Mannerism era of art was all about elegance, artificial exaggerations, and making artworks as grand and over-the-top as possible. It came after the natural, more harmonious Renaissance period, and ...

By isolating Mannerism’s criteria from the transient tastes of history, we can discover its essential workings, not only as they are expounded in the work of Michelangelo and his successors, but also ...

This exhibition examines the works of artists employed by European courts in the 16th century, such as the Medici in Florence, French royalty at Fontainebleau, and the Holy Roman Imperial courts in ...

“We live in an eclectic time in which everything can be considered architecture, so nothing is perhaps authentically so,” writes architect and theorist Lina Malfona. In her new book, published as part ...

They called it "the manner". The manner was precious, artificial, convoluted, a bit pretentious, often dry, always unnatural. It was everything that good, healthy, humane art is not supposed to be.

First, a history lesson: 500 years ago the harmony and high grandeur of Renaissance painting and architecture yielded to a new style characterized by distorted forms, awkward balances and lurid ...

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 ...