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Shearman explains that “When a Mannerist artist breaks rules he does so on the basis of knowledge and not of ignorance” (26). Many art historians including Shearman define Mannerism as un-classical and founded on the reversal of classical relationships and forms. In Pontormo?s Deposition, all the figures are characterized by athletic twists and turns, but the figure in the central front of the painting bends at the ribs, and holds up Christ?s body while positioned on the tips of his toes and leaning on a mound of fabric. Both are feats impossible for the human body to achieve. Artists of the high Renaissance strove to recreate the perfection of human form precisely but also realistically. Pontormo?s work is a mass of confusion. It is unclear at times whom certain appendage belongs to, or if a figure possesses them at all.

“Paolo Pino, in his Dialogo della Pittura says that in all your works you should intorduce at least one figure that is all distorted, ambiguous and difficult” (Shearman, 86). Mannerist figures appear flat yet are often twisted and contorted in many directions. By breaking the rules, it was obvious that the artist and anyone able to identify the broken rules knows them, and that they are educated in the finer points of art. It would perhaps be more witty to own a work that portrayed a deviation of a rule rather than simply offering one up to the audience.

Mannerist artists like to exploit the strain between two and three dimensions, between restricting flatness and poses that suggest the need of freedom and flexibility. Pontormo not only played with the rules of his figures, but he also breaks the rules of composition. Mannerist space is flat and ambiguous; the audience is never quite sure where it is going, or how the figures are arranged in it. The figures appear to be standing on a hill or incline, because the figures in the rear are lifted much higher than those in the front, and there are no clues to how far back the space actually extends.

The center of the canvas is the space usually allocated for the focus of the painting during the High Renaissance, but Pontormo leaves it empty. This leaves the composition void of a focal point forcing the viewers eye to continually scan the image. The bodies of the figures seem to move around the frame of the canvas, and the focus of each figure is somewhere different in the painting. Two figures are even facing toward the back of the painting leaving viewers unsure where their attention should be focused.

The composition is abstracted further by the palette of colors Pontormo chose. Compositions of the high Renaissance used, for the most part, the full range of primary colors, almost none of which appear in this work. Mannerist color wasn?t meant to be realistic, it was for the purpose of variation, and thrill.

Again in Fiorentino?s Descent From the Cross, the multitude of figures creates a lack of focus in the image, but the uniform light in the painting also helps to disperse focal attention. Mannerist light tends to originate from somewhere parallel to the picture plane reserving shadow for surfaces that recede or protrude. Containing such a small amount of shadow, Fiorentino?s scene appears to be bathed in the harsh flash of a camera stressing each figure equally and obscuring the subject. Fiorentino?s figures are a mass of parallels and intersections describing the use of line and geometry in Mannerist painting. Smyth says that “Elongation is not central to maniera, but the principals of angularity and of spotting the composition with angular elements are” (11). The cross and ladders add to the geometry of the painting and aid in the tangency of forms.

Shearman explains that the title ?Mannerism? creates the illusion that it was a conscious movement like one of the 19th or 20th centuries. Mannerism didn?t have a focus, the artists weren?t working toward a common goal. The artists of Mannerism were influenced by all that came before them: antiquity, their predecessors and artistic peers, but Mannerists were most importantly looking toward the future and their own imaginations. Artists were for the first time were creating art for the sake of art. The goal of art was no longer intended completely as social or religious propaganda to be determined by the patron. Mannerist art was influenced by imagination and based on fantasy, and it was largely aimed at the enjoyment of an audience.

Tansey, Richard G. and Fred S. Kleiner. Gardner?s Art Through the Ages. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996.

Janson, H.W. and Anthony F. Janson. History of Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997.

Fenton, James. Introduction. Les Miserables. By Victor Hugo. New York: Dewynters, 1997.

Waldman, Diane. Roy Lichtenstein. New York: Rizzoli International, 1993.

Waldman, Diane. Roy Lichtenstein. Austria: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1969.

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