Northern Mannerism
Northern Mannerism is the form of Mannerism that took hold north of the Alps in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It arrived in France around 1530, when Florentine artists among them Rosso Fiorentino and Francesco Primaticcio were hired to decorate the palace of Fontainebleau, generating a native style of lavish stucco frames, strapwork and mythological nudes. From 1576 the court of Rudolf II in Prague made the style its own, producing refined, highly finished mythological allegories by Bartholomäus Spranger and spreading them across Europe through prints, above all those of Hendrick Goltzius. In the Netherlands from the 1580s the idiom of the Haarlem Mannerists produced wildly elongated figures and agitated poses before artists moved on toward Caravaggio and the early Baroque.
Defining characteristics
- Elongated, serpentine figures - tiny heads, long tapering limbs and complex spiraling poses
- Cool, enamel-like finish and meticulous, jewel-like surface detail
- Courtly eroticism: crowded mythological scenes of near-naked gods and nymphs
- Dense ornamental vocabulary - strapwork, swags of fruit and sculpted stucco frames around paintings
- Brilliant, sometimes acidic color under polished, artificial light
- Virtuoso prints that carried the style across northern Europe
Key figures
- Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540) — Florentine painter at Fontainebleau whose ornamental stucco style defined the French phase
- Francesco Primaticcio (c. 1505-1570) — Bolognese painter-sculptor who carried the Fontainebleau idiom forward in France
- Bartholomäus Spranger (1546-1611) — Flemish court painter to Rudolf II whose mythological allegories anchored the Prague phase
- Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) — The greatest printmaker of the day, whose engravings spread the style across northern Europe
- Joachim Wtewael (1566-1631) — Utrecht painter who sustained an unabashed Mannerist idiom to the end of his life
Example works
- Perseus Freeing Andromeda — Joachim Wtewael (1611)
- Eva Prima Pandora — Jean Cousin the Elder (c. 1550)
Sources
- Northern Mannerism - Wikipedia encyclopedia