Distortion and Drama: An Introduction to Late Renaissance Art
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In our last post, we saw that the art of the High Renaissance (1490-1527) is known for the idealisation of the human figure and compositional geometry. In the late Renaissance, artists sought to go beyond these ideals, experimenting with contorted compositions, elongated figures and drama. Part four in our Introduction to Art series.
Europe in the mid-sixteenth century was changing. Protestantism was challenging the Catholic Church, the economic system was developing into capitalism and Europeans were exploring the rest of the world. Religious images in particular were coming under scrutiny in the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent (1545–1563) decided that religious images must be unambiguous, and devout contemplation. At the same time, virtuoso displays of talent were developing in the arts.
Titian
Tiziano Vecellio (Titian) worked in Venice rather than Florence or Rome. He developed a “sketchy” style that influenced artists for generations.
Titian’s earlier works did not use this sketchiness. His The Bacchanal of the Andrians (c. 1523-1524) was painted for the palace of Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, who devoted much of his life to collecting art and to learning about antiquity.
It is based on a written description by Philostratus, a third century Greek writer who described an ancient painting of Andros, an island with a river of wine created by Bacchus. Titian associated the pagan world with youthful happiness and painted a mixture of nudes, classical and contemporary clothing.
From 1540, Titian’s style changed. His The Flaying of Marsyas (c. 1575) is an example of his later tendency to paint “sketchy” paintings. The satyr Marsyas was flayed alive by the god Apollo, who had defeated him in a musical contest. As the satyr is skinned alive, blood falls onto the ground.
In this painting, Titian left his paint strokes unblended to make it look like an unfinished sketch, although he had in fact painted very carefully. He would let the first layer of paint dry then paint over and over again, drawing attention to the brush strokes rather than concealing them.
Titian’s new techniques were part of a general trend in the late Renaissance of going beyond the aims of naturalism and perfection that had been central to the High Renaissance.
Parmigianino and Mannerism
The term “mannerism” was originally coined as a criticism of Italian Renaissance art from between 1520 and 1600 that undermined the classicism of the High Renaissance. In the twentieth century, this became less pejorative due to the rise of expressionism (a modernist art movement originating in early 20th-century Germany that prioritises subjective emotion over objective reality). Now, the term can mean sixteenth century European art that is seems artificial and overly-emotional, with often contorted and unrealistically elongated figures.
A classic example of mannerist art is a work by Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola—also called Parmigianino: Madonna with the Long Neck (1534–40), which depicts the Virgin Mary with a very small head compared to her long neck, big hips and big body. The baby Jesus is very elongated, and his body is contorted in an uncomfortable way.
Some scholars think that the contortion of the body in mannerism is still linked to the techniques of antiquity—for instance, the classical sculpture of Laocoön involves twisting, contorted bodies. Michelangelo had experimented with twisted body positions in his Pietà, as had other artists of the High Renaissance.
Some art historians see mannerism as a way of going beyond the naturalistic perfectionism of the High Renaissance. Rather than distorting the body into a kind of ugliness, Dr. Stephen Zucker argues, “It’s not so much an ugly deformation as a kind of deformation that accentuates a kind of extreme elegance.” His colleague, Dr. Beth Harris, adds, “One way of thinking about Mannerism is to think about it as art taken from art instead of art from nature…a wilful complicating of the body.”
Jacopo Tintoretto
Jacopo Tintoretto was born in Venice and worked almost exclusively for Venetian patrons. His The Removal of the Body of Saint Mark (1562–66) was painted for the Scuola Grande di San Marco. If we compare this to Raphael’s Entombment or The Deposition (1507), which also has a dead body being carried in a similar pose, we can see that Tintoretto’s use of space is completely different.
In the same series, Tintoretto’s The Finding of the Body of Saint Mark (c. 1562-66) is typically mannerist in the sense that the body of St. Mark is elongated. There is a dramatic contrast of light and dark and a radical use of colour.
Tintoretto’s The Origin of the Milky Way is also typical of both Venetian painting in the late sixteenth century and mannerism. It has a sense of movement, diagonal lines, foreshortening, complex poses, intense colouration and drama.
El Greco
Doménikos Theotokópoulos (El Greco) is another example of a mannerist painter. El Greco was from Crete and (like others from his island), he was trained to use bright colours and unrealistic space that resembles medieval painting more than the Renaissance.
El Greco moved to Venice and learned about Titian and Tintoretto, then he moved to Rome, then Madrid and Toledo in Spain. El Greco’s A View of Toledo (c. 1597) shows his individual style that was a mixture of artistic traditions.
El Greco’s Annunciation (c. 1597) shows his typical elongated forms, unrealistic rendition of space and the bright colours. The pose of the angel shows both the influence of Renaissance art and deviation from it. It is based on the contrapposto poses of classical statues and Renaissance paintings, but there is a strange shape and proportion of the body.
The brushstrokes are visible, like those in Titian’s later painting—for instance, around the dove and the heads of the angels. The reddish-brown colour visible underneath the paint layers in places covered the entire canvas to give an underlying warm tone and adds to the overall “sketchy look.” The narrow, red-brown vertical band at the left edge of this image with just a few strokes painted over it is where El Greco cleaned his brush experimented with colours (eventually covered by the frame).
Modern artists like Jackson Pollock liked El Greco because they thought he challenged the idea that art had to imitate reality. El Greco’s The Vision of Saint John (c. 1608-1614) was unfinished when he died, but Pablo Picasso saw it in Paris and it influenced his The Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907).
Find out about the Northern Renaissance in our next post in the series!
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