11 Facts About Northern Mannerism

Northern Mannerism is the form of Mannerism found in the visual arts north of the Alps in the 16th and early 17th centuries.

Sophisticated art of Italian Northern Mannerism begins during the High Renaissance of the 1520s as a development of, a reaction against, and an attempt to excel, the serenely balanced triumphs of that style.

High Renaissance was a purely Italian phenomenon, and Italian Northern Mannerism required both artists and an audience highly trained in the preceding Renaissance styles, whose conventions were often flouted in a knowing fashion.

Each succeeding generations of artists, the problem became more acute, as much Northern Mannerism work continued to gradually assimilate aspects of Renaissance style, while the most advanced Italian art had spiralled into an atmosphere of self-conscious sophistication and complexity that must have seemed a world apart to Northern Mannerism patrons and artists, but enjoyed a reputation and prestige that could not be ignored.

The elongation of figures and strikingly complex poses of the first wave of Italian Northern Mannerism were continued, and the elegant distance of Bronzino's figures was mediated through the works of the absent Giambologna, who represented the ideal of the style.

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Whereas the artists of both Fontainebleau and Prague were mostly provided with a home so congenial in both intellectual and physical terms that they stayed to the end of their lives, for artists of the last Netherlandish phase of the movement Northern Mannerism was very often a phase through which they passed before moving on to a style influenced by Caravaggio.

Landscape painting was recognised as a Netherlandish speciality in Italy, where several Northern Mannerism landscapists were based, such as Matthijs and Paul Bril, and the Germans Hans Rottenhammer and Adam Elsheimer, the last an important figure in the Early Baroque.

Northern Mannerism was dominant in Poland–Lithuania between 1550 and 1650, when it was finally replaced by the Baroque.

Importance of prints as a medium for disseminating Mannerist style has already been mentioned; Northern Mannerism "was a style that lent itself admirably to printmaking, and inspired the production of a succession of masterpieces of the printmaker's art".

Northern Europe in the 16th century, and especially those areas where Mannerism was at its strongest, was affected by massive upheavals including the Protestant Reformation, Counter-Reformation, French Wars of Religion and Dutch Revolt.

Northern Mannerism's style derives from Netherlandish Mannerism, though his technique from Italian etchers, especially Barocci and Ventura Salimbeni.