The document summarizes key developments in Renaissance art in Venice and the emergence of Mannerism. It describes the Venetian school's preference for a softer approach to oil painting compared to Florence, as well as their willingness to depict erotic themes. Major Venetian artists discussed include Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and Veronese. The summary also characterizes Mannerism as a reaction against Renaissance ideals of balance, with elongated figures and unusual colors and compositions. Key Mannerist artists mentioned are Pontormo, Bronzino, and Tintoretto.

1. The High Renaissance and
Mannerism
PART 3

2. The Venetian School
• In the sixteenth century, artists such as
Giorgione and Titian preferred a gentler,
more sensuous approach to oil painting
than had been adopted by the Florentine
School. The Venetians used warm
atmospheric tones.
• Distant from the influence of the Papacy,
Venetian artists did not shy away from
controversial (erotic/pagan) themes.
• Poetic (poesia)
• Both Classical and Renaissance
poetry inspired Venetian artists
• This makes understanding the
subject matter difficult
2

3. GIOVANNI BELLINI, Saint Francis in the Desert,
ca. 1470–1480. Oil and tempera on wood.
• Saint Francis in ecstatic
moment
• BUT-No more “stage props”
of divinity (gold rays,
angels)
• Naturalism (beautiful details
on rocky ledge, landscape)-
borrowing from Northern
European artists.
• Miraculous stance, but
everyday life continues.
• Landscape emerges as
great theme.
3

5. GIOVANNI BELLINI and TITIAN, Feast of the Gods, from the Camerino d’Alabastro, Palazzo Ducale, Ferrara, Italy, 1529. Oil on canvas,
5’ 7” x 6’ 2”. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Widener Collection).
5

6. GIOVANNI BELLINI and TITIAN, Feast of
the Gods, from the Camerino d’Alabastro,
Palazzo Ducale, Ferrara, Italy, 1529
• Bellini painted figures, Titian (his
student) completed landscape
after his death.
• “Arcadian” landscape
(Arcadia=idyllic, peaceful rustic
place of simplicity)
• Duke of Ferrara (Alfonso d’Este)
commissioned for his private
room the Camerino d’Alabastro
(White Room). Preferred
mythological subjects.
• Scene from Ovid’s Fasti
• Some amorous activity hinted at,
pagan sensuousness, never-
ending pleasure. Bacchanalia.
(Ancient Gods on Spring Break)
6

10. Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, 1510.
Invented the “Recumbent Nude”
Nude mirrors landscape- sleep suggests the world of dreams.

11. GIORGIONE DA CASTELFRANCO,
The Tempest, ca. 1510. Oil on canvas,
2’ 8 1/4” x 2’ 4 3/4”. Galleria
dell’Accademia, Venice.
11

12. GIORGIONE DA CASTELFRANCO, The
Tempest.
• Mysterious and inscrutable
• Adam and Eve banished from
the Garden?
• Changes in painting revealed by
X-ray suggest that no definitive
narrative was planned.
• Uncertainty contributes to
enigma.
• Painting almost more about
transient effects of weather-
figures seem tacked on as an
excuse
12

17. GIORGIONE DA CASTELFRANCO (and/or TITIAN?), Pastoral Symphony, ca. 1508–1510. Oil on canvas, 3’ 7 1/4” x 4’ 6 1/4”. Louvre,
Paris. 17

18. GIORGIONE DA CASTELFRANCO (and/or
TITIAN?), Pastoral Symphony.
Venetian painting:
• “poesia”-painting as poetry
• Focus on lyrical and sensual
• Concrete narratives often elusive
• Giorgione-died young from plague
(33) but developed poetic manner
• Aristocratic artists make music and
poetry
• Nude women represent Allegorical
muses drawing water from the well
of inspiration
• “Wandering shepherd” symbolizes
the poet.
• Landscape eminent
18

19. Titian
• (Tiziano Vecelli)
• Extraordinarily prolific painter and a supreme colorist
• Establishes oil on canvas rather than wood panel as the
norm.
• Believed color and mood were more important than line
(design) and science
• Would paint entire canvas red first
– Using brushstrokes to create a textured surface

20. TITIAN, Meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne, from the Camerino d’Alabastro, Palazzo Ducale, Ferrara, Italy, 1522–1523. Oil on canvas, 5’ 9”
x 6’ 3”. National Gallery, London. 20

21. TITIAN, Meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne, from
the Camerino d’Alabastro, Palazzo Ducale,
Ferrara.
• Another commission for Alfonso
d’Este’s Camerino d’Alabastro
(White Room)-”pleasure chamber”
• Ancient Latin poem by Catallus
• Bacchus (God of Wine and
Intoxication), arrives on island of
Naxos where Ariadne has been
abandoned by Theseus (slayer of
the Minotaur).
• Rich luminous colors, sensual
appeal
• Based one figure off of recently
unearthed Laocoon
21

22. Titian, Bacchanal of the Andrians

23. TITIAN, Venus of Urbino, 1538. Oil on canvas, 3’ 11” x 5’ 5”. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
23

24. TITIAN, Venus of Urbino, 1538. Oil on canvas,
3’ 11” x 5’ 5”. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
• Commissioned by Duke of
Urbino (Guidobaldo II)
• Borrows from Giorgione
• Sensual Italian Courtesan
elevated allegorically to Roman
Goddess of love by title
• Composition divided in two,
clever recession of space into
smaller units.
• Suggestive gaze and hand
• Lapdog in place of Cupid
• “Venetian Red”- Bed sheets
echo the maid
24

26. 26

27. 27

28. TITIAN and PALMA IL GIOVANE, Pietà, ca. 1570–1576. Oil on canvas, 11’ 6” X 12’ 9”. Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice. 28

29. Venice
– Poetry of senses
– Nature’s beauty
– Pleasures of Humanity (Eros)
Florence & Rome
– Esoteric, intellectual themes
– Conceptions of religion
– Grandeur of the ideal

30. Mannerism
1525-1600
All problems of representing reality
had been solved and art had
reached a peak of perfection and
harmony – Now what?
Answer: replace harmony with
dissonance, reason with emotion,
and reality with imagination
A reaction to the classical rationality
and balanced harmony of the high
Renaissance.
30

31. Mannerist Painting
Highly subjective, arbitrary light
Unusual color
Dramatic composition – often with
vacant centers
Writhing/twisting/elongated bodies:
Figura Serpentinata
Less emphasis on balance,
symmetry, and rational
composition (values of High
Renaissance)
31

32. Rosso Fiorentino, Deposition.
Unnatural colors
Composition is mainly around the edges
Figures seem frozen in time

33. JACOPO DA PONTORMO, Entombment of Christ,
Capponi Chapel, Santa Felicità, Florence, Italy, 1525–
1528. Oil on wood, 10’ 3” x 6’ 4”.
33

36. JACOPO DA PONTORMO, Entombment of
Christ.
• Characteristic Mannerist colorations
(odd pinks, greens and blues)
• Omits cross and Christ’s tomb
• Creates void (symbol of loss and grief)
in center of composition, accentuates
group of hands filling the hole
• Anxious glances cast in all directions
• Includes bearded self-portrait
• Athletic bending, twisting, distortions,
odd figural placements and spaces
• Elastic elongation of limbs
• Small, ovular heads
36

37. JACOPO DA PONTORMO, Entombment of Christ,
Capponi Chapel, Santa Felicità, Florence, Italy, 1525–
1528. Oil on wood, 10’ 3” x 6’ 4”.
37

40. 40

43. 43
Parmigianino self-
portrait age 21
Young prodigy from
Northern Italy

44. PARMIGIANINO, Madonna with the Long Neck, from the Baiardi
Chapel, Santa Maria dei Servi, Parma,Italy, 1534–1540. Oil on
wood, 7’ 1” x 4’ 4”. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
44

45. PARMIGIANINO, Madonna with the Long
Neck.
• Embodies elegant stylishness that
was principle aim of Mannerism
• Sinuous, swaying elongation,
Attenuation and delicacy-marks of
Aristocratic taste
• Enigmatic capital (Painting is
actually unfinished (has to flee
Rome-Charles V invades)
•
• Enigmatic figure with a scroll
• Madonna’s neck compared to
ivory column
• Figural distortions and crowded
composition
• Reference to Michelangelo’s Pieta
45

48. MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI, Pieta, ca.
1498-1500. Marble, 5’ 8 ½” high. Saint
Peter’s, Vatican City, Rome.
48

52. BRONZINO, Portrait of a Young Man, ca. 1530–
1545. Oil on wood, 3’ 1 1/2” x 2’ 5 1/2”.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (H. O.
Havemeyer Collection, bequest of Mrs. H. O.
Havemeyer, 1929).
52

53. BRONZINO, Portrait of a Young Man,
• Cool sophistication and
detachment
• Hyper-articulate elegance
• Very “posed” and obvious
artificiality
• Identity is understood as a
performance
53

54. BRONZINO, Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time, ca.
1546. Oil on wood, 5’ 1” x 4’ 8 1/4”. National Gallery,
London.
54

55. BRONZINO, Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time.
• Learned allegory with lascivious
undertones
• Cupid fondles Venus (mother), Folly
is about to shower with Rose petals.
Both attempt to steal from the other.
• Time draws back the curtain to
reveal the transgression.
• Temptation appears as a snake with
girls head holding honeycomb in
switched hands.
• Masks represent deception.
• Other figures represent Envy and
Oblivion.
• A dark statement on the pitfalls of
Romantic love.
55

73. TINTORETTO, Last Supper, 1594. Oil on canvas, 12’ x 18’ 8”. San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice.
73

75. TINTORETTO, Last Supper, 1594.
Mannerism in Venice
• Spiritual, visionary forms, swirling
clouds, fitful, phantasmagoric light
• Shimmering halos, odd perspective
• Servants largest figures
• Imbalanced composition, willful
complexity
75

82. Tintoretto, FINDING OF
THE BODY OF ST. MARK,
1548

83. Tintoretto, THE REMOVAL OF THE
BODY OF ST. MARK, 1548

84. PAOLO VERONESE, Christ in the House of Levi, from the refectory of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, Italy, 1573. Oil on canvas, 18’ 3” x
42’. Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice.
84

85. PAOLO VERONESE, Christ in the House of
Levi.
• Originally titled “Last Supper”
• Christ sits in the center of the
splendidly garbed elite of Venice
• Holy Office of Inquisition accuses
Veronese of Impiety
• First ever trial of the right to artistic
expression
• Veronese simply changes the title
rather than the image
85

100. Hans Baldung Grien The Three Graces c. 1544

104. Albrecht Dürer: Der Tod und der Landsknecht,
1510
Death and the Landsknecht

105. 105
PIETER AERTSEN, Butcher’s Stall, 1551. Oil on wood, 4’ 3/8” x 6’ 5 3/4”. Uppsala University Art Collection, Uppsala.

106. 106
JOACHIM PATINIR, Landscape with Saint Jerome, ca. 1520–1524. Oil on wood, 2’ 5 1/8” x 2’ 11 7/8”. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

107. 107
PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER, Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559. Oil on wood, 3’ 10” x 5’ 4 1/8”. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen,
Berlin.

108. 108
PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER, Hunters in the Snow, 1565. Oil on wood, approx. 3’ 10 1/8” x 5’ 3 3/4”. Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna.

109. 109