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"That is to say, you prefer to believe that Holbein, and Lucas Cranach, and Sir Antonio More, and all their school, were mannerists. Nonsense, my dear fellow nonsense! It is Nature who is the mannerist. She loves to turn out a certain generation after a particular pattern; and when she is tired of that pattern, she invents another. Her fancies last, on the average about, a hundred years.
We may apply to some monotonous mannerists these verses of Boileau: Voulez-vous du public mériter les amours? Sans cesse en écrivant variez vos discours. On lit peu ces auteurs nés pour nous ennuier, Qui toujours sur un ton semblent psalmodier. Would you the public's envied favours gain?
If at the close of the sixteenth century the mannerists sought to startle and entrance the world by empty exhibitions of muscular anatomy misunderstood, and by a braggadocio display of meaningless effects crowding their compositions with studies from the nude, and painting agitated groups without a discernible cause for agitation the crime surely lay with the patrons who liked such decoration, and with the journeymen who provided it.
The literary schools, indeed, which I am speaking of, as resulting from the attractions of some original, or at least novel artist, consist for the most part of mannerists, none of whom rise much above mediocrity; but they are not the less serviceable as channels, by means of which the achievements of genius may be incorporated into the language itself, or become the common property of the nation.
Full Development and Decline of Painting Exhaustion of the old Motives Relation of Lionardo to his Pupils His Legacy to the Lombard School Bernardino Luini Gaudenzio Ferrari The Devotion of the Sacri Monti The School of Raphael Nothing left but Imitation Unwholesome Influences of Rome Giulio Romano Michael Angelesque Mannerists Misconception of Michael Angelo Correggio founds no School Parmigianino Macchinisti The Bolognese After-growth of Art in Florence Andrea del Sarto His Followers Pontormo Bronzino Revival of Painting in Siena Sodoma His Influence on Pacchia, Beccafumi, Peruzzi Garofalo and Dosso Dossi at Ferrari The Campi at Cremona Brescia and Bergamo The Decadence in the second half of the Sixteenth Century The Counter-Reformation Extinction of the Renaissance Impulse.
There are persons who, without being chargeable with the vice here spoken of, yet 'stand accountant for as great a sin'; though not dull and monotonous, they are vivacious mannerists in their conversation, and excessive egotists. Though they run over a thousand subjects in mere gaiety of heart, their delight still flows from one idea, namely, themselves.
They are to the full as much mannerists, too, as the poetasters who ring changes on the commonplaces of magazine versification; and all the difference between them is that they borrow their phrases from a different and a scantier gradus ad Parnassum.
But mannerism can be only avoided by the most thorough practice and knowledge. Half-educated writers are always mannerists; while, as the ancient canon says, "the perfection of art is to conceal art" to depart from uncultivated and therefore defective nature, to rise again through art to a more organised and therefore more simple naturalness.
Mannerists in style, however great their powers, rather excite the admiration than the affection of a man of taste; because their habitual art dissipates that illusion of sincerity, which we love to believe is the impulse which places the pen in the hand of an author. Two eminent literary mannerists are Cicero and Johnson.
Voltaire asserts that after the establishment of the French Academy not one work of genius appeared, for all the painters became mannerists and imitators. Hogarth agrees with him, declaring that "the institution will serve to raise and pension a few bustling and busy men, whose whole employment will be to tell a few simple students when a leg is too long, or an arm too short.
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