ART HIST 3I03: Assignment

School of the Arts

McMaster University

ITALIAN PAINTING & SCULPTURE, 1400-1580

ART HIST 3I03, Term II, 2014

MANNERISM

Location: TSH B106

Course Instructor: Greg Davies

WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT

DATE DUE: March 10, 2014 (in class). Please note that late papers will not be accepted unless accompanied by a physician’s note and will otherwise automatically receive a grade of zero.

            Walter Friedlaender’s Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting is regarded as a pioneering work of modern scholarship on 16^th-century art. The apparent logic and clarity of the author’s argument continue to appeal to those who seek to define Mannerism more than eighty years after his first published work on the topic.

            The core of Friedlaender’s argument rests on the polemical distinction drawn between Mannerist painting and the Baroque art that followed (emerging around 1590) as well as the High Renaissance art that preceded Mannerism. To illustrate the difference Friedlaender famously defines Mannerist painting as ‘anticlassical’ in style, thereby distinguishing it from the styles of High Renaissance and Baroque art (the ‘anti-mannerist’ style) at the same time. As Donald Posner has suggested (in his Forward to the current edition of the text) Friedlaender’s choice of the expression ‘anticlassical’ has a “special connotation” for the author who associates the term “with other artistic phenomena that were not wholly or at all in sympathy with High Renaissance classicism” (p. xvi).  This line of thinking offers a formulation of Mannerism quite distinct from the definitions offered by others such as John Shearman, who sees Mannerist art in terms of continuity rather than revolt.

            In light of these observations you are asked to assess Friedlaender’s definition. Is his formulation of Mannerism as ‘anticlassical’ style correct? Determine an answer to this question and defend your point of view in a short critique of 3 - 4 written pages (750 - 1000 words, double spaced + cover page).

Note: References to texts used should follow the Chicago Style of citation. Footnotes OR endnotes may be used. Please append a bibliography if citations are made.