Mannerism, women, and the historiographical legacy of the Renaissance

As the High Renaissance gave way to instability, a new style emerged that art historians call Mannerism, from the Italian "maniera" (style, manner), a term used by Vasari himself to describe the elegant, self-conscious art that followed Raphael's generation. Mannerism developed roughly between 1520 — the year of Raphael's death — and the Sack of Rome of 1527 on one side, and the close of the sixteenth century on the other, characterized by elongated figures, forced poses known as the "figura serpentinata," and compressed or ambiguous pictorial space. Parmigianino's "Madonna of the Long Neck" (c. 1534-1540) and Pontormo's "Deposition from the Cross" (c. 1528) in Santa Felicita, Florence, exemplify the new style's deliberate departure from High Renaissance balance.