Maniera and the education of a painter: iterations of Mannerist art theory in academic classicist doctrine and its critique

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to discuss narratives underlying the debate on artistic training and (self)education of artists in two distinguished moments: the sixteenth-century Italian Mannerism and nineteenth-century artistic movements which opposed academic instruction. Mannerist treatises were the first to encompass aesthetic and pedagogical concerns in the context of newly established art academies – providing a fundamental, albeit essentially unrecognised, conceptual background for the subsequent discussions on art education. The goal of this article, therefore, is to examine how the rich discursive production of Mannerist authors provided the frame of reference and delineated the limits of this debate until the late nineteenth century – by setting forth the perennial question of the polarity between imitation and individuality. For the conceptual treatment of empirical sources, we adopted an archaeological approach, which enabled us to identify how the derivations and appropriations of Mannerist concepts provided the theoretical base for both the firm establishment of Academic dogmas and, in parallel, their critique. By this methodological choice, we hope to make apparent how these narratives continually revolve around the same ideas in a binary logic of delivering critique and suggestions of reform and change, contributing thus to the deeper understanding of the debate on art education.

KEYWORDS:

• Art education
• art academies
• Mannerist art theory
• Mannerism
• maniera

Acknowledgements

The authors would also like to thank Jorge Ramos do Ó and Ana Luísa Paz for their comments on the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (New York: Routledge, 2003), 1963; and Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2005), 1966.

² Heinrich Woelfflin, Renaissance and Baroque (New York: Cornell University Press, 1968); Erwin Panofsky, Idea: A Concept in Art Theory (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968); and Ernst Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973).

³ James Mirollo, Mannerism and Renaissance Poetry: Concept, Mode, Inner Design (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); and Lynette Bosch, Mannerism, Spirituality, and Cognition. The Art of Enargeia (New York: Routledge, 2020).

⁴ Marco Treves, “Maniera, the History of a Word”, Marsyas 1 (1941): 69.

⁵ Bosch, Mannerism, Spirituality, and Cognition, 72.

⁶ Most clearly represented by Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier (1538).

⁷ Mirollo, Mannerism and Renaissance Poetry, 7.

⁸ Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450–1600 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 21–2.

⁹ Ibid., 33.

¹⁰ Jorge do Ó and Ana Paz, “The Invention of the Writing Subject in School: The Studia Humanitatis in the 15th-century Renaissance”, Paedagogica Historica 59, no. 3 (2023): 361–79; and Jorge do Ó, Fazer a Mão – por uma Escrita Inventiva na Universidade (Lisboa: Edições do Saguão, 2019).

¹¹ Martin Kemp, “‘Equal Excellences’: Lomazzo and the Explanation of Individual Style in the Visual Arts”, Renaissance Studies 1, no. 1 (1987): 13.

¹² Ibid., 13.

¹³ Giovan Paulo Lomazzo, Idea of the Temple of Painting (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), 1590, 53.

¹⁴ Ibid., 51.

¹⁵ Ibid., 54.

¹⁶ André Félibien, Conférences de l’Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (Paris: D. Mortier, 1705), XI; http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb30425268v.

¹⁷ Denis Diderot, Salons: Tome I (Paris: Brière, 1821); and Roger de Piles, Cours de Peinture par Principes (Paris: Jacques Estienne, 1708).

¹⁸ Treves, “Maniera, the History of a Word”, 80.

¹⁹ That is “men who can profess, and thus publicly proclaim, exceptional mastery over a determinate area of expertise”. Douglas Biow, Vasari’s Words: The Lives of the Artists as a History of Ideas in the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 156.

²⁰ Denis Mahon, Studies in Seicento Art and Theory (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1971), 176.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Nathalie Heinich, “The Neo-Academic Realm. Between Profession and Vocation in Nineteenth-Century France”, Boekmancahier 13, no. 47 (2001): 60–4.

²³ Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists (London: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1550, 232.

²⁴ Biow, Vasari’s Words, 156.

²⁵ Lomazzo, Idea of the Temple of Painting, 50–1.

²⁶ Ibid., 53.

²⁷ Ibid., 70.

²⁸ Jean Julia Chai, introduction to Idea of the Temple of Painting by Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), 1–41.

²⁹ Ibid., 38.

³⁰ Ibid., 41.

³¹ Heinich, “Neo-Academic Realm”, 60–4.

³² Charles Dempsey, “Some Observations on the Education of Artists in Florence and Bologna during the Later Sixteenth Century”, The Art Bulletin 62, no. 4 (1980): 552–69.

³³ Mahon, Studies in Seicento Art and Theory, 187.

³⁴ Who was first a deputy acting in the name of Le Brun and later elected Principe himself of the French Academy in Rome.

³⁵ Mahon, Studies in Seicento Art and Theory.

³⁶ Nikolaus Pevsner, Academies of Art, Past and Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 55.

³⁷ Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, 148.

³⁸ Ibid., 148.

³⁹ Giovanni Battista Armenini, On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting (New York: Burt Franklin, 1977), 1587, 72.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 72.

⁴¹ Pevsner, Academies of Art, 93.

⁴² André Félibien, Des Principes de l’Architecture, de la Sculpture, de la Peinture et des Autres Arts qui en dependent. Avec un Dictionnaire des Termes Propres à chacun de ces Arts (Paris: J.-B. Coignard, 1676), 646.

⁴³ Félibien, Conférences de l’Académie, n.a.

⁴⁴ de Piles, Cours de Peinture par Principes.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 6–7.

⁴⁶ Nathalie Heinich, Du peintre à l’Artiste. Artisans et Académiciens à l’Âge Classique (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1993), 165.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 166.

⁴⁸ Giovan Pietro Bellori, The Lives of Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1672, 71.

⁴⁹ Charles-Nicolas Cochin, Lettres à un Jeune Artiste Peintre, pensionnaire à l’Académie royale de France à Rome (Paris: Journal des Beaux-Arts, 1836).

⁵⁰ Brothers Annibale (1560–1609) and Agostino (1557–1602), and their cousin Ludovico (1555–1619).

⁵¹ Until 1602, when it was united with Compagnia dei Pittori in Bologna.

⁵² Clare Robertson, “Federico Zuccari’s Accademia del Disegno and the Carracci Accademia degli Incamminati: Drawing in Theory and Practice”, Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 39 (2012): 187–223.

⁵³ Ibid., 202.

⁵⁴ Ibid.

⁵⁵ Giovanna Perini, Gli Scritti dei Carracci (Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1990), 161.

⁵⁶ Anne Summerscale, Malvasia’s Life of the Carracci (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 97–8.

⁵⁷ Anton W. A. Boschloo, Annibale Carracci in Bologna: Visible Reality in Art after the Council of Trent (The Hague: Government Publishing Office, 1974), 47.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 47.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ Pierre Bourdieu, Manet: A Symbolic Revolution (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017).

⁶¹ Ibid..

⁶² Viccy Coltman, Fabricating the Antique: Neoclassicism in Britain, 1760–1800 (London: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

⁶³ Diderot, Salons: Tome I.

⁶⁴ Vasari, Lives of the Artists.

⁶⁵ Armenini, On the True Precepts, 71.

⁶⁶ James Hutson, “Le Accademie Bolognese e Romana: Reconsidering Center-Periphery Pedagogy”, Art and Design Review 7 (2019): 155.

⁶⁷ Armenini, On the True Precepts, 72.

⁶⁸ Gail Feigenbaum, “Practice in the Carracci Academy”, in The Artist’s Workshop, ed. Peter M. Lukehart (Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, 1993), 63.

⁶⁹ Pevsner, Academies of Art, 17.

⁷⁰ Arnold Hauser, Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of Modern Art (New York: Routledge, 1965), 356.

⁷¹ Edward Young, Conjectures on Original Composition (Manchester: The University Press, 1918), 14.

⁷² Pevsner, Academies of Art.

⁷³ Jacques Bousquet, Mannerism: The Painting and Style of the Late Renaissance (New York: George Braziller, 1964), 23.

⁷⁴ See note 72 above.

⁷⁵ Ibid.

⁷⁶ Ibid.

⁷⁷ Caspar Friedrich, “Observations on Viewing a Collection of Paintings Largely by Living or Recently Deceased Artists”, in Art in Theory (1815–1900). An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. C. Harrison and P. Wood (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1998), 12, 54.

⁷⁸ See note 25 above.

⁷⁹ Eugène Delacroix, Journal (1823–1850) (Paris: Librarie Plon, 1893), 245.

⁸⁰ Alois Riegl, Problems of Style: Foundations for a History of Ornament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 1893.

⁸¹ Delacroix, Journal (1823–1863), 202.

⁸² Théodore Géricault, “On Genius and Academies”, in Art in Theory (1815–1900). An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. C. Harrison and P. Wood (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1998), 26.

⁸³ Ibid., 26.

⁸⁴ Delacroix, Journal (1823–1850), 207, 321.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 321.

⁸⁶ Gustave Courbet, “Letter to a Group of Students”, in From the Classicists to the Impressionists. Art and Architecture in the 19th Century, ed. E. G. Holt (London: Yale University Press, 1966), 1861, 353.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 353.

⁸⁸ Robertson, “Federico Zuccari’s Accademia del Disegno”.

⁸⁹ Courbet, “Letter to a Group of Students”, 352.

⁹⁰ Feigenbaum, “Practice in the Carracci Academy”, 73.

⁹¹ Ibid., 73.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a PhD fellowship from FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (grant reference https://doi.org/10.54499/2021.07113.BD) and by National Funds through FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., under the scope of UIDEF—Unidade de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Educação e Formação, UIDB/04107/2020, https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDB/04107/2020.

Notes on contributors

Wiktoria Szawiel

Wiktoria Szawiel is a PhD candidate and a grant holder attributed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) to develop her doctoral dissertation at the Institute of Education, University of Lisbon. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland (2012), and Contextual Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven, the Netherlands (2014). Her research focuses on art theory and history of education with an emphasis on art education.

Mónica Raleiras

Mónica Raleiras is a Phd candidate at Instituto de Educação da Universidade de Lisboa. Her research focuses on the training of young modernist artists.