RENAISSANCE COMPARED WITH MANNERISM
discordant art—now emotional to distortion (Tintoretto, El Greco),
now disciplined to self-effacement (Bronzino). The High Renais-
sance is full, Mannerism is meagre. There is luxuriant beauty in
Titian, stately gravity in Raphael and gigantic strength in Michel-
angelo, but Mannerist types are slim, elegant and of a stiff and highly
self-conscious deportment. Self-consciousness to this extent was a
new experience to the West. The Middle Ages, and the Renaissance
too, had been much more naive. Reformation and counter-Re-
formation broke up that state of innocence, and this is why Manner-
ism is indeed full of mannerisms. For the artist now for the first time
was aware of the virtues of eclecticism. Raphael and Michelangelo
were recognised as the masters of a Golden Age equal to the Ancients.
Imitation became a necessity in quite a new sense. The mediaeval
artist had imitated his masters as a matter of course, but he had not
doubted his own (or his time's) ability to surpass them. This con-
fidence had now gone. The first academies were founded, and a
literature on the history and theory of art sprang up. Vasari is its
most famous representative. Deviation from the canons of Michel-
angelo and Raphael was not ostracised, but it assumed a new air of
the capricious, or the demonstrative, or the daring: forbidden
pleasures. No wonder that the i6th century has seen the sternest
ascetics and the first writers and draughtsmen to indulge in the
hidden sins of pornogr'aphy (Aretino and Giulio Romano).
So far only names of painters have been mentioned because the
qualities of 16th-century painting are at least a little more familiar
than those of architecture. The application of the principles of
Mannerism to architecture is only in its very tentative stages on the
Continent and in America; in England it has not even been attempted.
Yet if we now turn to buildings and compare the Palazzo Farnese
(fig. 57 and pi. nv) with die Palazzo Massimi alle Colonne
(pi. LV) as the most perfect examples of High Renaissance and
Mannerist palace architecture in Rome, the contrast between their
emotional qualities will at once be visible. The Palazzo Farnese was
designed in 1530 by Antonio da San Gallo the Younger (1485-1546).
It is the most monumental of Roman Renaissance palaces, an iso-
lated rectangle of about 150-feet frontage, facing a square. The
facade has strongly emphasised quoins, but no rustication. The
ground-floor windows are provided with straight cornices, those
on the first floor with alternating triangular and segmental pedi-
ments, supported by columns (i.e. so-called cediculte), a Roman
101