The Mannerist Element in English Literature

THE MANNERIST ELEMENT IN ENGLISH LITERATURE ROY DANIELLS "In Paradiso non vale piu Ia Teorica della Prospettiva come aI Mondo." l\IALVASIA In a recent exhibition based on the Rothschild collection of the Louvre it was possible to see Jacopo de Barberi's early engraving "Apollo and Diana," executed about 1500, and to become aware how the full appeal of Mannerism can sublimate itself from a S ingle small work. Apollo is shown taking his stand in the zodiac, ready to loose his arrow from a strenuously drawn bow. Behind him, Diana retires into space with her diminished moon, her stag accompanying her. The grace and strength of Apollo and the tenderness of line rendering the body of the goddess reveal a profound indebtedness to classical forms. But the whole design reflects a new feeling for space. A multitude of fine rays emanate from Apollo in concentric ovals, a form repeated in the demi-arc of his bow, the contour of his thigh, the turning Hank of the goddess; and in finely etched curves suggesting meridians of the celestial sphere or paths of remote stars. Piercing this array of trajectories are bursts of solar and lunar rays, the aimed arrow, the antlers of the stag, and the luminous hair of both god and goddess blowing in "the great wind of the world." While the eye is engaged with the design, the imagination responds to this conjunction of the last enchantments of the Hellenic world with the new science, the new celestial mechanics. It is typical of the technique of Mannerism, in its first purity, that the burin was used with so fine a touch as to make possible only a few perfect prints before the texture of the line became impaired. In the contemplation of works of this kind, appealing so powerfully to a twentieth-century sensibility, the reason for our renewed appreciation of Mannerism becomes apparent. Viewing the fine arts, we pay attention only to those figures that show us our own face and the periods that furnish an image-direct or converse - of our own problems. With this premise we can understand the gradual movement of Mannerism into prominence over the past fifty years. As Volume XXXVI, Nttmber I , October, 1966 2 ROY DANIELLS the First World War came to an end, Max Dvorak, the professor of art history in Vienna, delivered a lecture-"Ueber Greco und den Manierismus "-which soon became a landmark of criticism. Amid the confusions of warfare and the frustrations of defeat, in a society which Hasek and Kafka have mirrored for us, Dvorak found in EI Greco a vision of faith, a victory of the inner spirit over the forces of materialism. Subsequent criticism has not always supported Dvorak's idealism; it has added to his conclusions and broadened the base of consideration. But we find so recent a writer as Battisti returning with enthusiasm to Dvorak's starting pOint-the primacy of vision derived from an inner world of spiritual values-and arguing that what Mannerism can offer to our own disordered world is accessible and useful as never before. Like "Gothic" and "Baroque," the word "Mannerism" has slowly achieved respectability, after long employment in a pejorative sense. "Maniera" meant at first simply a manner in which one works or behaves. Vasari, in his Lives, wrote of a good manner of painting, a bad manner, a beautiful manner, an obscure manner, a Gothic manner, an old Greek (Byzantine) manner, and so forth. Since a personal manner is conditioned of necessity by subjective preferences, he implies a contrast between such a style and faithfulness to objective nature. Sculptors representing hair in massive curled locks show "pill di maniera che d'imitazione naturale." When, in due time, the influence of Caravaggio brought about a renewed regard for nature and for old masters, "maniera" easily became a somewhat disparaging term. G. P. Bellori, C. C. Malvasia, and other seventeenth-century writers lay blame on those who neglect nature to indulge their personal manner. Malvasia does rather amusingly admit the crucial limitation of natural models: Michelangelo, he remarks, represented the creation of Adam and Eve and the majesty of God without proper regard for the rules...