Madonna with the Long Neck and Allegory with Venus and Cupid

The Late Renaissance began around 1520 with the death of the artist Raphael. It was during this period that the Mannerist style emerged and became popular. A Mannered piece of art can be defined as “having an artificial or stilted character”. Mannered art is more stylized with figures having unrealistic bodies or positions and compositions that feel unstable. Two famous paintings from this era are Madonna with the Long Neck and Allegory with Venus and Cupid.

Madonna with the Long Neck by Parmigianino is a beautiful example of Mannerist art, although it is unfinished due to the artist’s early death. The subject of the piece comes from Christianity; Mary holding a sleeping Christ. She has unnatural body proportions indicative of the Mannerist style. Her long neck (hence the name of the painting) matches the slenderness of her fingers trailing across her chest. She has a large lower body in contrast to a narrow upper body. This makes for Mary being a very large and dominant figure. In contrast to this, we can see a very small St. Jerome in the bottom right corner. Christ himself is also of a large nature in the painting.

In keeping with the “visual joke” aspect of Mannerism, Mary is in a position that gives the impression she is seated although there is no chair in the painting. Her right foot is resting atop two pillows in such a way that makes the position her body is in virtually impossible without some sort of sitting apparatus.

Allegory with Venus and Cupid by Bronzino is another example of Mannerist painting. Just like Parmigianino, Bronzino draws on religion for his subject matter, although in this case, it is Greek mythology that is portrayed. Also, like in Madonna with the Long Neck, this piece shows a mother with her child, although in a very different manner. In the previous painting, Mary lovingly holds her son while he sleeps, while in Bronzino’s painting, Venus is being kissed and caressed by her son.

The scene we see is uncomfortable owing to the seemingly passionate and inappropriate position we find Venus and Cupid in and perhaps being encouraged by the sauntering figure at the right who is getting ready to shower the couple in rose petals. This could have been some sort of joke that viewers understood when the piece was created that we don’t understand today.

 Cupid is in a strange half-standing, half-kneeling stance beside his mother. In my own opinion, Cupid’s face does not quite match his body. His face seems extremely youthful while his body looks more like that of a young man. There is another figure in the painting whose head doesn’t match the body, and that would be the strange serpent on the right. The body is scaly and reptilian while the face is that of a beautiful young girl. Her face is flatter and has less definition than the other figures in the composition.

Unlike Parmigianino’s piece with the large, deep background, Bronzino’s work is given a claustrophobic feeling with all the figures squished so close together and with the cloth held by Chronos and Night in the back pushing everything forward into the same plane instead of having a distinctive foreground and background.

Both of these painting are fantastic examples of the Mannerist style that broke away from the precision and perfection of the earlier Renaissance years.