What’s a Manner(ism)?
Ten points for my title.
It’s funny that this purposely sexualized (at the time) painting of Mary and Joseph has a guy measuring Joseph’s penis.Thanks, monk, for doing that. Oh Rosso.
Artists aren’t weirdos, they’re just heavy boned. For example, the Mannerist painter, Rosso, lived with a baboon and he supposedly studied corpses with the fascination of the decomposition process. There would be a dark quality in his work, looming with sinisterness, which went with the chaos of the political landscape of the time, and as a reaction to the previous movement’s harmony.
Read what this site had to say about this painting (also note how demanding the passage is of the reader):
The entire structure of the painting is “hanging” on the cross by the ladder. It’s an explosive, dynamic painting: everybody moves. Il Rosso created chaos but he could also control it. We can compare it with El Greco: look at the screaming man, the figure on the left. Joseph of Arimatea is on top of the cross. Look at the expression of Jesus face: he has a strange smile, totally inexplicable. It is a confusing figure to the onlooker, nobody has ever done this before in the tradition. Look at Mary Magdalene: her body is turned in a “cubic” structure, it’s a “box like” figure. The distortion of light bridles and gives sharp edges. All the previous figures from Giotto to Leonardo are here, but Il Rosso increases and distorts emotions, see for example the elongated faces.
Yeech…
Rosso was controversial and devilish, but the Church still put up his work. Thanks for being a good sport, Church.
Mary and Joseph, penis, Mannerist, Rosso, Church
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