Vibrant Subtlety

I decided to compare and analyze Bronzino’s Allegory with Venus and Cupid along with Parmigianino’s Madonna with the Long Neck. Both of these paintings are innovative and amazing for there time. Bronzinos painting is very bizarre in the way it holds true to the mannerist style while Madonna with the Long Neck subtly shows off its exaggeration in form and content without being uncomfortable for the viewer.

         What I first enjoyed and studied during my first look at the painting Allegory with Venus and Cupid was the colors. Almost every figure had a very dull, unrealistic skin tone that made them look almost as ghosts, yet everything else in the scene seemed to be very colorful and vibrant. It was all down hill after that, every object and figure my eye stopped at was a very drastic change from what I have seen in the Early and high renaissance. Unity between the subjects was relevant but there was no unity that brought the scene completely together. It seemed almost as if there were multiple compositions put together almost as a collage, even the expressions and mood shifts from figure to figure. But in terms of form, scale and proportion, this work seems very realistic; this is one key difference between it and Parmigianino’s piece Madonna with the long Neck.

            Parmigianino did not blast the canvas with vibrant color, nor did he ignore the connection between the characters within his work. This painting seems very close to a classical renaissance piece but it cannot be said to be realistic witch traps it in the Mannerist style. Oddly the first thing I recalled from this painting was the man in the background. The use of putting a figure that far back opens the entire painting up and hinted my eye of the manipulation to come, as did the title. Mary and the angels are painted in a very realistic skin tone while the baby has a very light tint to his skin like Bronsino’s painting. The direct lighting seems to be giving the giant baby the ghostly shade and does Mannerist’s to reveal importance as if theaters spot light use a common effect. While this work is not quite bizarre and confrontational it still holds an essence of eerie, especially with the small but noticeable exaggerations of Mary and the babies form. The long neck, large legs and giant baby hold the viewer to ask why. But at the same time the painting had unity. Other then the background character trapped in the depth of the canvas, every angel was locked on Mary and Mary to the baby in her lap. 

               Both of these paintings hold there own essence of the mannerist style. One does it with subtle alterations in form and lighting, while Bronzino’s bluntly scatters the canvas with intense color and isolated subjects. These two pieces are very innovative and important both for the time they were created and even now. I find it to be very important that these two artists along with countless others stepped back from the classical appeal of the realistic and perfect and found power in symbolism and extravagance.