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| Alessandro Allori Descent from the Cross ca. 1550 oil on panel Prado, Madrid |
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| Alessandro Allori Body of Christ anointed by two Angels ca. 1593 oil on copper Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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| Alessandro Allori Abduction of Prosperpine 1570 oil on panel Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
"Thus it was that the older style (which I have called "anti-classical," for lack of a better word, but which is usually termed "manneristic" by a process of reverse derivation from its offshoot) became "mannered." In other words, the noble, pure, idealistic, and abstract style, lasting approximately from 1520 to 1550 [illustrated in the just-previous post] was transformed in the succeeding phase (about 1550 to 1580) into a manner; it became "di maniera" by repetition, cleverness, and playful exaggeration on the one hand, by weak concessions on the other. The "healthy" will of certain discerning people was directed only against this then-present danger. They felt that an extraordinary decline in quality had taken place since the High Renaissance, which was already accepted as "classic"; and in their eyes the only cure for art lay in a return to the tested principles of that period . . ."
"Basically the reformers had no very difficult task. They were tearing down a building that was already crumbling. As is almost always the case in such periods, there were very many and very industrious artists who puttered along at Mannerism displaying slight stylistic variations; among them were talented men, capable and witty as well as entertaining decorators and designers of ornament, but there was not one outstanding personality in the whole lot. . . . To this group belong all the artists "de petite manière" who worked in the Studiolo of Francesco I: Macchietti, Naldini, Poppi, Stradano, and so on. . . . It also includes the painters of large scale frescoes: Vasari and Salviati (who reveals a somewhat stronger character); Alessandro Allori who flooded all Tuscany with his insipid pictures; and correspondingly in Rome, the even less enjoyable and more pretentious apparition of Federigo Zuccaro, Barocci's cousin. Santi di Tito (so wittily lampooned by Tintoretto), although more reactionary and more conservative, also belongs in this series to some extent."
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| Federico Zuccaro Calumny ca. 1569-72 oil on canvas Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Giovanni Battista Naldini Bathsheba ca. 1570 oil on panel transferred to canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Johannes Stradanus Vanity, Modesty and Death 1569 oil on panel Louvre, Paris |
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| Santi di Tito Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist ca. 1570-75 oil on panel Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Orazio Samacchini Holy Family with St Catherine of Alexandria, St Margaret of Antioch and St Francis of Assisi ca. 1570-75 oil on panel Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide |
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| Giorgio Vasari Six Tuscan Poets 1544 oil on panel Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Giorgio Vasari Garden of Gethsemane ca. 1570 oil on panel National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo |
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| Federico Barocci Madonna del Popolo 1579 oil on panel Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |
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| Federico Barocci Aeneas fleeing Troy with Anchises 1598 oil on canvas Galleria Borghese, Rome |
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| Francesco Salviati Madonna and Child with Angel ca. 1538-40 oil on panel Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Francesco Salviati Holy Family with Bird-catcher ca. 1543 oil on panel Prado, Madrid |
"In opposition to these handy-men of the maniera arose artists, who, although not all of the same age, were all born in the last third of the century, in different places. Very different as to temperament and character, and sharply contrasting in their artistic activities though they were, they shared certain traits in common – the desire for simplicity and objectivity instead of complexity, for truth to nature (or that part of nature that could be objectively tested) instead of the "imaginative," and for solid and dedicated work instead of painting by rote with only a glib and facile "effect" in mind. To name only the most important, the group included the Carracci of Bologna, Cigoli in Florence, and (a number of years younger) Caravaggio, the Lombard, in Rome, and Cerano in Milan."
– from an essay by Walter Friedlaender originally published in 1929, translated in 1957 and published by Columbia University Press in Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting