Counter-Maniera

Counter-Maniera or Counter-Mannerism (variously capitalized and part-italicized) is a term in art history for a trend identified by some art historians in 16th-century Italian painting that forms a sub-category or phase of Mannerism, the dominant movement in Italian art between about 1530 and 1590. Counter-Maniera or Counter-Mannerism reacted against the artificiality of the second generation of Mannerist painters in the second half of the 16th century. It was in part due to artists wishing to follow the vague prescriptions for clarity and simplicity in art issued by the Council of Trent in its final session in 1563, and represented a rejection of the distortions and artificiality of high Mannerist style, and a partial return to the classicism and balance of High Renaissance art, with "clarity in formal order and legibility in content". The term was devised by the art historian Sydney Joseph Freedberg (1914–1997), and has gained a good degree of acceptance, although it is by no means universally adopted by other art historians. Counter-Maniera was one of the four phases of 16th-century Italian painting defined by Freedberg in his Painting in Italy, 1500–1600, first published in 1971 and long the standard textbook on the period, as: "First Maniera, High Maniera, Counter-Maniera and Late Maniera".¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Counter-Maniera”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

Counter-Maniera is 16th-century Italian artistic trend, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶