Toward the end of the Renaissance, calculability and measurability ceased to be the criteria of objectivity and they were reduced to mere instruments for the creation of steadily more complex ways of representing space that brought about a suspension of proportionate order. It is no accident that a full understanding of the value of Mannerism did not come along until modern times: if Beauty is deprived of criteria of measure, order, and proportion, it is inevitably destined to fuzzy, subjective criteria of judgment. An emblematic example of this trend is Arcimboldo, an artist considered minor and marginal in Italy, who enjoyed fame and success at the court of the Hapsburgs. His surprising compositions, his portraits, in which the faces are composed of objects (fruit, vegetables, and so on) delight and amuse viewers. The Beauty of Arcimboldo is stripped of all appearances of Classicism and is expressed through surprise and wit. Arcimboldo shows that even a carrot can be beautiful: but at the same time he portrays a Beauty that is such, not by virtue of an objective rule, but only thanks to the consensus of the public, of the “public opinion” of the court.
Giuseppe Archimboldo - Summer (1573)
The distinction between proportion and disproportion no longer held, while the same applied to that between form and formless, visible and invisible: the representation of the formless, the invisible, and the vague transcended the opposition between beautiful and ugly, true and false. The representation of Beauty grew in complexity, artists appealed to the imagination more than the intellect, giving themselves new rules on their own initiative.
Mannerist Beauty expresses a thinly veiled conflict within the soul: it is a refined, cultured, and cosmopolitan Beauty, like the aristocracy that appreciated it and commissioned its works (whereas the Baroque was to have more popular and emotional features). Mannerism opposed the strict rules of the Renaissance, but rejected the unrestrained dynamism of Baroque figures; it looks superficial, but it cultivated this superficiality with a study of anatomy and a deepening of the relationship with the Ancients that went beyond similar tendencies during the Renaissance: in short, it outstripped and deepened the Renaissance at the same time.
Correggio - Jupiter and Io (1530)
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