Editing Mannerism (section)

==Early theorists==
[[File:Pietro Francavilla - Apollo Victorious over the Python - Walters 27302.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|[[Pietro Francavilla]], ''Apollo Victorious over the Python'', 1591. [[The Walters Art Museum]].]]

===Giorgio Vasari===
[[Giorgio Vasari]]'s opinions about the art of painting emerge in the praise he bestows on fellow artists in his multi-volume ''[[Lives of the Artists]]'': he believed that excellence in painting demanded refinement, richness of invention (''invenzione''), expressed through virtuoso technique (''maniera''), and wit and study that appeared in the finished work, all criteria that emphasized the artist's intellect and the patron's sensibility. The artist was now no longer just a trained member of a local Guild of St Luke. Now he took his place at court alongside scholars, poets, and humanists, in a climate that fostered an appreciation for elegance and complexity. The coat-of-arms of Vasari's [[Medici]] patrons appears at the top of his portrait, quite as if it were the artist's own. The framing of the woodcut image of Vasari's ''Lives'' would be called "[[Jacobean era|Jacobean]]" in an English-speaking milieu. In it, Michelangelo's Medici tombs inspire the anti-architectural "architectural" features at the top, the papery pierced frame, the satyr nudes at the base. As a mere frame it is extravagant: Mannerist, in short..

===Gian Paolo Lomazzo===
Another literary figure from the period is [[Gian Paolo Lomazzo]], who produced two works—one practical and one metaphysical—that helped define the Mannerist artist's self-conscious relation to his art. His ''Trattato dell'arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura'' (Milan, 1584) is in part a guide to contemporary concepts of [[decorum]], which the Renaissance inherited in part from Antiquity but Mannerism elaborated upon. Lomazzo's systematic codification of aesthetics, which typifies the more formalized and academic approaches typical of the later 16th century, emphasized a consonance between the functions of interiors and the kinds of painted and sculpted decors that would be suitable. Iconography, often convoluted and abstruse, is a more prominent element in the Mannerist styles. His less practical and more metaphysical ''Idea del tempio della pittura'' (''The ideal temple of painting'', Milan, 1590) offers a description along the lines of the "[[four temperaments]]" theory of human nature and personality, defining the role of individuality in judgment and artistic invention.