Northern Mannerism - Other Outcrops

Other Outcrops

Henry VIII of England had been spurred in emulation of Fontainebleau to import his own, rather less stellar, team of Italians and French artists to work on his new Nonsuch Palace, which also relied heavily on stuccoes, and was decorated from about 1541. But Henry died before it was completed and a decade later it was sold by his daughter Mary without ever having seen major use by the court. The palace was destroyed before 1700 and only small fragments of work associated with it have survived, as well as a faint ripple of influence detectable in later English art, for example in the grand but unsophisticated stuccoes at Hardwick Hall.

The portrait miniaturist Isaac Oliver shows tentative Late Mannerist influence, which also appears in some immigrant portrait painters, such as William Scrots, but generally England was one of the countries least affected by the movement except in the area of ornament.

Though Northern Mannerism achieved a landscape style, portrait-painting remained without Northern equivalents of Bronzino or Parmigianino, unless the remarkable but somewhat naive Portraiture of Elizabeth I is considered as such.

One of the last flowerings of Northern Mannerism came in Lorraine, whose court painter Jacques Bellange (c.1575–1616) is now known only from his extraordinary etchings, though he was also a painter. His style derives from Netherlandish Mannerism, though his technique from Italian etchers, especially Barocci and Ventura Salimbeni. Unusually, his subjects were mainly religious, and though the costumes are often extravagant, suggest intense religious feelings on his part.