Mannerist in the context of "Plaquette"

Body proportions is the study of artistic anatomy, which attempts to explore the relation of the elements of the human body to each other and to the whole. These ratios are used in depictions of the human figure and may become part of an artistic canon of body proportion within a culture. Academic art of the nineteenth century demanded close adherence to these reference metrics and some artists in the early twentieth century rejected those constraints and consciously mutated them.

Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer known for his work Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, considered the ideological foundation of Western art-historical writing, and still much cited in modern biographies of the many Italian Renaissance artists he covers, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, although he is since regarded as including many factual errors, especially when covering artists from before he was born.

Vasari was a Mannerist painter highly regarded both as a painter and architect in his day but rather less so in later centuries. He was effectively what would later be called the minister of culture to the Medici court in Florence, and the Lives promoted, with enduring success, the idea of Florentine superiority in the visual arts.

Limoges enamel has been produced at Limoges, in south-western France, over several centuries up to the present. There are two periods when it was of European importance. From the 12th century to 1370 there was a large industry producing metal objects decorated in enamel using the champlevé technique, of which most of the survivals (estimated at around 7,500 pieces), and probably most of the original production, are religious objects such as reliquaries.

After a gap of a century, the industry revived in the late 15th century, now specializing in the technique of painted enamel, and within a few decades making rather more secular than religious pieces. In the French Renaissance it was the leading centre, with several dynastic workshops, who often signed or punchmarked their work. Luxury pieces such as plates, plaques and ewers were painted with sophisticated Mannerist decoration of pictorial figure scenes, which on vessels were surrounded by elaborate borders.

Jacopo Robusti (late September or early October 1518 – 31 May 1594), best known as Tintoretto (/ˌtɪntəˈrɛtoʊ/ TIN-tə-RET-oh; Italian: [tintoˈretto], Venetian: [tiŋtoˈɾeto]), was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Venetian school. His contemporaries both admired and criticized the speed with which he painted and the unprecedented boldness of his brushwork. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed il Furioso (Italian for 'the Furious'). His work is characterised by muscular figures, dramatic gestures and bold use of perspective, in the Mannerist style.

The Vision of Saint Jerome of The Madonna and Child with Saints is a painting by the Italian Mannerist artist Parmigianino, executed in 1526–1527. It is in the collection of the National Gallery, in London.

Sebastiano Serlio (6 September 1475 – c. 1554) was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau. Serlio helped canonize the classical orders of architecture in his influential treatise variously known as I sette libri dell'architettura ("Seven Books of Architecture") or Tutte l'opere d'architettura et prospetiva ("All the works on architecture and perspective").

Baroque sculpture is the sculpture associated with the Baroque style of the period between the early 17th and mid 18th centuries. In Baroque sculpture, groups of figures assumed new importance, and there was a dynamic movement and energy of human forms—they spiralled around an empty central vortex, or reached outwards into the surrounding space. Baroque sculpture often had multiple ideal viewing angles, and reflected a general continuation of the Renaissance move away from the relief to sculpture created in the round, and designed to be placed in the middle of a large space—elaborate fountains such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini‘s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Rome, 1651), or those in the Gardens of Versailles were a Baroque speciality. The Baroque style was perfectly suited to sculpture, with Bernini the dominating figure of the age in works such as Ecstasy of Saint Theresa (1647–1652). Much Baroque sculpture added extra-sculptural elements, for example, concealed lighting, or water fountains, or fused sculpture and architecture to create a transformative experience for the viewer. Artists saw themselves as in the classical tradition, but admired Hellenistic and later Roman sculpture, rather than that of the more "Classical" periods as they are seen today.

Baroque sculpture followed Renaissance and Mannerist sculpture and was succeeded by Rococo and Neoclassical Sculpture. Rome was the earliest centre where the style was formed. The style spread to the rest of Europe, and especially France gave a new direction in the late 17th century. Eventually it spread beyond Europe to the colonial possessions of the European powers, especially in Latin America and the Philippines.