Mannerism

After the High Renaissance had achieved perfect balance, painters began stretching necks, twisting bodies, and unsettling their color. The style's name comes from Vasari's word maniera, 'manner' or 'technique', and it started life as an insult: painting that merely imitates a master's hand, with nothing of one's own inside it. What do you do once the ideal has already been achieved? This generation painted that very discomfort.