gures, but he also breaks the rules of composition. Mannerist space is flat and ambiguous; the audience is never quite sure where it is going, or how the figures are arranged in it. The figures appear to be standing on a hill or incline, because the figures in the rear are lifted much higher than those in the front, and there are no clues to how far back the space actually extends. The center of the canvas is the space usually allocated for the focus of the painting during the High Renaissance, but Pontormo leaves it empty. This leaves the composition void of a focal point forcing the viewers eye to continually scan the image. The bodies of the figures seem to move around the frame of the canvas, and the focus of each figure is somewhere different in the painting. Two figures are even facing toward the back of the painting leaving viewers unsure where their attention should be focused. The composition is abstracted further by the palette of colors Pontormo chose. Compositions of the high Renaissance used, for the most part, the full range of primary colors, almost none of which appear in this work. Mannerist color wasnt meant to be realistic, it was for the purpose of variation, and thrill. Again in Fiorentinos Descent From the Cross, the multitude of figures creates a lack of focus in the image, but the uniform light in the painting also helps to disperse focal attention. Mannerist light tends to originate from somewhere parallel to the picture plane reserving shadow for surfaces that recede or protrude. Containing such a small amount of shadow, Fiorentinos scene appears to be bathed in the harsh flash of a camera stressing each figure equally and obscuring the subject. Fiorentinos figures are a mass of parallels and intersections describing the use of line and geometry in Mannerist painting. Smyth says that "Elongation is not central to maniera, but the principals of angularity and of s...
