¶ … cultural movements of European art after the Renaissance, namely those style periods of Mannerism, Baroque, and Rococo. In the late sixteenth century, Mannerism was a unique artistic technique that made use of distortions of scale and viewpoint. The Baroque movement in art and architecture enhanced Europe between the early seventeenth and middle eighteenth centuries as it emphasized dramatic and at times tense affects. The Baroque artists and sculptures consistently used very bold, curving forms, and extremely elaborate ornamentation. However, unlike Mannerism, they emphasized balance of incongruent parts. The Baroque musicians of the period also flourished throughout Europe and were known for their expressive dissension and complex embellishment of tones. Rococo, which originated early in eighteenth century France and may be considered by some experts as merely an extension of the Baroque movement, was an artistic approach used to create beautiful architecture and art works that were often based on flora and animal forms and often adorned by extremely complicated...
Even Rococo musical composition was characterized by its elevated degree of embellishment.
To truly understand some similarities of these cultural movements, it is best to understand why they came to be in the first place. They each represented change and sprang out of desires to be free of the previous movement's restrictions or limitations. Just as the Renaissance was in itself an effort to escape the dead period called the Middle Ages, Mannerism stormed away from the innate order and balance of the Renaissance. Mannerism promoted new ideas like imbalance and it allowed for works that were crowded, jumbled and used bold harsh colors. People wanted to revolt against the self-contained spatial arrangements of the Renaissance -- they wanted to be a little more playful.
Consider the origins of the Baroque movement which was also a shift away from control. Control in this sense came from political and religious upheaval with the 30 years war, conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, Puritans being forced to flee…
