Maniera, (Italian: “manner,” “style”) in art criticism, certain stylistic characteristics, primarily in Mannerist painting (see Mannerism). In the 14th and 15th centuries, manière in France and maniera in Italy designated refined, courtly manners and sophisticated bearing. The name was first applied to art—apparently to praise the grace of the art of the Italian court painter Pisanello—by a critic, either Agnolo Galli or Ottaviano Ubaldini, in Urbino in 1442. Between about 1520 and 1550—first in Italy, then the French court (especially at Fontainebleau), and later in the Netherlands and other settings in the north of Europe—artists developed qualities of grace, novelty, and curiosity in their painting, at the same time adhering to older formal conventions and self-consciously displaying their abilities to resolve difficult artistic problems and to exercise license within rules derived from Classical art.
The Florentine painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari praised the productions of the Italians for exhibiting bella maniera, “beautiful style,” in addition to satisfying more technical qualities. In the 17th century, the art historian Giovanni Pietro Bellori condemned the same painters Vasari had praised because they had abandoned the study of nature and adulterated the arts with maniera.