Love Scene is the conventional title given to a monumental composition by Giulio Romano (1499–1546), a striking representative of Roman Mannerism who began his career in the studio of the great Raphael. Episodes with erotic overtones were among the motifs more frequently found in the Mannerists’ arsenal of subject matter.
The Holy Family with St Elizabeth is one of the few works now known to be indisputably by Francesco Primaticcio (1505-1570), a painter of the Bolognese school who was among the Italian artists who laid the foundations of the Fontainebleau School in French art.
The striking Bathsheba, executed with virtuoso skill by Giovanni Battista Naldini (1537–1591), a pupil of Pontormo, is at the same time marked by characteristic features of Late Mannerism – coldness and the loss of the vividness of the images.
The message of the Allegory of the Christian Church by Alessandro Allori (1535–1609) is conveyed by a host of symbols. The Church is personified by a young woman who is having a wreath with a red rose (a symbol of martyrdom) placed on her head by an infant who holds in his other hand a wreath of thorns, a reminder of the crown of thorns that Christ was made to wear.
The Portrait of a Man by Federico Barocci (Federico Fiori, c. 1535–1612) represents a genre that occupied a considerable place in Mannerist art.