Manner: Taxonomy and Periodisation, Individual and Collective Identity

Abstract ‘Manner’ was a term that was very widespread before being progressively replaced by ‘style’ since the second half of the eighteenth century. First, this article reviews the twentieth-century debate on this topic to clarify certain points regarding Vasari’s lexical choices and the method used to create periodising labels. These initial observations allow to move on to a subsequent analysis of the France of Louis XIV , in which the Academicians questioned the intrinsic and extrinsic causes of manner, before arriving in the heart of the eighteenth century, specifically with the case of Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville, to highlight the strong links between art and science within the classificatory method. The many voices of the authors involved will help to elucidate the extent to which the parameters of manner, and thus style, have been decisive in classification systems.