Definition of "mannerist" [man•ner•ist]

• Someone especially interested in personal manners (noun)
• One who has many idiosyncratic mannerisms (noun)

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• "The piece's brooding exaggerations might be best described as mannerist: angular, often insistent elaborations of the chorale melody; a rhetorical approach that alternates fragmentary utterance with rhapsodic outpourings, some of which traverse the entire compass of the keyboard; unexpected eruptions of pedal virtuosity; interlocking echoes that exploit the architectural expanse of northern organs; and a final cadence of high pathos, its keening swoop of descending scales followed by craggy upward leaps grasping to recover lost heights."
• "He was noted as much for his small stature (he was just over five feet tall) as for his comic roles, most of which werelike that of Fritzwritten for him and therefore tended to become ever more similar in nature and substance, so much so that he was regarded as a "mannerist," or what today is called a "stock" character actor whose roles become inseparable from the actor himself."
• "At first, this painting, by the mannerist painter Parmigianino, looks perfectly finished."