Crime and Illusion: The Art of Truth in the Spanish Golden Age (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781912554096)

According to an old historiographic tradition, the Spanish Golden Age placed the imitation of nature at the service of religion: its radical naturalism responded to the deep faith of that culture and moment. Crime & Illusion argues the opposite. It defends the thesis that the fundamental problem artists of the Golden Age confronted was not imitation but Truth. Moreover a large part, maybe the best part, of Spanish Baroque religious imagery is better understood as a complex exercise in addressing the spectators' doubts. Hovering on the horizon of an emerging empiricism, artists created their images as pieces of evidence, arguments for belief. Crime & Illusion reconstructs and interprets this judicial or forensic aspect of early modern visual culture at the center of a political, religious, and scientific triangle. Finally, the book explores the artists' skeptical reflection on the problematic relationship of painting and sculpture to the art of truth.

Author: Felipe Pereda
ISBN-10: 1912554097
ISBN-13: 9781912554096
Publisher: Harvey Miller
Language: English
Published: 01/09/2019
Pages: 336
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.47lbs