Crime and illusion : the art of truth in the Spanish Golden Age /

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 and illusion argues the opposite. It defends the thesis that the fundamental problem a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pereda, Felipe, 1968- (Author)
Other Authors: Lopez-Morillas, Consuelo (Translator)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: London ; Turnhout, Belgium : Harvey Miller Publishers, [2018]
Series:Harvey Miller studies in Baroque art.
Subjects:
Description
Summary: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 and 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 and 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. --Preliminary page.
Physical Description:334 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), color maps ; 29 cm.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9781912554096
1912554097