Fisiognomía y expresión en la literatura artística española de los siglos XVII y XVIII

Abstract

Whenever Western figurative culture has focused on the human body, it inevitably has exceeded strictly organic or structural studies. Furthermore, Western culture has deepened in human inner world and in its expressive and affective abilities, in accordance with the philosophical conception that closely links soul and body. Painters and sculptors often face problems that go beyond a purely visual scope in order to penetrate an intuitive realm expecting to be verbalized and codified since artistic literature times. Therefore, our aim is to tackle the interest aroused from the subject by analyzing the testimonies of a number of theoretical-artistic works drafted in Spain between the 17th and 18th centuries.