VERACITY, VERISIMILITUDE, AND OPTICS IN PAINTING IN ITALY AT THE TURN OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

AbstractIn Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata, Armida's garden is an artifice, a simulation created by the sorceress, appearing completely natural. The art that created it is nowhere apparent. If the illusion fails, then it is the skill of the creator that we will admire, rather than its effect, and this ran contrary to what was required by the Counter-Reformation, which rejected the show of skill in Michelangelo and the obvious artifice and artificiality of Mannerist painting (see Fig. 1). The recondite and aristocratic productions of late Mannerism that had limited the audience to the initiated and cultured were replaced by paintings that would appeal to both the educated and the people, securely rooted in the tangible. Just as Gabriele Paleotti, bishop of Bologna, himself returned to direct involvement with his parishioners, preaching and being available in person, bringing the Church back to the people, so he also exhorted the painter in his works to be accessible and comprehensible to all, to educate, to b...