Darker Shades
Difference exists; otherness is constructed. This book asks how important Western artists, from Giotto to Titian and Caravaggio, and from Bosch to Dürer and Rembrandt, shaped the imaging of non-Western individuals in Early Modern art. This nuanced and detailed study examines images of racial ‘otherness’ during a time of new encounters with different cultures and peoples, such as people of colour, Muslims and Jews. The book also reconsiders the Western canon’s most essential facets: perspective, pictorial narrative, composition, bodily proportion, beauty, colour, harmony and lighting. What room was there for the ‘Other’ in such a crystalline, unchanging paradigm?
This book is a fascinating investigation for anyone interested in early modern art history, anthropology and post-colonial studies.
Victor I. Stoichita is Professor of Modern Art History at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He is the author of Visionary Experience in the Golden Age of Spanish Art (1997) and A Short History of the Shadow (1997, 2019), and co-author with Anna-Maria Coderch of Goya: The Last Carnival (1999), all published by Reaktion Books.