True Lies: The Value of Distortion in José García Hidalgo’s Prints of the Crucified Christ

• In Event: Transcendence, Figuration, Modernity: On Theology and the Arts in the Renaissance I

Abstract

José García Hidalgo’s 1693 treatise instructed artists on how to correct the optical disfigurement of paintings that were displayed on high or viewed from oblique angles. A number of the book’s prints distort the body of Christ to the point that, if decontextualized, they could have been perceived as mockeries of sacred pictures. I examine the effect that operations of geometric adjustment had on images that fell into the category of the verdadero retrato, or ‘true portrait.’ I will argue that in order to reconcile ‘true’ sacred images with potentially ‘deceitful’ artistic practices, García Hidalgo made recourse to semantics, subtly placing the onus of falsehood not on the artist or the artwork, but on external factors. This suggests that to the early modern viewer, the operations of subjective mediation that undergirded the making and reception of sacred images did not necessarily reduce their claim to truthfulness.

Author

• Adam Jasienski, Southern Methodist University