Body, Shadow and Death: Redefinition of the Origin of Painting with Tracing the Shadow
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54097/ehss.v1i.679Keywords:
Human body, Shadow, Truth, Illusion.Abstract
The origin of things has always captivated people; for painting, there are several myths to illustrate it. In western, Pliny the Elder contributed one of the most antiquity stories in his Natural History; from 1770 to 1820, particularly in Britain and France, there are an increasing number of works based on this story, the majority of which are composed of the same elements: classical environment, two lovers, as well as shadow. Considering Joseph Benoit Suvée's the Invention of the Art of Painting in 1791 as a starting place, this paper intends to challenge Plato's reasonable rejection of shadows while, in the process, analyzing Hans Belting's theory of image anthropology, the present essay focuses on two key concepts of the shadow with the truth. Thus, Pliny argued that shadows may be genuine, whereas Plato held that they could be dangerously deceptive.
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