Secret places in Renaissance art. The grotto as opening and closure of the pastoral landscape

Abstract

The image of the grotto as perceived in Antiquity and in the Spanish humanistic tradition can also be considered central to our knowledge of Renaissance artistic settings. lt seems to represent the dynamic
relationship between the natural and the artificial, between the deliberately unfinished image and that completed according to accepted conventions, thus enriching the integration of the arts within the genres of poetry and the pastoral novel.The use of the pastoral grotto settings also recalls the Theme of the Flood as a dark place in the origin of the cosmos which contrasts with the idealizing conventions of Christian Humanism and pure Classicism which prefers a geometrical plan, with a harmonic elevation.